Weasels Not welcome!

Even were we to assume Conservative policies could solve our nation's many social, fiscal and foreign policy problems it is highly problematic, at this time, the Republican Party has much of a chance of doing so.

They certainly could benefit, and may even, from an Obama implosion but that is an un-enviable position to be in because no one, even the most partisan, wishes that to befall our nation.

Second, though Republicans may have begun to return to their principles they proved incapable of staying on message and governing accordingly when they had the opportunity and were in power.

Third, they corrupted themselves. Their internal leadership failed and thus, even as they try to return to their roots by espousing their renewed convictions, few voters, I suspect,are now willing to give them the benfit of the doubt. Why? Because they are viewed though the cynical prism that politicians will be politicians and regaining office is their goal not serving the nation's best interest. Clinton said: "you gotta do what you gotta do." Is, is, is and that pretty much said it all.

The best hope for true Conservatives, whether Democrats or Republicans, is to rebut consistently and offer constructive common sense programs that are in the nation's best interest, leave no room for doubt as to their sincerity and are unabashedly put forth even if doing so carries political risk of defeat.

Our nation was founded by those who believed in what they were undertaking and who did so at personal risk both to life and economic security. Weasels were not welcomed nor were they at the recent CPAC Meeting..

The Republican base is far too narrow. To broaden it they are conflicted between watering down their principles and becoming the party of 'me tooism.' That sunk Romney and eventually McCain. Palin was unprepared for 'prime time.'

From my perspective the Demwits will eventually fall on their own sword and if Conservatives can stay true to their convictions, and in the process tolerate losing a few elections, and come with up solid and truly appealing candidates they will be returned to power. Eventually the nation will be well served and we will be a better one for it.

The depression we are in is a wake up call from which we can learn valuable lessons. The best one is to re-examine what made the wheels fly off and I suspect we will find it was our love affair with unbridled Liberalism and belief that future generations should pay the bill.

Though Obama has been president since the first week in January he actually began taking over four months ago with his first speech about the economy - GW basically bowed out and allowed Obama to take center stage. Since then, the market has dropped some 3000 Dow Points. To most objective observers this would suggest lack of confidence due to any plan of action that makes sense. Most of Obama's policies, to date,have been ad hoc.

A tennis friend of mine and fellow memo reader summarized his own frustrations as follows: (See 1 below.)

Now Obama is proposing trading GW's missile defense for some vague pledge of co-operation by Russia vis a vis Iran. In doing so he has left Poland's leaders out to dry.

Obama's Secretary of State is in the Middle East dangling $300 million to rebuild Gaza as a reward for Palestinian support of Hamas' rocketing Israel and another $600 million to help Abbas stay in office in the West Bank so he and Fatah can survive a merger with Hamas. More American tax dollars being thrown down the drain as Hamas rockets continue raining on Israel and Netanyahu will not tolerate this nor would any sovereign nation. (See 2 below.)

Thjis week, Obama proposed policies which will penalize mortgagees. This will hurt the housing market and when you harm housing you further weaken banks and when you further weaken banks you cannot calm financial markets with more bails outs. Why? Because, perversely, bail outs send signals that matters are really in terrible shape and investors react accordingly - they panic as they have.

The Chairman of Bankamerica acknowledged as much when he said accepting money from the government actually caused more problems because investors mis-interpreted by thinking his bank was in worse shape than it was.

The tragic mistake our neophyte president is repeatedly making is his pedagogic and dangerous belief he can simultaneously push forward whith his extreme socially liberal agenda while we are in an economically depressed state.

He is stunningly tone deaf to the market's extreme unction with his urgent imposition of growing government to the detriment, nay destruction, of capitalism. No wonder the financial markets are sinking and trillions of security values have been and are being erased.

How can Obama talk about PE Ratios when no one knows what earnings will be. By doing so, he simply displays ignorance. Does Obama believe our economy is a python capable of digesting his outsized budget while the world is experiencing severe delveraging? Lamentably, it would appear he does.

Or perhaps he wants the economy to tank so he can rush through more legislation placing ever greater parts of our economy under government control.

Those who support Obama and voted for him, when I ask them what they now think, offer these responses among others:

a) He inherited a mess.

b) He has not been in office but a few weeks.

c) He is doing his best, is very intelligent and has equally smart advisors.

d) What he is proposing is what we need, ie. government run health care system, caps on energy etc.

Were this happening on GW's watch I suspect they would not be so dis-passionate.

I repeat, Obama misconstrued his election and his rapacious desire to aggressively pursue his agenda is boomeranging and as long as he remains arrogantly insensitive to his contribution to the problems we face matters will worsen.

Eventualy Obama will get it right because he lacks experience and experience does not count. Only words matter and he is full of words.

For those who are interested this is what Newt says about the current situation. (See 3 below.)

Stratfor on Russia's Finanical Crisi and the six pillars. (See 4 below.)

Let's hear it from Iran. (See 5 below.)


Finally, two items sent to me by dear freinds and fellow memo readers. I have not checked to see if (6 below) was actually published in The WSJ but if the writer was outraged a year ago no telling how much more she is now. (See 6 and 7 below.)


Dick

1) So, Let's Recap the first month of Obama's term--

1. The American people elect a black president with a total of 142 days experience as a US Senator from the most politically corrupt state in America whose governor is ousted from office. The President's first official act is to order the close of Gitmo and make sure terrorists civil rights are not violated.

2. The U.S. Congress rushes to confirm a black Attorney General, Eric Holder, whose law firm we later find out represents seventeen Gitmo Terrorists.

3. The CIA Boss appointee, Leon Panetta has absolutely no experience, has a daughter Linda we find out, who is a true radical anti-American activist and a supporter of all the Anti-American regimes in the western hemisphere.

4. We got the most corrupt female in America as Secretary of State; bought and paid for.

5. We got a Tax Cheat for Treasury Secretary, who does not understand the IRS Tax Code but files his own taxes.

6. A Commerce Secretary nominee who withdrew due to corruption charges.

7. A Tax cheat nominee for Chief Performance Officer who withdrew under charges.

8. A Labor Secretary nominee who withdrew under charges of unethical conduct.

9. A Secretary of Human and Health Services nominee who withdrew under charges of cheating on his taxes.

10. Multiple appointments of former lobbyists after an absolute campaign statement that no lobbyists would be appointed.

And that's just the first month?

America is being run by the modern-day Three Stooges ~ Barrack, Nancy, and Harry ~ and they are still trying to define stimulus..."it's
spending"...

The congress passes the $800,000,000,000 (that's $800 billion) pork loaded spending bill where the government gives you a smidgen of your tax dollars ($13 per week) making you feel so good about yourself [stimulated] that you want to run out to Wal-Mart and buy a new Chinese-made HDTV and go home and watch Telemundo!

Only in America, what a country...

2) That Surreal Gaza Reconstruction Conference
By Daniel Pipes


Was I the only one rubbing my eyes in disbelief yesterday, as the Egyptian government hosted an "International Conference for the Reconstruction of Gaza"?


Husni Mubarak of Egypt addresses the Gaza donors' conference.

It took place in Sharm El-Sheikh, attended by delegations from 71 states, plus 16 regional, international, and financial organizations. Its stated goal was to raise US$2.8 billion, of which $1.3 was for rebuilding what had been destroyed in the course of Israel 's recent war on Hamas (the rest would be sent to the Palestinian Authority to help improve its standing). The actual amount raised at the conference was $4.5 billion which, when added to previously committed funds, means the grant total for Gaza and the PA comes to $5.2 billion, to be disbursed over a two-year period. A delighted Egyptian foreign minister called the amount "beyond our expectations." U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton called it "a very productive conference"


Among the larger donations included a Gulf Cooperation Council contribution of $1.65 billion over five years and a U.S. government pledge of $900 million from the American taxpayer (of which $300 million will go for Gaza rebuilding).
Husni Mubarak of Egypt, Nicholas Sarkozy of France, Silvio Berlusconi of Italy, Ban Ki-moon of the United Nations, Amr Moussa of the Arab League, and Mahmoud Abbas of the Palestinian Authority gave speeches.


Why my disbelief at this spectacle: I wonder if those eminentoes and worthies really believe that warfare in Gaza is a thing of the past, and that the time for reconstruction is nigh?


They must not read dispatches from southern Israel , which report the daily warfare that continues there. Take a representative news item from Yedi'ot Aharonot, dated February 28, "Experts: Grads in Ashkelon were advanced."
the two Grad rockets that landed in Ashkelon Saturday morning[, Feb. 28,] were new and improved models, capable of greater destruction than those usually fired from Gaza . One of the rockets hit a school in the southern city, and succeeded in penetrating the fortification used to protect it from projectiles. … The Grad rockets that hit Ashkelon were two of only five or six locally manufactured 170 mm rockets ever fired at Israel , experts say. The rarely used rockets have a range of 14 km (8.6 miles) and are capable of massive damage, evident from the destruction witnesses described on the scene of Saturday's attack.

In an official protest to the United Nations, the Israel 's Ambassador Gabriela Shalev noted that "there have been nearly 100 rocket and mortar attacks from the Gaza Strip" since the ceasefire on January 18, or over two per day. These have been increasing in number, with 12 rockets were fired at Sderot on March 1 alone.
Responding to these attacks, the Israeli cabinet resolved on March 1 that "should the firing from the Gaza Strip continue, it would be met by a painful, sharp, strong and uncompromising response by the security forces." Prime Minister-designate Binyamin Netanyahu echoed this bellicosity, reportedly telling a European leader that he would not sacrifice Israel 's security "for a smile."


(Saudi foreign minister Saud Al-Faisal, in unexpected agreement, noted that rebuilding Gaza would be "difficult and fool-hardy, so long as peace and security do not prevail" there.)


What the hell are the donor countries doing, getting in the middle of an on-going war with their high-profile supposed reconstruction effort? My best guess: this permits them subtly to signal Jerusalem that it better not attack Gaza again, because doing so will confront it with a lot of very angry donor governments – including, of course, the Obama administration.


Adding to the surreal quality is a blithe disregard for Israel 's security needs. Consider the attitude of Douglas Alexander, international development secretary for Britain 's Labour government, who pledged £30 million of his taxpayers' funds to rebuild houses, schools, and hospitals in Gaza . "There is a desperate need for tough restrictions on the supply of goods to be relaxed," he said, demanding next that " Israel must do the right thing and allow much-needed goods to get through to those men, women and children who continue to suffer."


That's very humanitarian of Mr. Alexander, but he willfully ignored Israeli expectations that Hamas will confiscate steel, concrete, and other imported construction materials to build more tunnels, bunkers, and rockets. After all, Hamas appropriated prior deliveries intended for civilians, and so blatantly that even the usually docile United Nations Relief and Works Agency protested.


Husni Mubarak might warn Hamas not to treat the donors' pledges as a "conquest of war," but it will assuredly do precisely that. U.S. Rep. Mark Kirk (Republican of Illinois) got it right: "To route $900 million to this area, and let's say Hamas was only able to steal 10 percent of that, we would still become Hamas' second-largest funder after Iran ."
So, under the cheery banner of building, in Clinton's words, "a comprehensive peace between Israel and its Arab neighbors," donor states are not only defying Israel to protect itself from rocket fire but they are funneling matériel to Hamas.
Is this ignorance or mendacity? I suspect the latter; no one is that dumb.

3) Exactly Wrong on the Economy
By Newt Gingrich

I'm beginning this week by doing something I don't usually do: thanking the New York Times.

Last week, this was the Times headline over a story about President Obama's budget:

"A Bold Plan Sweeps Away Reagan Ideas"

And so I want to thank the New York Times for portraying the Obama budget for what it is: The most audacious attempt in generations to create a government-centered, bureaucratically controlled country.


"Never Let A Crisis Go To Waste"
We should have seen it coming.

Way back in November, when the Obama team was still flush with victory in the election, Obama White House Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel laid out what he called "Rule One":

"Never let a crisis go to waste."

The Obama budget plan unveiled last week is proof that the goal of the administration is not economic recovery. The goal is an unprecedented shift of power to politicians and bureaucrats.


Which America Do We Want?
Ronald Reagan believed that at the center of American life was the individual. The entrepreneur. The worker. The doer. The family man and woman.

The Obama budget reveals a very different vision of the men and women at the center of American life.

They are the politicians. The bureaucrats. The interest groups that support an ever expanding government sector.

And so the American people are presented with a real choice: Which America do we want?

An America in which citizens and entrepreneurs are free and hold the power?

Or an American in which politicians and bureaucrats dominate and are in charge?


The New Religion of the Secular Left
The first month and a half of the Obama Administration has presented Americans with another choice to make.

The choice is captured best in the administration's announcement last week that it intends to rescind the Bush Administration rule that allowed doctors, nurses, pharmacists and other health care workers to refuse to perform acts that violate their religious and moral beliefs.

I'll have more to say about this in the future. But for now, let me just point out what it bodes for religious freedom in America.

The Obama Administration's reversal of what has become known as the "conscience provision" to protect doctors and nurses who have a moral objection to participating in or performing abortions is a direct assault on religious liberty.

It marks the establishment of a state-sponsored religion of secular leftism. And it gives this new religion the right to eliminate the religious liberty of all others that it deems inappropriate.

It, too, presents the American people with a choice of two competing futures. A future of traditional American respect for religious freedom. Or a future in which the values of the secular left over-ride our religious liberty wherever they come into conflict.


The U.S. Has the Second Highest Business Taxes in the World
Concentrating more power in Washington politicians and bureaucrats means government dictating what it deems are the "right" choices to individuals and businesses, rather than giving them the freedom and incentive to make their own choices.

For example, in his address to the joint session of Congress last week, the President announced his intention to punish "corporations that ship our jobs overseas."

The United States imposes the second highest business taxes of any industrialized nation in the world. While countries like Ireland tax corporations at 12.5%, and even our neighbor Canada is moving its national business tax rate to 15% (the lowest among the G-7 countries), the United States taxes businesses at a whopping 35%. And a number of states have corporate income taxes on top of that.

Inevitably, high taxes in the U.S. cause some businesses to locate some or all of their business in lower tax countries overseas.


Don't Punish Businesses for Locating Overseas. Encourage Businesses to Come to America to Create American Jobs
But if President Obama were serious about wanting to create jobs, he wouldn't be thinking up ways to punish companies for wanting to relocate overseas

If President Obama were serious about creating and keeping American jobs he would be thinking of ways to make companies want to bring their jobs and capital to America - and keep them here.

Americans Solutions has created 12 American Solutions for Jobs and Prosperity. Our No. 3 recommendation for jobs and prosperity is for America to match Ireland's 12.5% business tax.

That would do more than anything in the President's budget to accomplish his often-repeated goal of "creating and saving" American jobs.


What Entrepreneur Wants Chris Dodd to Dictate How Much He Can Earn?
As it stands, what entrepreneur in his or her right mind would risk the time, effort and capital to start a business in America?

So Sen. Chris Dodd (D-Conn.) can act as income dictator and tell them how much they can earn?

So a hidden energy tax can dramatically increase the cost of manufacturing, not to mention heating the business and transporting employees?

So union bosses can deny American workers the right to a private ballot?

Who wants to create a job in America at a time when Washington, D.C., not New York or Silicon Valley, is fast becoming the controlling center of American business?

Who wants to create jobs in America if politics trumps economics when it comes to determining who succeeds and who fails?


Yes to Bureaucracies, No to Charities
It's not just in the area of jobs that the Obama budget sends a message that he would shift power dramatically from the people to the politicians.

At a time when charitable donations are suffering because of the economic downturn, President Obama's budget discourages charitable giving by those Americans with the most to give by limiting the charitable giving deduction.

And at a time when cratering housing prices are driving the recession, President Obama's budget discourages home ownership by those Americans who could most positively impact housing prices by limiting the mortgage interest deduction.

President Obama's Budget Message: Bureaucratic government is the solution, and we no longer have a choice about it.


Attorney General Holder: Come to Detroit. Let's Talk About Cowardice
Another clue to how the Obama Administration views the intelligence and capability of the American people came when Attorney General Eric Holder recently called America "a nation of cowards" when it comes to race.




Photo Credit: Callista Gingrich, Gingrich Productions
See more of Callista's pictures at GingrichProductions.com
In my speech to the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) on Friday I issued a challenge to Attorney General Holder that I repeat here:

Mr. Attorney General, the American people aren't cowards. Quite the opposite. They have the courage to demand that their leaders tell them the truth.

So in the spirit of courageous truth telling, I invite you to come to Detroit to discuss politics and race. I invite you to discuss the failure of the policies and institutions that you support in a city which those policies and institutions have failed more than any other.

Let's have the courage to debate the failure of the Detroit school system. Let's have the courage to discuss the bad policies, bad ideas and bad bureaucracies that have taken Detroit from No. 1 in the nation in per capita income to No. 62.

This is a serious invitation to the Attorney General to have a dialogue with me about what the residents of cities like Detroit need most: More talk about race, or leadership that believes they have a God-given right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness just like the rest of us.


Let's Have a Debate, America
I've had some strong words for the Obama Administration today, but my real message is to the American people:

Now that President Obama has revealed the direction in which he wants to take the country, let's have a debate. Let's choose up teams.

If you believe the best way to create jobs is to give more money to bureaucrats in Washington and more power to politicians in Congress, you have a team.

If you think the best way to create jobs is to make life easier for people who want to work hard, take risks and create businesses and wealth, you have a team.

If you think America should be a place where politics trumps economics and religion, you have a team.

But if you think America is a place where freedom trumps it all, you have a team.

Let's let the American people choose. Which America do you want?


4) The Financial Crisis and the Six Pillars of Russian Strength
By Lauren Goodrich and Peter Zeihan

Under the leadership of Vladimir Putin, Russia has been re-establishing much of its lost Soviet-era strength. This has given rise to the possibility — and even the probability — that Russia again will become a potent adversary of the Western world. But now, Russia is yet again on the cusp of a set of massive currency devaluations that could destroy much of the country’s financial system. With a crashing currency, the disappearance of foreign capital, greatly decreased energy revenues and currency reserves flying out of the bank, the Western perception is that Russia is on the verge of collapsing once again. Consequently, many Western countries have started to grow complacent about Russia’s ability to further project power abroad.

But this is Russia. And Russia rarely follows anyone else’s rulebook.
The State of the Russian State
Russia has faced a slew of economic problems in the past six months. Incoming foreign direct investment, which reached a record high of $28 billion in 2007, has reportedly dried up to just a few billion. Russia’s two stock markets, the Russian Trading System (RTS) and the Moscow Interbank Currency Exchange (MICEX), have fallen 78 and 67 percent respectively since their highs in May 2008. And Russians have withdrawn $290 billion from the country’s banks in fear of a financial collapse .

One of Moscow’s sharpest financial pains came in the form of a slumping Russian ruble, which has dropped by about one-third against the dollar since August 2008. Thus far, the Kremlin has spent $200 billion defending its currency, a startling number given that the currency still dropped by 35 percent. The Russian government has allowed dozens of mini-devaluations to occur since August; the ruble’s fall has pushed the currency past its lowest point in the 1998 ruble crash.

The Kremlin now faces three options. First, it can continue defending the ruble by pouring more money into what looks like a black hole. Realistically, this can last only another six months or so, as Russia’s combined reserves of $750 billion in August 2008 have dropped to just less than $400 billion due to various recession-battling measures (of which currency defense is only one). This option would also limit Russia’s future anti-recession measures to currency defense alone. In essence, this option relies on merely hoping the global recession ends before the till runs dry.

The second option would be to abandon any defense of the ruble and just let the currency crash. This option will not hurt Moscow or its prized industries (like those in the energy and metals sectors) too much, as the Kremlin, its institutions and most large Russian companies hold their reserves in dollars and euros. Smaller businesses and the Russian people would lose everything, however, just as in the August 1998 ruble crash. This may sound harsh, but the Kremlin has proved repeatedly — during the Imperial, Soviet and present eras — that it is willing to put the survival of the Russian state before the welfare and survival of the people.

The third option is much like the second. It involves sealing the currency system off completely from international trade, relegating it only to use in purely domestic exchanges. But turning to a closed system would make the ruble absolutely worthless abroad, and probably within Russia as well — the black market and small businesses would be forced to follow the government’s example and switch to the euro, or more likely, the U.S. dollar. (Russians tend to trust the dollar more than the euro.)

According to the predominant rumor in Moscow, the Kremlin will opt for combining the first and second options, allowing a series of small devaluations, but continuing a partial defense of the currency to avoid a single 1998-style collapse. Such a hybrid approach would reflect internal politicking.

The lack of angst within the government over the disappearance of the ruble as a symbol of Russian strength is most intriguing. Instead of discussing how to preserve Russian financial power, the debate is now over how to let the currency crash. The destruction of this particular symbol of Russian strength over the past ten years has now become a given in the Kremlin’s thinking, as has the end of the growth and economic strength seen in recent years.

Washington is interpreting the Russian acceptance of economic failure as a sort of surrender. It is not difficult to see why. For most states — powerful or not — a deep recession coupled with a currency collapse would indicate an evisceration of the ability to project power, or even the end of the road. After all, similar economic collapses in 1992 and 1998 heralded periods in which Russian power simply evaporated, allowing the Americans free rein across the Russian sphere of influence. Russia has been using its economic strength to revive its influence as of late, so — as the American thinking goes — the destruction of that strength should lead to a new period of Russian weakness.
Geography and Development
But before one can truly understand the roots of Russian power, the reality and role of the Russian economy must be examined. From this perspective, the past several years are most certainly an aberration — and we are not simply speaking of the post-Soviet collapse.

All states economies’ to a great degree reflect their geographies. In the United States, the presence of large, interconnected river systems in the central third of the country, the intracoastal waterway along the Gulf and Atlantic coasts, the vastness of San Francisco Bay, the numerous rivers flowing to the sea from the eastern slopes of the Appalachian Mountains and the abundance of ideal port locations made the country easy to develop. The cost of transporting goods was nil, and scarce capital could be dedicated to other pursuits. The result was a massive economy with an equally massive leg up on any competition.

Russia’s geography is the polar opposite. Hardly any of Russia’s rivers are interconnected. The country has several massive ones — the Pechora, the Ob, the Yenisei, the Lena and the Kolyma — but they drain the nearly unpopulated Siberia to the Arctic Ocean, making them useless for commerce. The only river that cuts through Russia’s core, the Volga, drains not to the ocean but to the landlocked and sparsely populated Caspian Sea, the center of a sparsely populated region. Also unlike the United States, Russia has few useful ports. Kaliningrad is not connected to the main body of Russia. The Gulf of Finland freezes in winter, isolating St. Petersburg. The only true deepwater and warm-water ocean ports, Vladivostok and Murmansk, are simply too far from Russia’s core to be useful. So while geography handed the United States the perfect transport network free of charge, Russia has had to use every available kopek to link its country together with an expensive road, rail and canal network.

One of the many side effects of this geography situation is that the United States had extra capital that it could dedicate to finance in a relatively democratic manner, while Russia’s chronic capital deficit prompted it to concentrate what little capital resources it had into a single set of hands — Moscow’s hands. So while the United States became the poster child for the free market, Russia (whether the Russian Empire, Soviet Union or Russian Federation) has always tended toward central planning.

Russian industrialization and militarization began in earnest under Josef Stalin in the 1930s. Under centralized planning, all industry and services were nationalized, while industrial leaders were given predetermined output quotas.

Perhaps the most noteworthy difference between the Western and Russian development paths was the different use of finance. At the start of Stalin’s massive economic undertaking, international loans to build the economy were unavailable, both because the new government had repudiated the czarist regime’s international debts and because industrialized countries — the potential lenders — were coping with the onset of their own economic crisis (e.g., the Great Depression).

With loans and bonds unavailable, Stalin turned to another centrally controlled resource to “fund” Russian development: labor. Trade unions were converted into mechanisms for capturing all available labor as well as for increasing worker productivity. Russia essentially substitutes labor for capital, so it is no surprise that Stalin — like all Russian leaders before him — ran his population into the ground. Stalin called this his “revolution from above.”

Over the long term, the centralized system is highly inefficient, as it does not take the basic economic drivers of supply and demand into account — to say nothing of how it crushes the common worker. But for a country as geographically massive as Russia, it was (and remains) questionable whether Western finance-driven development is even feasible, due to the lack of cheap transit options and the massive distances involved. Development driven by the crushing of the labor pool was probably the best Russia could hope for, and the same holds true today.

In stark contrast to ages past, for the past five years foreign money has underwritten Russian development. Russian banks did not depend upon government funding — which was accumulated into vast reserves — but instead tapped foreign lenders and bondholders. Russian banks took this money and used it to lend to Russian firms. Meanwhile, as the Russian government asserted control over the country’s energy industries during the last several years, it created a completely separate economy that only rarely intersected with other aspects of Russian economic life. So when the current global recession helped lead to the evaporation of foreign credit, the core of the government/energy economy was broadly unaffected, even as the rest of the Russian economy ingloriously crashed to earth.

Since Putin’s rise, the Kremlin has sought to project an image of a strong, stable and financially powerful Russia. This vision of strength has been the cornerstone of Russian confidence for years. Note that STRATFOR is saying “vision,” not “reality.” For in reality, Russian financial confidence is solely the result of cash brought in from strong oil and natural gas prices — something largely beyond the Russians’ ability to manipulate — not the result of any restructuring of the Russian system. As such, the revelation that the emperor has no clothes — that Russia is still a complete financial mess — is more a blow to Moscow’s ego than a signal of a fundamental change in the reality of Russian power.
The Reality of Russian Power
So while Russia might be losing its financial security and capabilities, which in the West tend to boil down to economic wealth, the global recession has not affected the reality of Russian power much at all. Russia has not, currently or historically, worked off of anyone else’s cash or used economic stability as a foundation for political might or social stability. Instead, Russia relies on many other tools in its kit. Some of the following six pillars of Russian power are more powerful and appropriate than ever:
Geography: Unlike its main geopolitical rival, the United States, Russia borders most of the regions it wishes to project power into, and few geographic barriers separate it from its targets. Ukraine, Belarus and the Baltic states have zero geographic insulation from Russia. Central Asia is sheltered by distance, but not by mountains or rivers. The Caucasus provide a bit of a speed bump to Russia, but pro-Russian enclaves in Georgia give the Kremlin a secure foothold south of the mountain range (putting the August Russian-Georgian war in perspective). Even if U.S. forces were not tied down in Iraq and Afghanistan, the United States would face potentially insurmoun table difficulties in countering Russian actions in Moscow’s so-called “Near Abroad.” Russia can project all manner of influence and intimidation there on the cheap, while even symbolic counters are quite costly for the United States. In contrast, places such as Latin America, Southeast Asia or Africa do not capture much more than the Russian imagination; the Kremlin realizes it can do little more there than stir the occasional pot, and resources are allotted (centrally, of course) accordingly.
Politics: It is no secret that the Kremlin uses an iron fist to maintain domestic control. There are few domestic forces the government cannot control or balance. The Kremlin understands the revolutions (1917 in particular) and collapses (1991 in particular) of the past, and it has control mechanisms in place to prevent a repeat. This control is seen in every aspect of Russian life, from one main political party ruling the country to the lack of diversified media, limits on public demonstrations and the infiltration of the security services into nearly every aspect of the Russian system. This domination was fortified under Stalin and has been re-established under the reign of former President and now-Prime Minister Vladimir Putin. This political strength is based on neither financial nor economic foundations. Instead, it is based within the political institutions and parties, on the lack of a meaningful opposition, and with the backing of the military and security services. Russia’s neighbors, especially in Europe, cannot count on the same political strength because their systems are simply not set up the same way. The stability of the Russian government and lack of stability in the former Soviet states and much of Central Europe have also allowed the Kremlin to reach beyond Russia and influence its neighbors to the east. Now as before, when some of its former Soviet subjects — such as Ukraine — become destabilized, Russia sweeps in as a source of stability and authority, regardless of whether this benefits the recipient of Moscow’s attention.
Social System: As a consequence of Moscow’s political control and the economic situation, the Russian system is socially crushing, and has had long-term effects on the Russian psyche. As mentioned above, during the Soviet-era process of industrialization and militarization, workers operated under the direst of conditions for the good of the state. The Russian state has made it very clear that the productivity and survival of the state is far more important than the welfare of the people. This made Russia politically and economically strong, not in the sense that the people have had a voice, but in that they have not challenged the state since the beginning of the Soviet period. The Russian people, regardless of whether they admit it, continue to work to keep the state intact even when it does not benefit them. When the Soviet Uni on collapsed in 1991, Russia kept operating — though a bit haphazardly. Russians still went to work, even if they were not being paid. The same was seen in 1998, when the country collapsed financially. This is a very different mentality than that found in the West. Most Russians would not even consider the mass protests seen in Europe in response to the economic crisis. The Russian government, by contrast, can count on its people to continue to support the state and keep the country going with little protest over the conditions. Though there have been a few sporadic and meager protests in Russia, these protests mainly have been in opposition to the financial situation, not to the government’s hand in it. In some of these demonstrations, protesters have carried signs reading, “In government we trust, in the economic system we don’t.” This means Moscow can count on a stable population.
Natural Resources: Modern Russia enjoys a wealth of natural resources in everything from food and metals to gold and timber. The markets may take a roller-coaster ride and the currency may collapse, but the Russian economy has access to the core necessities of life. Many of these resources serve a double purpose, for in addition to making Russia independent of the outside world, they also give Moscow the ability to project power effectively. Russian energy — especially natural gas — is particularly key: Europe is dependent on Russian natural gas for a quarter of its demand. This relationship guarantees Russia a steady supply of now-scarce capital even as it forces the Europeans to take any Russian concerns seriously. The energy tie is something Russia has very publicly used as a political weapon, either by raising prices or by cutting off supplies. In a recession, this lever’s effectiveness has only grown.
Military: The Russian military is in the midst of a broad modernization and restructuring, and is reconstituting its basic warfighting capability. While many challenges remain, Moscow already has imposed a new reality through military force in Georgia. While Tbilisi was certainly an easy target, the Russian military looks very different to Kiev &# 8212; or even Warsaw and Prague — than it does to the Pentagon. And even in this case, Russia has come to rely increasingly heavily on its nuclear arsenal to rebalance the military equation and ensure its territorial integrity, and is looking to establish long-term nuclear parity with the Americans. Like the energy tool, Russia’s military has become more useful in times of economic duress, as potential targets have suffered far more than the Russians.
Intelligence: Russia has one of the world’s most sophisticated and powerful intelligence services. Historically, its only rival has been the United States (though today the Chinese arguably could be seen as rivaling the Americans and Russians). The KGB (now the FSB) instills fear into hearts around the world, let alone inside Russia. Infiltration and intimidation kept the Soviet Union and its sphere under control. No matter the condition of the Russian state, Moscow’s intelligence foundation has been its strongest pillar. The FSB and other Russian intelligence agencies have infiltrated most former Soviet republics and satellite states, and they also have infiltrated as far as Latin America and the United States. Russian intelligence has infiltrated political, security, military and business realms worldwide, and has boasted of infiltrating many former Soviet satellite governments, militaries and companies up to the highest level. All facets of the Russian government have backed this infiltration since Putin (a former KGB man) came to power and filled the Kremlin with his cohorts. This domestic and international infiltration has been built up for half a century. It is not something that requires much cash to maintain, but rather know-how — and the Russians wrote the book on the subject. One of the reasons Moscow can run this system inexpensively relative to what it gets in return is because Russia’s intelligence services have long been human-based, though they do have some highly advanced technology to wield. Russia also has incorporated other social networks in its intelligence services, such as o rganized crime or the Russian Orthodox Church, creating an intricate system at a low price. Russia’s intelligence services are much larger than most other countries’ services and cover most of the world. But the intelligence apparatus’ most intense focus is on the Russian periphery, rather than on the more expensive “far abroad.”
Thus, while Russia’s financial sector may be getting torn apart, the state does not really count on that sector for domestic cohesion or stability, or for projecting power abroad. Russia knows it lacks a good track record financially, so it depends on — and has shored up where it can — six other pillars to maintain its (self-proclaimed) place as a major international player. The current financial crisis would crush the last five pillars for any other state, but in Russia, it has only served to strengthen these bases. Over the past few years, there was a certain window of opportunity for Russia to resurge while Washington was preoccupied with wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. This window has been kept open longer by the West’s lack of worry over the Russian resurgence given the financial crisis. But others closer to the Russian border understand that Moscow has many tools more potent than finance with which to continue reasserting itself.


5) Iran: Israel "cancerous tumor," Obama on same wrong path as Bush



Leading a concentrated outpouring of venomous hate, Iran's supreme ruler Ayatollah Ali Khamenei declared Wednesday, March 4, that President Barack Obama is pursuing the same "wrong path" as his predecessor George W. Bush in supporting Israel – "a cancerous tumor" - and he saw no change.

This was Tehran's response to the moderate language coming from the new US president and Obama's willingness to engage in diplomacy to resolve the impasse over its nuclear program.

Addressing a conference in Tehran on the Palestinians, he said: "Another big mistake is to say that the only way to save the Palestinian nation is by negotiations." Negotiations with whom?" he asked. "With an occupying and bullying regime...? or negotiations with America and Britain who committed the biggest sin in creating and support this cancerous tumor…?

"The way to save [the Palestinians] is by standing firm and resisting [euphemism for terror]."

President Mahmoud Ahmandinejad told the conference, which was attended by all the Palestinian factions including Mahmoud Abbas' Fatah, "The story of the Holocaust, a nation without a homeland and a homeland without a nation... are the biggest lies of our era."

He went on to say: "The continuation of the Zionist regime on even one inch of the land of Palestine means the continuation of crime, occupation, threat and insult to the nations."

Alil Jafari, commander of Iran's Revolutionary Guards's contribution to the event attended by 80 delegations was this: "All Israel's nuclear installations are within range of Iranian missiles."

6) This letter was sent to the Wall Street Journal on August 8, 2008 by Alisa Wilson, PhD. of Beverly Hills, CA in response to the Wall Street Journal article titled, "Where's The Outrage?" that appeared July 31,2008.


"Really. I can tell you where the outrage is. The outrage is here, in this middle-aged, well-educated, upper-middle class woman. The outrage is here, but I have no representation, no voice. The outrage is here, but no one is listening for who am I?

I am not a billionaire like George Soros that can fund an entire political movement.

I am not a celebrity like Barbra Streisand that can garner the attention of the press to promote political candidates.

I am not a film maker like Michael Moore or Al Gore that can deliver misleading movies to the public.

The outrage is here, but unlike those with money or power, I don't know how to reach those who feel similarly in order to effect change.

Why am I outraged? I am outraged that my country, the United States of America , is in a state of moral and ethical decline. There is no right or wrong anymore, just what's fair.

Is it fair that millions of Americans who overreached and borrowed more than they could afford are now being bailed out by the government and lending institutions to stave off foreclosure? Why shouldn't these people be made to pay the consequences for their poor judgment?

When my husband and I purchased our home, we were careful to purchase only what we could afford. Believe me, there are much larger, much nicer homes that I would have loved to have purchased. But, taking responsibility for my behavior and my life, I went with the house that we could afford, not the house that we could not afford. The notion of personal responsibility has all but died in our country.

I am outraged, that the country that welcomed my mother as an immigrant from Hitler's Nazi Germany and required that she and her family learn English now allows itself to be overrun with illegal immigrants and worse, caters to those illegal immigrants.

I am outraged that my hard-earned taxes help support those here illegally. That the Los Angeles Public School District is in such disarray that I felt it incumbent to send my child to private school, that every time I go to the ATM, I see "do you want to continue in English or Spanish?", that every time I call the bank, the phone company, or similar business, I hear "press 1 for English or press 2 for Spanish".
WHY? This is America , our common language is English and attempts to promote a bi- or multi-lingual society are sure to fail and to marginalize those who cannot communicate in English.

I am outraged at our country's weakness in the face of new threats on American traditions from Muslims. Just this week, Tyson's Food negotiated with its union to permit Muslims to have Eid-al-Fitr as a holiday instead of Labor Day. What am I missing? Yes, there is a large Somali Muslim population working at the Tyson's plant in Tennessee. Tennessee, last I checked, is still part of the United States. If Muslims want to live and work here, they should be required to live and work by our American Laws and not impose their will on our long history.

In the same week, Random House announced that they had indefinitely delayed the publication of The Jewel of Medina, by Sherry Jones, a book about the life of Mohammed's wife, Aisha, due to fear of retribution and violence by Muslims When did we become a nation ruled by fear of what other immigrant groups want? It makes me so sad to see large corporations cave rather than stand proudly on the principles that built this country.

I am outraged because appeasement has never worked as a political policy, yet appeasing Mahmoud Ahmadinejad is exactly what we are trying to do. An excellent article, also published recently in the Wall Street Journal, went through over 20 years of history and why talking with Iran has been and will continue to be ineffective. Yet talk, with a madman no less, we continue to do. Have we so lost our moral compass and its ability to detect evil that we will not go in and destroy Iran's nuclear program? Would we rather wait for another Holocaust for the Jews - one which they would be unlikely to survive?
When does it end?

As if the battle for good and evil isn't enough, now come the Environmentalists who are so afraid of global warming that they want to put a Bag tax on grocery bags in California; to eliminate Mylar balloons; to establish something as insidious as the recycle police in San Francisco. I do my share
for the environment: I recycle, I use water wisely, I installed an energy efficient air conditioning unit.
But when and where does the lunacy stop? Ahmadinejad wants to wipe Israel off the map, the California economy is being overrun by illegal immigrants, and the United States of America no longer knows right from wrong, good from evil. So what does California do? Tax grocery bags.

So, America , although I can tell you where the outrage is, this one middle-aged, well-educated, upper middle class woman is powerless to do anything about it. I don't even feel like my vote counts because
I am so outnumbered by those who disagree with me."

Alisa Wilson, Ph.D.
Beverly Hills, California

7)What a profound short little paragraph that says it all!!! "You cannot legislate the poor into freedom by legislating the wealthy out of freedom. What one person receives without working for, another person must work for without receiving. The government cannot give to anybody anything that the government does not first take from somebody else. When half of the people get the idea that they do not have to work because the other half is going to take care of them, and when the other half gets the idea that it does no good to work because somebody else is going to get what they work for, that my dear friend, is about the end of any nation. You cannot multiply wealth by dividing it." ~~~~~ Dr. Adrian Rogers, 1931

Bigger Government - Save Us From Big Government!

Unprovoked Hamas terrorist rockets continue to fall on Israel and Olmert continues to bluster and make empty threats. Olmert remains more damaging than Hamas' Qassams. (See 1 and 1a below.)

Radicalization of American campuses by pro-Arab support groups is seldom reported in the news. Stilling campus debate and voices is an effective method that has been employed since the beginning of time by fascist thugs or misguided dolts.

One would think academics would respond to campus hate grooups but far too many college administrations have been cowered or are too PC to stand up as evidenced by their timidity during the Viet Nam Era. Radicalize a nation's educational institutions, crush free speech and you undergird its social fabric and foundation.

The only solution is to fight back, be informed and don't rely upon the intestinal fortitude of college administrators - for far too many are too intellectually comfortable in their academic setting. They have lost sight of their mission, their raison detre' - to protect our society by educating young minds to reason and reject the propaganda of hate and false beliefs.

Annette Bening's visit to Iran placed her in a compromised role and gave her a mild taste of what students are experiencing.(See 2 and 2a below.)

It would appear Obama has taken a page from campus hate groups and used it is a litmus test to select his new chairman of the National Intelligence Council. - Charles Freeman.

I believe Obama seriously misinterpreted his election. He has taken it as a signal to radically change our nation's direction in the mistaken assumption we are willing to become Europeanized - lamentably, maybe we are.

Playing off national fear and self-doubt, due to the severity of our economically depressed state, and enjoying majority political numbers, Obama has moved swiftly to capitalize by an agenda that is outsized and far removed from mainstream attitudes.

I believe Obama was elected for four main reasons:

a) First, Obama was able to capitalize on the nation's 'angst' over GW.

b) Second, Obama ran an effective campaign and is a solid orator.

c) Third, the opposition, and even his own party, selected candidates doomed from the beginning because of their questionable campaign abilities, baggage and high negatives.

d) Obama played the race card and 'affirmatively' benefited from 'white guilt.' (See 3 below.)

I am from the bigger government and I am here to help rescue you from big government. (See 4 below.)

Were Obama to take our State Deartment's head out of the sand, attack Iran he could get re-elected even while running trillions of dollars of deficits. Ducking out on Iran the focus will return to his governance, radical policies and he will probably not be re-elected.

It will be fascinating to see which side of the fence he chooses.(See 5 below.)

Aluf Benn portrays Netanyahu's actions as detrimental to a two-state solution when in fact, a two state solution is far more unlikely than the one proposed by so many others - Gaza becomes part of Egypt, the West Bank part of Jordan. Neither are likely to happen regardless of U.S. and Western efforts because Hamas and Fatah are oil and water and neither Egypt or Jordan want more Palestinians in their lands.

Arab leaders' street interests continue to be served by allowing Palestinians to twist in the wind and remain subject to their own self-destructive fate. Thus, providing themselves with a convenient excuse - blame Israel the 'Apartheid Nation.' (See 6 below.)

Matters have truly reached the point of hopeless when European tolerance is held up as the model for solving the conflict between Palestimans and Israelis. Hard nosed common sense is far more likely to produce results but we keep pulling Palestinian chestnuts out of the fire.

If a student does not study, cheats on his exam and still fails does it make moral sense for the professor to take the exam for him? (See 7 and 7a below.)

Are Arab Liberals becoming smarter than our own? Even they are learning that repeating the same mistakes produces more of them. (See 8 below.)

David Shribman writes the "hope" fumes are getting thin. One thing for sure - hope has sprung leaks to the tune of trillions. (See 9 below.)

Reagan is dead and buried but Obama (The President from La Mancha), always in need of a straw man to battle, feels compelled to bury him again and is doing so under a mountain of debt. (See 10. below.)

Dick


1) PM vows to bring 'total' quiet to South


Following a weekend of rocket fire on Ashkelon and other areas of the western Negev, Prime Minister Ehud Olmert said on Sunday that Israel would not tolerate the escalation and would employ a wide array of measures in order to end the threat on southern Israel.


"Terrorists, led by Hamas, are trying to recuperate from the hard hit which they suffered during Operation Cast Lead, and are doing this in the only way they know how - through terror," he told ministers at the start of the weekly cabinet meeting.

"The Israeli government has formulated policies and a unanimous decision has been made made by the cabinet according to which, should the rocket fire continue, we will respond in a serious, painful, strong and uncompromising way," Olmert continued. "The cabinet's decision will be carried out until the terror organizations understand that Israel is not willing to accept their way."

"Israel has a wide range of options which can be used and these options will be utilized until total quiet is brought to the South," he added.

Kassam rockets continue to hit South

On Friday and Saturday, at least eight rockets struck various areas of the western Negev, including one that hit a school in Ashkelon. Nobody was wounded in any of the attacks, but various buildings sustained extensive damage.

During the meeting, the cabinet upheld its approval of an additional 2.5 billion shekels for the defense budget, rejecting the Finance Ministry's appeal against the extra funds.

Finance Minister Ronnie Bar-On had said that the additional finances were unnecessary since the IDF could get its required funds from money already allotted to the defense establishment.

Prior to the cabinet meeting, Infrastructures Minister Binyamin Ben-Eliezer said Israel "must respond severely" to the rocket fire.

Similarly, Pensioners Minister Rafi Eitan said that Israel "cannot leave the situation like it is," and that it needs to respond "decisively."

Meanwhile, Public Security Minster Avi Dichter said he had "no doubt" that there would be more IDF operations in Gaza.

Speaking to Israel Radio, Dichter said that the operation had achieved its main objective of hitting Hamas hard, citing "700 Hamas gunmen killed and some one thousand wounded," but he conceded that it hadn't totally deterred the group from launching more rockets and smuggling weapons.

Dichter said that "whoever thinks Hamas can be smashed with one blow is mistaken," adding that although it would take years to destroy the group's military capability, that should be Israel's ultimate goal.

Concerning Gilad Schalit, Dichter said Israel was making the utmost effort to secure the captive's release and dismissed claims that recent internal Israeli developments had hindered chances of a deal.

With regards to the Hamas reconciliation talks with Fatah, the public security minister said they were an attempt by the Islamic group to take over the whole of the Palestinian territories.

"Hamas aims to rule the entire Palestinian Authority," he said. "It tried to do this militarily and failed, so it's now trying legally, just like Hizbullah did in Lebanon."

1a) Hamas missile upsurge erodes Israeli deterrence, dashes ceasefire hopes



Ten Palestinian missiles struck Israel from the Gaza Strip Saturday, Feb. 28, including two heavyweight Grads aimed at Ashkelon. The number since Israel halted Operation Cast Lead Jan. 18 has risen to seventy.

Military sources directly correlate the upsurge of Palestinian rockets attacks on Israel and the setbacks in securing the release of the captive Israeli soldier Gilead Shalit with defense minister Ehud Barak's dogged insistence on the imminence of an Egyptian-brokered long-term ceasefire.

The figures are irrefutable, the ceasefire is receding and the message from Cairo is plain. The Egyptians say the rockets will keep on coming and the Israeli soldier stay missing until the rival Palestinian factions Hamas and Fatah reach an accord on sharing power, which is Cairo's top priority.

Israel is not offered any say in this process; neither is Hamas required to abandon violence or its ruling ambition to destroy Israel. But the Palestinian Islamists' conditions for a deal are largely addressed to… Israel. Hence the pressure-by-missile.

Cairo optimistically forecasts a "successful" outcome later this month; other Arab sources mention April-May. But Barack and his envoy to Cairo Amos Gilead seem to have no qualms about Cairo's linkage of Palestinian missile fire and a Palestinian unity accord, although this makes Ashkelon hostage to a Palestinian factional reconciliation. And what happens if the Palestinian deal falls through, as it has before?

For more than a month, therefore, Israeli retaliation for the missile attacks has been muted, restricted to the harmless aerial bombardment of empty buildings and smuggling tunnels in Gaza.

This tactic contradicts the promises Barak and foreign minister Tzipi Livni made that Israel would respond instantaneously and effectively to Palestinian aggression from Gaza, if the military operation of January failed to bring the promised "new security reality" to southern Israel.

Sensing this weakness in Israel's stance, Hamas which has quickly recovered from its hammering at Israel's hands is moving forward on three fronts:

1. An upsurge in missile attacks: Saturday, two newly upgraded 170mm Grad missiles were launched against Ashkelon. One went through the fortified roof of a schoolroom where no lessons were held because of the Sabbath.

This attack on an important Israeli port-city made nonsense of the defense minister's claim that Israel's deterrence capacity was in place.

2. Iran is smuggling larger quantities of weapons to Hamas via Sinai than during the days prior to Operation Cast Lead: 50 improved Grad rockets, different types of anti-air missiles and tons of explosives were delivered in the last two weeks.

That takes care of another solemn promise (delivered by Amos Gilead) that, if Israel agreed to a Cairo-brokered unilateral ceasefire last month, Egypt would reciprocate with strenuous action to stem the smuggling of arms to Hamas through its territory.

Our sources add that Tehran, which took that promise seriously, had planned alternative, more expensive and roundabout smuggling routes. Now Iran sees it can save itself the trouble and go back to shipping arms via Sinai to Gaza relatively undisturbed.

3. Hamas is digging its heel in harder than ever before on the release of Gilead Shalit. This tramples yet another of Barak's assurances, this one endorsed by the outgoing prime minister Ehud Olmert, that the military offensive would bring his freedom closer. Hamas has made it clear that the price for his release is up and still rising.

2) BACK' ON COLLEGE CAMPUSES



In response to the growing number of anti-Israel rallies and activism on American college campuses, the Anti-Defamation League (ADL) has produced a new manual to provide students with information on countering criticism of Israel.


ADL's new resource for students, "Fighting Back: A Handbook for Responding to Anti-Israel Rallies on College and University Campuses," is available on ADL's website and is being distributed in print form through ADL's 30 regional offices to campus Hillels and student groups across the country.

Anti-Israel activism has been a growing concern on college campuses and has increased due to Israel's three-week military action to defend its citizens against Hamas rocket attacks from Gaza, which prompted an outpouring of anti-Israel rallies and anti-Semitism around the world.

Fighting Back presents information about free speech on campus, including what type of speech is and is not protected by American law and campus codes of conduct. The guide offers suggestions on how to counter "bad speech" with "good speech" by organizing rallies, distributing fliers and encouraging university administrators to speak out against hateful and offensive speech.

The guide also provides answers to commonly asked questions regarding anti-Semitism on campus, including: When does criticism of Israel become anti- Semitism? What can I do when I feel threatened or singled out by activists or students because I am Jewish? How should one respond to anti-Israel or anti-Semitic fliers on campus? Are they protected speech? What should I do when a group of anti-Israel protestors blocks access to a building?

2a) Tehran greets Hollywood smiles with demand for apology



President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's art adviser greeted a Hollywood delegation in Tehran by demanding it apologize for 30 years of "insults and slanders" about Iranians in their films. He cited the 2007 war epic "300" for its portrayal of their ancestors as bloodthirsty in the Greco-Persian wars and the tearing of the Iranian flag in The Wrestler by the 2009 Oscar nominee Mickey Rourke.

"We will believe in Obama's policy of change when we see change in Hollywood too," said Javad Shamaghdari.

Thirty-eight years ago, a ping pong team sent by US president Richard Nixon to Beijing opened the door to Communist China. February 27, 2009, president Barack Obama launched his bid for dialogue with Iran with an Academy of Motion Pictures, Arts and Sciences delegation from Hollywood. It is led by the actress Annette Bening, AMPAS president Sid Ganis and his predecessor Frank Pierson who flew in just after the Oscar award ceremony. Visiting in the framework of "US-Iranian culture exchanges," they will hold talks in Tehran Saturday and Sunday.

Washington sources note that this visit coincides with three relevant events:

1. Friday, Obama announce that the bulk of US forces will be out of Iraq by Aug. 2010 leaving only 50,000 in place. This meets Tehran's objections to the presence of large-scale US forces in Iraq.

2. He calmed Iran's fears on another score when he stated in a PBS interview: "One of the things that I think we have to communicate in Afghanistan is that we have no interest or aspiration to be there over the long term."

3. The US president had his reply from Tehran in the former Iranian president Akbar Hashemi Rasanjani's Friday sermon, when he extended his government's first overt invitation for talks on the nuclear issue: "…we don't make false promises," said the Iranian strongman. "Therefore I declare that Iran's nuclear plan is not to build weapons …and we are ready to prove it in negotiations."


3) Congressmen Question Saudi Lobbyist for Head of National Intelligence Council
By Peggy Shapiro


Two congressmen are demanding the answer to this question:

Which of the following would disqualify a person for the position of chairman of the National Intelligence Council, whose "goal is to provide policymakers with the best information: unvarnished, unbiased and without regard to whether the analytic judgments conform to current U.S. policy"?

A. Heading an organization which accepted $1 million donation from the Saudis;

B. Lobbying for the Saudi government;

C. Accusing Israel of Nazis tactics;

D. Denying claims of any historical Jewish presence in Jerusalem and blaming Israel for the lack of peace in the Middle East;

E. Publishing anti-Semitic canards such as the U.S. sacrificing its self interests because of a powerful Jewish cabal;

F. Promoting public schools textbooks which the independent Textbook League describe as "a vehicle for disseminating disinformation, including a multitude of false, distorted or utterly absurd claims that are presented as historical facts. ...[with] three principal purposes: inducing teachers to embrace Islamic religious beliefs; inducing teachers to embrace political views that are favored by the MEPC, Middle East Policy Council (formerly the American Arab Affairs Council)...; and impelling teachers to disseminate those religious beliefs and political views in schools";

G. Marketing educational materials which recreate world history and refer to the land of Israel only as Palestine and claim that native American Iroquois and Algonquin chiefs had names like "Abdul-Rahim and Abdallah Ibn Malik";

H. Blaming the U.S. for the terror attack of 9/11;

I. Praising Hamas as the only democratically elected government in the Arab world and excusing terrorism as a response to Israel's and the U.S. "unreasoning hostility and condemnation."

Two congressmen are answering, "All of the above" in response to the appointment of Chas W. Freeman Jr. for the chairmanship of the National Intelligence Council. On Thursday, Rep. Mark Steven Kirk (IL) was gaining support for his letter for to the inspector general of the Office of the Director for National Intelligence urging a review of Mr. Freeman's organization.

"Given his close ties to the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, we request a comprehensive review of Ambassador Freeman's past and current commercial, financial and contractual ties to the Kingdom to ensure no conflict of interest exists in his new position," the letter said.

Eric Cantor (VA) also expressed grave concerns.

"Chas Freeman's past associations and positions on foreign policy are deeply alarming. His statements about the U.S.-Israel relationship raise serious concerns about his ability to support the administration's attempts to bring security, stability and peace to the Middle East."

Thanks to Representatives Kirk and Cantor for getting the questions started in Congress,

Another question might be: how could the President think that assigning a key intelligence post to someone whose prejudices are so extreme that they have convoluted history, who excuses enemies of the U.S., and who condemns its friends would be able to provide the unvarnished, unbiased information that the nation needs for its security.

4) Government to the Rescue?
By Trenton Newell

What is the cause for the current recession? That is the question that has become worth 6.2% of America's GDP.


The answer to that question has proven elusive even to great financial minds such as Secretary of the Treasury Timothy Geithner, who has complained that TurboTax is too difficult for him to use. I place blame for the current recession on both Democrats and Republicans.


Democrats are responsible for causing this crisis:


Former President Bill Clinton placed significant pressure on Fannie Mae to increase lending to "low and moderate income people," as a September 30, 1999 New York Times article reported. Those who bash George W. Bush as having deregulated the financial sector should realize that Clinton repealed part of the Glass-Staegall Act, which had been in place since 1933. Former President Jimmy Carter, who presided over the highest interest and unemployment rates since the Great Depression, signed the Community Reinvestment Act in 1977. The Act encouraged subprime lending, especially lending into what many proponents of the Act called "communities of color" with less regard for the potential loan recipients' financial standing.


Both Democrats and Republicans are responsible for exacerbating and prolonging the crisis:


Former President George W. Bush took anything but a "ready, aim, fire" approach; he favored a "ready, fire, aim" approach without the "aim" or "ready" parts. Very soon after the severity of the problems became apparent, Bush endorsed the TARP program. Strongly backed by then-Secretary of the Treasury Henry Paulson, the TARP program has been anything but clear and effective. Originally, the program was to buy banks' toxic assets, which the Secretary said were not valueless. My question to him was, if they were not valueless then why was no one except the government willing to buy most of them? Paulson later admitted that, even while he was informing Congress that the program was for the purchasing of toxic assets, he had decided that the idea was not viable. Instead, the government decided to implement textbook socialism by buying into private firms. Bush exclaimed that he abandoned his principles to save the economy. In my opinion, one who is led by his or her principles only in times of gain is not principled at all. Assessing the success of this program has also proved controversial and difficult as its stated goals have changed. Before the goal was simply to avoid bank failures it was to cause banks to begin lending money again.


On the Democratic front, things have been at least as detrimental. President Obama has continued the TARP program while announcing bailout plans of his own. He has spent more money in his first month in office than any President in American history. He has now done the unthinkable: announce significant tax increases during a recession. The tax increases will not be sufficient to meet Obama's "halving the budget" goal, so how long will it be until lower income levels see their own tax rates increased? Because no country can loan the amount of money needed to cover Obama's new spending, the Fed is simply issuing IOU's to the Treasury while the Treasury prints trillions of dollars to keep the government afloat. While certainly not a problem at the moment -- outside of that caused by energy prices -- inflation is a near certainty in the not-so-distant future.


Obama has proposed spending breathtaking amounts of money, including a $643,000,000,000 down payment on America's universal healthcare system, which does not even exist as a plan. By some estimates, the debt Obama could ring up in eight years could be three times what Bush is responsible for, and Bush was certainly not a conservative spender. Obama attempts to pass these types of spending bills off by saying that they are necessary to "arrest the downward spiral" of the economy. He says that he does not want a "lost decade" like that experienced in Japan, but Japan increased its government spending by 400%, yet it remained in a recession for an entire decade. Certainly this lends no credence to the idea of a government's ability to spend a nation out of recession. Even FDR's Treasury Secretary said that they spent a lot of money, and it didn't work! Government debt of the size America has accrued is extremely dangerous. For those who do not believe me, you could ask the Soviet Union or Rome, but neither of them exists anymore.


Both sides of the aisle have fingered falling housing prices and non-existent lending as the causes of this recession. My response? Both are wrong; politicians in both Parties are at fault.


It is true that housing prices have fallen from their 2006 records. How low they have not fallen is shocking. Adjusted for inflation, housing prices are only at 2000 levels (still extremely high, historically). Nominally, housing prices are only down to 2002 levels.


According to an October 1, 2008 Forbes article, lending continued to trend upward even deep into the economic crisis. August 2008 lending levels were 9.5% higher, year-to-date. Recent data have shown that lending levels are still robust. When government says that lending is "non-existent," it is talking about the largest banks. However, smaller banks have gladly taken up the lending slack.


Negative rhetoric from Republicans, and now Democrats, is responsible for this crisis. Defaulting on loans certainly was taking place at fairly high levels, but defaulting on subprime loans is nothing new. Even now, only 8% of Americans have defaulted. Banks failed, but again, that's nothing new. Larger-than-normal numbers of people defaulting on their loans did indeed cause some banks to fail. Admittedly, combining this with falling housing prices created a very uneasy situation economically. It did not have to be this bad, however.


As some banks failed, news leaked about the government's list of hundreds of other "at-risk" financial institutions. This news -- combined with apocalyptic talk from vote-mongering politicians -- caused mad rushes on many other banks by people who, out of fear, wanted to retrieve their money. Bush and Paulson heralded the TARP program as completely necessary to avoid total economic disaster. When it initially failed to pass, investors became so afraid that they sent the Dow plunging 700 points in a single day. Now Obama says things such as, "...failure to act on an economic recovery package could plunge the nation into a long-lasting recession that might prove to be irreversible..." The Congress did, in fact, act on Obama's economic stimulus package, yet Obama's rhetoric has only gotten gloomier. This is the politics of fear, and investors and consumers alike are certainly fearful. Obama should take Clinton's advice and be a little more optimistic.


All of this talk from politicians has cratered investor and consumer confidence causing both to significantly cut back on spending due to misconceptions. Lending remains robust, and housing prices are anything but historically low; yet most people do not know this. They live in fear due to government-caused ignorance, and so they cut back significantly on their spending. This directly leads to massive lay-offs, more defaulting due to the lay-offs, and further economic decline. Anytime small snippets of positive news are released, politicians' doomsday rhetoric quickly drowns it out.


People are fearful because of the talk from the government, but is the talk from the government well-founded? No. By engaging in this negativity, government officials are preventing from happening the thing that can most quickly lift us from recession: increased consumer spending.


There is a very easy solution to this problem. Government: stop the apocalyptic rhetoric and immediately cut taxes.

5) U.S. Army chief: Iran has ability to make nuclear bomb


The United States believes Iran has obtained enough nuclear material to make a bomb, U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff Admiral Mike Mullen said on Sunday.

"We think they do, quite frankly," Mullen said on CNN's State of the Union program when asked whether Iran has enough fissile material for a nuclear weapon.

"And Iran having nuclear weapons, I've believed for a long time, is a very very bad outcome - for the region and for the world," Mullen said.

A watchdog report issued by the International Atomic Energy Agency two weeks ago said Iran had built up a stockpile of nuclear fuel, raising alarm among Western governments that Tehran might have understated by one third how much uranium it has enriched.

The United States suspects Iran of trying to use its nuclear program to build an atomic bomb, but Tehran insists it is purely for the peaceful generation of electricity. Enriched uranium can be used to make nuclear weapons.

U.S. President Barack Obama's administration, which favors diplomatic engagement with Tehran to defuse the dispute over its nuclear intentions, called Iran's nuclear program an "urgent problem" the international community must address.

The IAEA report showed a significant increase in Iran's reported stockpile of low-enriched uranium (LEU) since November to 1,010 kg - enough, some physicists say, for possible conversion into high-enriched uranium for one bomb.

The IAEA later said Iran was cooperating well with UNnuclear inspectors to help ensure it does not again understate the amount of uranium it has enriched, suggesting the uranium accounting shortfall might not have been deliberate evasion.

On Thursday, the United States ambassador to the United Nations said that the Obama administration would seek to end Iran's nuclear ambition and its support for terrorism - comments that drew an immediate rebuke from Iran's UN envoy.

Ambassador Mohammad Khazee said Iran has never and will never try to acquire nuclear weapons and dismissed U.S. Ambassador Susan Rice's allegation that Iran engages in terrorism as baseless and absurd.

Rice brought up Iran at an open meeting of the UN Security Council on Iraq, saying the long-term U.S. commitment to Iraq and the reduction of the U.S. military presence in the country had to be understood in a larger, regional context that included Afghanistan, the Middle East and Iran.

"The United States will seek an end to Iran's ambition to acquire an illicit nuclear capacity and its support for terrorism," Rice said. "It will aim to encourage both Iran and Syria to become constructive regional actors."

Meanwhile, Defense Minister Ehud Barak said last week that Israel was "running out of time to address the Iranian threat," and must continue to keep "all options on the table" regarding a potential response.

"The U.S. administration is getting ready to conduct dialogue with Iran. We are convinced that the dialogue must be confined to a short period of time while simultaneously stepping up sanctions," Barak said.

Earlier, at a Labor Party conference in Tel Aviv, Barak explained U.S. dialogue must be confined to a short time frame in order to rapidly determine whether "there is or isn't a chance."

Speaking later at an event sponsored by a Jordan valley college in memory of former Israel Defense Forces chief of staff Dan Shomron, Barak said it was "essential for Israel to keep all the options on the table, while standing behind its declarations."

"It is important first to reach an understanding with the new U.S. administration of [President Barack] Obama," Barak continued. "A strategic understanding with the U.S. is crucial, and possible. We must try to renew the negotiations with the Palestinians and with Syria, but we must do so from a position of power while fighting for Israel's interests."

6 )ANALYSIS / Why isn't Netanyahu backing two-state solution?
By Aluf Benn


Prime Minister-designate Benjamin Netanyahu is refusing to declare his support for a two-state solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. For Kadima chairwoman Tzipi Livni, that is reason enough to go into the opposition or to attempt to impose a rotation arrangement on Netanyahu. This weekend U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton reiterated Washington's commitment to a two-state solution, effectively joining the foreign minister in portraying Netanyahu as an obstacle to a negotiated settlement.

There are obvious political reasons for Netanyahu's refusal to demonstrate a more moderate stance: It would cost him his potential coalition with the right-wing National Union and Habayit Hayehudi, and force him into a rotation arrangement with Livni. But his opposition to a Palestinian state is also a matter of principle, one he has held for many years.

Netanyahu says he doesn't want to rule over the Palestinians, and has no interest in Nablus, Tul Karm or Jenin; they should govern their own lives, as long as they don't threaten Israeli security, he says. Netanyahu seeks to deny the Palestinians four rights of any sovereign state: control of its airspace; control of its electromagnetic spectrum; the right to maintain an army and to sign military alliances; and, most importantly, control of the border crossings where arms and terrorists could pass. Netanyahu believes Israel must retain all of these.


Netanyahu's model is based on the work of Stanford University political science professor Stephen Krasner, who was director of policy planning in the State Department under Condoleezza Rice. Krasner developed a "restricted sovereignty" model for problematic state structures.

Netanyahu also has a tactical reason for objecting to a Palestinian state: He believes that this must come through negotiations, rather than being something conceded by Israel in advance. He considers the Annapolis process that outgoing prime minister Ehud Olmert and Foreign Minister Livni conducted with the Palestinian Authority's Mahmoud Abbas and Ahmed Qureia to be a joke. In his opinion, Israel must not offer a near-total withdrawal from the West Bank in advance, which he believes would achieve nothing and only encourage the Palestinians to demand more.

Netanyahu believes Israel must insist on retaining 50 percent of the West Bank - the open areas in the Jordan Valley and the Judean Desert that are vital as a security zone. In light of statements the outgoing government has made to the Palestinians, Netanyahu's position is a joke meant to kill the negotiations before they even begin.

In an interview with Lally Weymouth in yesterday's Washington Post, Netanyahu elegantly avoided the question about two states. Instead of merely saying "No," he presented a vague formulation: "The Palestinians should have the ability to govern their lives but not to threaten ours." Such a statement doesn't explicitly discount the creation of an independent Palestinian state, nor does it address the fine points of control and sovereignty. Netanyahu also undertook to continue the negotiations with the Palestinians, and said Hamas should be toppled by the residents of Gaza [and not by Israel].

Livni demanded Netanyahu explicitly support the establishment of a Palestinian state. The question is what Clinton will make of Netanyahu's opening gambit. Netanyahu's aides believe that as a seasoned politician, Clinton will find a way to work with him, not against him, but it will be interesting to see whether she will also try to effect a compromise between Netanyahu and Livni in a bid toward creating a more moderate Israeli government.

7) Nothing to look up to
By SETH J. FRANTZMAN

In the waning days of 2008, author Amos Oz received Germany's most prestigious award for literature, the Heinrich Heine Prize. According to reports Oz said, "The Arab-Israeli conflict could only be resolved in the context of European values of tolerance, rationality and pragmatism." Coming from someone who is celebrated as one of the country's greatest writers, this statement deserves attention for it represents a very common belief.


There is a common belief in many circles here that the country needs to follow a "European" model, and that it needs to thus become more secular and more "tolerant." The signers of such documents as the Geneva Initiative continually show a belief that Europe and its "values" can solve the Arab-Israeli conflict. The Geneva Initiative calls for an "International Implementation and Verification Group (IVG) - including the US, Russia, the EU, the UN and others - and a Multinational Force (MF) in Palestine will be established to provide security guarantees to both parties."

In essence it calls for a sort of European neocolonial force to sit between Israel and the Palestinians. These types of "international forces" have a long history of meddling unsuccessfully in the Middle East.

The United Nations Emergency Force (UNEF) placed in the Sinai between 1956 and 1967 withdrew without undue protest when Egypt's president Gamal Abdel Nasser ordered it to do so in May 1967 - an action that paved the way for the militarization of Sinai and Israel's need to defend itself. The UN Interim Force in Lebanon (UNIFIL) has long been seen as an obstacle to peace, since the PLO in the 1970s and then Hizbullah have stored their weapons there and attacked Israel under its nose. UN forces in Haiti, Rwanda, the Congo and Kosovo have similarly failed.

THIS RELIANCE on Europe both as a model and problem solver goes hand in hand with the false perception that European history represents values of "tolerance, rationality and pragmatism."

January marked the 64th anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz. November will mark the 20th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall, which heralded the end of communism in Eastern Europe. When we think back to the dominance and impact that Nazism and communism had in Europe during the 20th century, it is hard to claim that there is such a thing as "European values" of tolerance, rationality or pragmatism.


Mark Thompson, author of The White War, recently wrote that "Europe before the First World War was rackety and murderous - closer in its statecraft to the Middle East than today's docile continent."

Amos Oz seeks to recall the Europe of the Enlightenment and the 19th century - something Amos Elon intended to do in his book Pity of It All, a tour de force on the history of German Jewry. But the 19th century was not without the extremism of Napoleon. In the 18th century we have only to look to Maximillien Robespierre, a towering figure of the French Revolution, who declared in 1794: "The spring of government during a revolution is virtue combined with terror: virtue, without which terror is destructive; terror, without which virtue is impotent. Terror is only justice prompt, severe and inflexible." Hardly tolerant or rational.

Oz's predilection to look outside Judaism to find tolerance, pragmatism and rationality is unfortunate. Within Judaism there is a deep sense of tolerance. Unlike some other religions, Judaism does not seek to convert the world, or to fight wars against "infidels."

HEINRICH HEINE is a great example of the influence of Jewish values of tolerance. He was born into a family of assimilated Jews in Dusseldorf in 1797. He accurately predicted in his play Almansor: "Where they burn books, so too will they in the end burn human beings." He was referring to the Inquisition, although the statement has since seemed to predict the Holocaust. He was referring to Europe, both in the past and, as it turned out, the future. His source of tolerance was as much his Judaism as his European environment.

Oz seems to have misunderstood Heine and wrongly seen him as representing "European values." But European values have so often meant terrible things, including fanaticism and the worst human rights violations. Modern Europe's guise as the human rights capital of the world may be a short-lived phenomenon, or it may be leading the way to an era of peace and tolerance. Jewish tolerance and rationality, however, have existed far longer and withstood the test of time. Oz and other Israeli intellectuals would be wise to understand that the next time they look to European history for inspiration for solving the Israeli-Palestinian dispute.

7a)Blair in Gaza: A lot of money will be coming in

Day before international donor conference in Egypt, Quartet's Mideast envoy says aid aimed at rebuilding Strip 'will not have a lasting impact unless there is a political solution.' Israeli official: No one wants to see Hamas strengthened

Tony Blair paid his first visit to the Hamas-ruled Gaza Strip on Sunday as envoy of international peace brokers and said reconstruction aid after Israel's offensive would not have a lasting effect without peace.


Palestinian Prime Minister Salam Fayyad ordered NIS 90 million, out of NIS 175 million allotted by Israel for payment of government workers' wages, to be transferred for reconstruction of houses damaged during Israeli offensive, Ynet learns



Blair, a former British prime minister, also toured the Israeli border town of Sderot, a frequent target of rocket attacks by Palestinian militants in the Gaza Strip.

He did not meet Hamas officials in the coastal enclave, a day before an international donor conference in Egypt to raise funds for rebuilding homes and infrastructure damaged or destroyed in the 22-day offensive Israel launched in December.

"There will be money - that will be coming, and there will be money, probably a significant amount of it, pledged at the conference - but this money will not have a lasting impact unless there is a political solution," Blair told reporters.

Blair called for a "viable, durable ceasefire", followed by a lifting of an Israeli-led blockade on the Gaza Strip that has kept out vitally needed material such as cement and steel which Israel said could be used by militants to rebuild and rearm.

He said he hoped for Palestinian unity that could ease the flow of aid to the Gaza Strip, whose Hamas rulers are shunned by the West over their refusal to recognize Israel, renounce violence and accept existing interim peace deals.

Blair was appointed Middle East envoy by the "Quartet" of brokers - the United States, the European Union, the United Nations and Russia - two years ago with a mandate to try to strengthen the Palestinian economy and promote peace.

'Reconstruction cannot happen without resistance'
He has refrained from meeting Hamas officials, in line with the West's policy towards the group, which won a Palestinian election in 2006 and violently wrested control of the Gaza Strip from President Mahmoud Abbas' Fatah faction in 2007.


The Palestinian Authority has said it hopes to raise $2.78 billion at the donor conference, $1.33 billion of it for the Gaza Strip.

Egypt, which like Israel borders Gaza, has been trying to mediate a Palestinian reconciliation deal and consolidate a Jan. 18 Gaza truce.

While welcoming initiatives to repair the ravages of the three-week assault - which Israel said aimed to suppress Palestinian cross-border rocket fire --Hamas has bristled at signs it was again being marginalized by foreign powers.

Youssef Rizqa, an adviser to the Hamas administration in Gaza, said the Palestinian Authority was the "wrong address" for donor funds as it "does not represent the Palestinian people".
"Reconstruction cannot happen without the government in Gaza and the resistance, which fought the war," he said in a statement.

The World Bank has weighed in on Gaza, pledging to help channel funds both to Palestinian Authority institutions and several independent groups.

Juan Jose Daboub, World Bank managing director, said reconstruction would be predicated on the free flow of material.

"That is the greater obstacle we all need to work towards eliminating," he said during a visit to Gaza.


Palestinians have been circumventing the embargo by using smuggling tunnels from Gaza, though not without risk. Israel has regularly bombed the frontier and medical workers said on Sunday that four tunnellers had drowned in a winter flood.

"Like the international community, we want to make sure that the help will be delivered to the people of Gaza, not to the Hamas regime. No one wants to see Hamas strengthened," Mark Regev, an Israeli government spokesman, said in Jerusalem.

8) Rethinking "Resistance": Arab Liberal Perspectives
By: Daniel Lav *

Introduction:

The ideology of "resistance" - muqawama - has been a central feature of Arab political thought in the modern age. Recently, though, the concept of resistance - and in particular the way it has been deployed in the last few years - has come under attack from Arab liberals. This essay will present the broad outlines of this critique and the circumstances of its emergence.

Arab liberalism was a force of only marginal importance in the Middle East in the second half of the 20th century, and has only recently regained prominence. A number of factors contributed to this liberal resurgence. First, the decline of the global Left in general and the Arab Left in particular led a number of former Arab Marxists to embrace liberal ideas. Among these are such figures as Hazem Saghieh, Lebanese political editor at Al-Hayat; Tunisian intellectual Lafif Lakhdar; and Syrian intellectual Georges Tarabishi. [1] This phenomenon mirrors (though belatedly) the movement of prominent intellectuals in the West, such as the French historian Francois Furet, from the Marxist camp to liberalism. Yet more significant than the intellectual evolution of specific individuals has been the fact that the eclipse of Marxism in Russia and Eastern Europe and the democratization of much of the Third World has led to a general convergence on the liberal model of progress. Thus, Arab thinkers concerned with modernizing their societies no longer have two competing models of modernity to choose from. [2]

Another contributing factor to the liberal resurgence was the attacks of September 11, 2001. The shock of these attacks having emerged from the Arab world provided the impetus for Arab intellectuals, and those in Saudi Arabia and the Gulf states in particular, to reexamine the foundations of modern Arab society. One Saudi liberal encapsulated this watershed event in the following lines: "Thank you, bin Laden. Were it not for you, we would still be stuck in the 1990s, living in study sessions with Ibn Taymiyya, eating at the table of Ibn Kathir, with our sick forming a queue at Ibn Al-Qayyim's clinic, and looking to Ibn Hanbal for solutions to our civilizational crises." [3]

The spread of these new intellectual trends has been facilitated by changes in the structure of the Arab media. The Gulf states, aware of the challenges to their stability presented by both Sunni radicalism and a resurgent Iran, have allowed for a margin of liberal discourse, especially in newspapers like the Kuwaiti Al-Siyassa and Awan and the Saudi Al-Watan. More importantly, these developments have coincided with the burgeoning of electronic media in the Arab world, with the establishment of explicitly liberal websites such as Elaph, [4] Middle East Transparent, [5] Aafaq, [6] Al-Awan, [7] and others. It is the websites in particular that allow a new degree of freedom of expression and help establish networks among writers in different countries, producing a kind of Arab liberal "Republic of Letters."

A number of recent events have turned these writers' attention to the issue of Islamist resistance: the war in Iraq, Hamas' electoral victory and subsequent armed coup in Gaza, and Hizbullah's takeover of Beirut. The Arab liberal reaction to these events in part takes aim at these groups' Islamist agenda, but many have gone further and engaged in a comprehensive critique of the concept of "resistance" in Arab society.


The Legacy of Left-Wing Resistance

The 1967 Arab-Israeli war was a turning point in Arab public life. Just as the 1948 defeat had discredited an earlier generation of Arab nationalists, the 1967 war discredited the "progressive" pan-Arab regimes that both flirted and competed with their most serious domestic opposition, the secular Marxist Left. One way in which this Arab Left responded to the defeat was by calling for a move from conventional warfare to a strategy of popular resistance.

A prominent proponent of this approach was the Syrian philosopher Sadik Jalal Al-'Azm. His first two books, Self-Criticism after the Defeat and Critique of Religious Thought, encapsulated the concerns of the Arab Left in the wake of the 1967 defeat. The first book, which gained immediate fame - and was banned in several countries - was a devastating critique of Arab political and religious culture in light of the Arabs' defeat in the war. Al-'Azm pinned the blame for the defeat on the tepid political program of the "progressive" regimes, which had attempted to find a third way between revolutionary socialism and traditional society and values. He argued that this project was a failure, and repeatedly held up the Viet Cong as a role model, urging the wholesale mobilization of the Arab states in support of a "popular war of liberation" against Israel using guerilla tactics.

At this point in his career, Al-'Azm was not thought to be a liberal, nor did he consider himself one. In Self-Criticism he wrote: "I have no doubt that the liberal circles that call for a modern Arab society want to make the call to overcome backwardness a substitute for the only surefire Arab response to the expansionist Zionist presence on Arab land - namely, the popular war of liberation." In contrast with the Arab liberals, he argued that these two goals were actually complementary, and not contradictory, since socialist peoples' armies ineluctably use such wars to uproot traditional social structures and modernize their countries. "The individual's participation, direct and indirect, in resistance (muqawama) and the people's war effort leads necessarily to the widening of his horizons. He will grasp that he has a country (watan) and a nation (umma), and not just a tribe and a family…" [8]

Al-'Azm thus saw armed resistance and modernization as going hand in hand. It is precisely this argument that would prove less convincing when, from the 1980s on, Islamists began replacing leftists and nationalists as the leaders of the armed conflict with Israel and the West. Rather than revolutionary nationalism, the broadened horizons of which Al-'Azm spoke turned out to be the territorial and historical reaches of political Islam.


The Islamist Ascendance and the Shift from Left to Liberalism

Al-'Azm's second book, Critique of Religious Thought, was a logical extension of Self-Criticism after the Defeat: After describing religious doctrine as one of the causes of the defeat, Al-'Azm noted that no one had yet undertaken a systematic critique of the prevailing religious ideology, and then went on to provide his own. He wrote that this was an urgent task not only because religious ideology was the main weapon of reaction against progress, but also because some "progressives" as well had increasingly turned to religion after 1967, whether out of sincere belief or for political benefit.

Al-'Azm's analysis may have been prescient in anticipating the Islamist awakening, but it did little to stem the tide. The 1980s and '90s witnessed the progressive displacement of left-wing radicalism and Arab nationalism by Islamism. In Lebanon, Amal and then Hizbullah set up camp in southern Lebanon, where the PLO had formerly held sway. In the Palestinian territories, Hamas began its long ascent, with its "resistance" credentials later strengthened by the PLO's entering into the Oslo Accords. The rise of Islamic resistance movements was buttressed and amplified by the rise of revolutionary Iran, the Afghan jihad, and the wider religious revival. While the Islamist movements have mostly failed in their goal to overthrow the Arab regimes, they have nonetheless succeeded in winning the mantle of "resistance."

This development clearly called into question Al-'Azm's assumption that popular guerilla war against Israel would go hand in hand with progress and modernization in the Arab world. These two desires now seemed diametrically opposed, and modernists would have to choose whether to support the Islamists in their fight against Israel and the West or oppose them in the name of secularism and progress. As it was, the decline of the global socialist camp was encouraging reformed leftists and new liberals to see progress as requiring integration into the West and the adoption of its values.

The question of the Iraqi resistance has served as a kind of generational acid test for Arab liberals in this regard, gauging the durability of Third-Worldist anti-imperialist motifs in the face of the new liberal critique of resistance. The new Arab liberals differ from an older generation of Arab reformists - including figures like Sa'ad Eddin Ibrahim and Gamal Al-Bana - who, while often critical of the Islamists' agenda, have at times been willing to excuse these groups' illiberalism so long as they were fighting Israel or the West.

The clearest example of this split within the liberal camp was a polemic that erupted between the Egyptian sociologist Sa'ad Eddin Ibrahim, one of the godfathers of the Arab liberal movement, and a number of Iraqi liberals: 'Abd Al-Khaliq Hussein, Hosheng Broka, and Kazem Habib. The dispute centered on a pair of articles Ibrahim wrote in late 2007 on the war in Iraq, in which he advanced a deterministic theory of resistance based on the precedents of Vietnam and Algeria. Ibrahim wrote that no matter what the circumstances of a foreign occupation, the native population will ultimately rise up in arms, and sooner or later the occupiers will leave in defeat. The controversial aspect of the articles was their tone of sympathy for the Iraqi resistance and the comparisons drawn between Al-Qaeda, on the one hand, and such Third-World icons as the Algerian FLN and Ho Chi Minh on the other.

Ibrahim's three Iraqi critics all advanced more or less the same objection: that the "resistance" paradigm was not the appropriate framework for assessing the situation in Iraq. While not all of them had supported the initial invasion, they all concurred that the Saddam regime was "fascist" or "racist" and that the main activity of the Iraqi resistance was the murder of innocent civilians. 'Abd Al-Khaliq Hussein pointed to the tribal Awakening movement as a sign that the Iraqis themselves were opposed to the resistance, and both he and Broka argued that none of the leaders of the resistance were actually Iraqi. As Kazem Habib put it, Ibrahim "did not manage to differentiate between a national resistance and the obscurantist forces that want to impose a regime like the Afghan Taliban regime on Iraq…"

The harsh tone of this polemic against one of the grand doyens of Arab liberalism was an indication of the salience of the issue and the gulf that had emerged between the older Third-Worldist liberalism and the newer generation of liberal writers. Thus, Habib wrote that Ibrahim had "left behind the fight for human rights, individual freedom, and democracy," and had become a defender of "criminal actions against the Iraqi people." [9]


The Resistance Weltanschauung

The modern Arab notion of "resistance" (muqawama) grew out of the fight against Western colonialism and against Israel, in concrete wars with concrete aims. Over time, however, the idea of resistance morphed into a metaphysical concept encompassing the themes of vitality, virility, and regeneration. In his speech celebrating the July 16, 2008 prisoner swap with Israel, Hasan Nasrallah called resistance the true identity of the Middle East's peoples: "I want to emphasize that the true identity of the native, steadfast peoples of this region is the identity of resistance, the will to resistance, the culture of resistance, and the rejection of ignominy and disgrace at the hands of any occupier." [10] The idea that resistance is a weltanschauung unto itself was also recently expressed by Sheikh Na'im Qasim, Hizbullah deputy secretary-general, at a book-signing event for his recently-published volume titled The Resistance Society: Desiring Martyrdom and Producing Victory: "The resistance is not just an armed group that wants to liberate a piece of land, nor is it a contingent tool whose role comes to an end when that which occasioned it does. Rather, the resistance is a vision and a program, and not just a military reaction." [11]

A further example of this view of resistance was furnished in an article by Muhammad 'Ali Fakhru, former Bahraini education minister and ambassador to France and Belgium, published in Al-Quds Al-'Arabi on May 15, 2008:


… In the Arab homeland, at a time when most of its countries have failed in defending the independence of their lands and in bringing general and sustained growth; and at a time when the forces of society, including political parties and unions, have been suppressed and weakened; and at a time when there has arisen an atmosphere of despair, anomie, and loss of hope of seeing the sun of tomorrow appear - the forces of resistance remain one of the important signs that the will for life, self-respect, moral nobility, and honor are still the arteries of the Arab nation…

The resistance in Iraq, Palestine, and Lebanon are not some event, but rather a vital phenomenon which expresses that which is noble and honorable in the reality of this nation. Thus, when dealing with this phenomenon, one must rise up to its spiritual and moral level. The resistance is an eagle soaring above the mountain crests, and thus those who live like chickens, collecting the remains of worms and crumbs of refuse, are not capable of understanding this greatness that swims in the skies, in the heart of the winds, the storms, and the thunder… [12]


What is remarkable about Fakhru's article is that it says little about these movements themselves or their ideology. The importance of the resistance resides in the very fact of fighting, which is seen as a proof of Arab vitality and which elevates the resistance movements above the "mountain crests" and beyond the epistemological horizon of small-minded liberal critics.

It is equally significant that Fakhru's article, titled "Unjust Criticism of the Resistance," is of an apologetic nature. Written directly in the wake of Hizbullah's takeover of Beirut and after the Awakenings movements decimated Al-Qaeda in Iraq, the defender of the resistance felt that he was himself on the defensive. This is indicative of the fact that the critique of resistance has emerged into the mainstream.


The Liberal Critique

A succinct critique of this resistance weltanschauung was penned by Hazem Saghieh, political editor at the Al-Hayat daily and an influential Arab liberal author. This critique sees the central faults of the resistance as the following: 1) a dualistic worldview; 2) nihilism and glorification of violence; 3) the view of the resistance as an end in itself; and 4) the persistence of the resistance mentality after victory. In what follows, his essay will serve as a framework for the discussion of the Arab liberal perspectives on resistance:


1. Dualism: Saghieh begins by pointing out the difference between the form of legitimacy claimed by civil government and that claimed by a resistance movement. Civil government rests on the principle of popular will and on the reality of a government that embodies it. In contrast, a resistance movement, which is born in a state of violence and in the absence of legitimate civil rule, draws its legitimacy from ideological (or putatively ideological) criteria: right and wrong, "with us" vs. "against us," and so forth. Above all, the resistance promotes a negative self-definition, i.e., the definition of one's own identity in opposition to an external enemy. [13]

A similar point was put forth by 'Abd Al-Razzaq 'Eid, a Sorbonne-educated Syrian philosopher from Aleppo. He was one of the nine public figures (in addition to parties and organizations) who signed the Damascus Declaration for Democratic National Change, the founding document of an umbrella group uniting Syrian dissidents of all persuasions. He characterizes himself as a dissident with respect to both the regime and the opposition; he has also been subjected on occasion to harassment by the security forces. [14]

In his December 31, 2007 article on the liberal Middle East Transparent website, written after the arrest of a fellow dissident, 'Eid criticized the Syrian regime's ideology and its model of nationalism, which he describes as "a kind of prattle that has become as obsolete as the tyranny" that created it. (It should be noted that Syria is perhaps the only Arab state to continue to center its official ideology on the theme of resistance.) In 'Eid's view, the Syrian regime's nationalism is hollow because it lacks concepts of true citizenship and a civil, contractual social structure. Instead, it is almost entirely focused on defending a hypothetical domestic unity, in which the part is subjected to the whole, against a foreign enemy - the West and Israel. This is precisely the "resistance" dualism described by Saghie.

For 'Eid, the regime "takes as its starting point a conception of society based on the principle of a harmonious and concordant unity of its identity, the purity of whose harmony and concord is only disturbed by the external colonialist imperialist Zionist [enemy]." But this hypothetical unity of identity is not in fact organic, but is rather constructed in opposition to the external enemy. He adduces the Palestinian experience as a kind of prototype for the Arab national experience on the whole; in his view, the Palestinians saw their enemy as an absolute 'other', instead of as a real, historical enemy, and thus were unable or unprepared to learn from their enemies' points of strength.

Sadik Jalal Al-'Azm had already written in his Self-Criticism after the Defeat that the Arabs needed to learn from the scientific mentality of their enemies, including Israel. [15] Thus 'Eid, consciously or not, was echoing a classic of Arab autocritique - but with an important addition. He identifies the underlying reason for the Arabs' inability to draw lessons from defeat as their excess of enmity and the tendency to view the conflict in mythic terms - a characterization that could perhaps be applied to Al-'Azm as well.

For 'Eid, the corollary of this dualism is the inability to engage in honest introspection. In his view, the various Arab ideologies, whether leftist, pan-Arabist, or Islamist, do not understand that "the principle enemy hunkers within: it is tyranny, ignorance, and corruption in the innermost reaches." Here again we see how 'Eid differs from Al-'Azm: The fight against Israel does not smoothly dovetail with the need for domestic reform; it competes with and obfuscates it. 'Eid warns of the corroding effect this has on Arab societies, breaking them up into "human nebula," held together only by a repressive cult of national security. [16]

A more radical version of 'Eid's critique was offered by the Iraqi novelist 'Arif 'Alwan, for whom the contemporary Arab malaise in its entirety is attributable to the Arabs' rejection of the UN Partition Plan in 1947, and their subsequent mythologizing of their defeat as the "nakba." He argues that the "nakba" mentality so entrenched the attitude of rejection of the other that it boomeranged on the Arabs, giving rise to both the Arab dictators and the Islamist terrorists. In his view, this refusal to acknowledge the rights of the other has led to a culture of cruelty, and "the Arabs have no hope of extricating themselves from the cultural and political challenge of terrorism unless they come up with [new] and different [fundamental] premises, and with an outlook completely free of the fetters of the religious ritual that they have devised in modern times and called the nakba." [17]

A case-specific treatment of the role of enmity in resistance identity comes in an article by the liberal Yemeni author Elham Mane'a on Hizbullah's May 2008 takeover of Beirut. Addressing Hasan Nasrallah, she wrote: "People like you need an enemy against whom they can resist. They need this badly. Without an enemy there would be no justification for your existence; without him, there would be no more justification for your weapons, which you raise up and say 'we will aim them at the enemy.' At whom did you aim your weapons today, Nasrallah? Whose breast did you pierce? Whose blood did you spill? Was it Lebanon's breast? Lebanon's blood? Lebanon's fate?..."

"I ask you Nasrallah… not to resist. Don't resist an enemy you invented…" [18]

Like Hazem Saghieh and 'Arif 'Alwan, Mane'a sees the dualist instinct as self-perpetuating: when one's identity becomes inextricably tied to fighting an enemy, eventually one will come to find or invent another enemy rather than disband the resistance.


2. Glorification of violence and nihilism: In Saghieh's view, armed resistance is at times necessary, as in the classic cases of foreign invasion or occupation. But in such an event the resistance should not be a cause for joy; rather, the use of violence to counter violence should be viewed as an unfortunate necessity bereft of any triumphalism. He notes though that the reality is usually otherwise: "Violence, in the traditions of ideologies of struggle, is not presented as a regrettable means, or as a passing moment that one must leave behind as quickly as possible. Rather, it is transformed into a glorified, lyrical activity that is [considered] an expression of the people's inner vitality and political energy." [19]

Basim Al-Ansar, an Iraqi poet living in Denmark, addressed this issue in an article titled "The Death of the Resistance," published in the Elaph e-journal on August 5, 2008. He characterizes the resistance's glorification of violence and nihilism as a case of sadomasochism: "…Victory, in the lexicon of the armed resistance, has something sadistic to it that can absolutely not be ignored. This [sadism] lies in the pleasure taken in torturing the enemy and stealing its life away from it. At the same time, we see that it has a clear masochistic aspect, in the pleasure it takes in the death of some of its members and in its exalting of the concepts of martyrdom and sacrifice…" [20]

The Iraq war and the atrocities committed in the name of the resistance greatly amplified the scope of this criticism, to the point where sardonic critique of the Iraqi resistance emerged as something of a subgenre of its own. Thus, Ibrahim Al-Khayr Ibrahim, a Sudanese author, praised the "historic accomplishments" of the "intrepid pan-Arab/Islamist resistance in Iraq" against "those foreign agents: children who let themselves be tempted to ride buses to their schools or candy stores, and adults, male and female, who let themselves be tempted into going to the markets to buy necessities." [21] And the Iraqi author Jamal Al-Khurasan noted that the resistance had turned to blowing up bridges, writing that "bridges have become an enemy to these backwards groups, though the bridges' only crime was to offer a free service to Iraqi citizens - and this is a first-degree crime in the bylaws of the 'resistance'." [22]

Likewise, 'Arif 'Alwan opens his article on "the nakba mentality" with a description of Palestinian internecine violence: "When the salafi mob in Gaza tied the hands and feet of a senior Palestinian official and hurled him, alive, from the 14th floor, I asked myself: What political or religious precepts must have been inculcated into the minds of these young people to make them treat a human life with such shocking cruelty?" He continues with an earlier episode from the second intifida: "Earlier, I had watched on TV as the bodies of two Israeli soldiers were thrown from the second floor [of a building] in a Palestinian city… What historic linguistic distortion could have erased from the human heart [all] moral sensibilities when dealing with a living and helpless human being?"

This voice of protest against the resistance's glorification of violence can be seen as an implicit critique of Frantz Fanon's theory of redemptive violence, as we will see presently.


3. Resistance as an end in itself: Hazem Saghieh writes: "Perhaps it was Frantz Fanon who did the most to transform the relative equation into an absolute depiction in which the resistance itself becomes the goal… He had an abiding fear that a peaceful Algerian evolution towards independence would emerge…" According to Saghieh, Fanon was opposed to peaceful evolution because he did not view the Algerian bourgeoisie as any better than the French occupation, and he hoped (like Al-'Azm after him) that the resistance would not just drive out the occupier, but would become the driving force behind social transformation. [23]

It is not clear that Fanon in fact viewed resistance as "an end in itself," but he certainly saw it as having a transformative quality surpassing the simple achievement of formal independence: "Colonialism is the organization of the domination of a nation after military conquest. The war of liberation is not a seeking for reforms but the grandiose effort of a people, which had been mummified, to rediscover its own genius, to reassume its history and assert its sovereignty." [24] Fanon also wrote: "Decolonization… cannot come as a result of magical practices, a natural shock, or a friendly understanding… The naked truth of decolonization evokes for us the searing bullets and bloodstained knives which emanate from it. For if the last shall be first, this will only come to pass after a murderous and decisive struggle between the two protagonists." [25]

Whether derived from Fanon or not, contemporary Arab proponents of resistance do seem to view it as an end in itself; for Hasan Nasrallah, the resistance is an "identity," [26] and for Fakhru it is a "vital phenomenon." [27]

As we saw in our discussion of the liberals' critique of resistance glorification of violence, they doubt that resistance violence is transformative or has any inherent worth. Instead of leading to national regeneration, the resistance mentality perpetuates violence in accordance with its dualistic worldview. In the end, and after the classic liberation struggle has ended, the same violence is invariably employed against fellow citizens who have been stamped as enemies.


4: The persistence of the resistance mentality after victory and its function as a mask for civil war: Hazem Saghieh sees the persistence of the resistance mentality after victory as a direct outcome of the dualism inherent in resistance: "Resistances [are] locomotive forces for the spreading of a negative self-definition, which is accompanied by an oppositional definition of the other side, instead of defining it with regards to itself. While there are justifications [for this] in extreme cases, like the resistance against Nazism, it leaves breaches in the rationalism of politics, and after liberation is achieved and [the resistance forces] cling to power, these breaches are filled by heavy-handed opportunism and random blind violence." [28]

Likewise, Basim Al-Ansar writes in his article "The Death of the Resistance": "Victory, in the lexicon of the resistance, has a destructive aspect to it that persists even after the enemy or the occupier has disappeared from the country. This is because it becomes part of the nature of one who believes in it, and he then applies it against members of the collective for whom he claimed to be fighting." [29] The dualistic worldview inherent in resistance is thus responsible for the perpetuation of the resistance mentality even when it no longer serves any rational function.

The historical background to the rapid spread of this line of criticism was the events in Gaza, Lebanon, and Iraq in 2007, when a large number of commentators argued that the resistance was not actually fighting a foreign enemy at all - or at least not primarily - and had instead devolved into factional warfare. Even in 2006, some liberal observers had warned that the end goal of Hizbullah's war with Israel, waged six years after the Israeli withdrawal and ostensibly to recover prisoners, was in fact to lend the movement "a nationalist-Islamist halo" so it could march on Beirut as Mussolini had marched on Rome. [30]

Shortly after Hizbullah did in fact take over Beirut in the summer of 2008, the journalist Hazem Al-Amin wrote in Al-Hayat:


Is it not true that what happened in Beirut is the end and the upshot of all the 'resistances' in the East, and perhaps even elsewhere on Allah's wide land, from Lebanon to Palestine to Iraq, by way of Algeria and Libya, and down to Somalia? It is the never-ending 'resistance' tangled up with civil war…

My purpose here is not to condemn, but simply to look into the fate of the 'resistances' in their capacity as masks for civil wars. What happened in Beirut is the worst instance, but let us look also at Iraq. Is there any doubt that a civil war in that country was tangled up with the 'resistance?' Those of us wanting to find the 'pure' sides of the resistance cannot find a single Iraqi resistance faction that is not, in its definition [of itself], caught up in one of the sides of the civil war. [They] understand resistance as an absolute value, and not as a means or as activities. [31]


Conclusion

A number of factors coalesced to produce a cohesive and widespread liberal Arab critique of the culture of resistance, one of the ideological mainstays of 20th-century Arab political culture. On the geopolitical level, the end of the Cold War and the decline of the Third-Worldist Left have led progressive Arab intellectuals to view the West more as a source of inspiration than as the source of all evil. In parallel, the rise of Islamism in the Arab world, and in particular its assumption of the mantle of resistance, has made the resistance factions unappealing to modernists; the 9/11 attacks and Al-Qaeda's activities in Iraq further sealed this estrangement. In 2007 and 2008 in particular, a spate of internecine fighting erupted in Gaza and Lebanon, with Hamas and Hizbullah both describing this fighting as "resistance," as did the Iraqi factions. The critique that emerged from the confluence of all these factors was given wide distribution through a newly emergent network of Arab liberal electronic media and a handful of liberal-leaning newspapers.

How influential is this critique? While liberal intellectuals have certainly made gains in the Arab media in recent years, liberalism has yet to prove itself as an important political force in the Arab world (as demonstrated by the lackluster performance of liberal parties in Kuwait, for instance). On the other hand, the Gulf states and Egypt are more worried about Islamist challenges to their rule (Iran, Al-Qaeda, and the Muslim Brotherhood) than they are about Israel or the West, and thus the liberal critique dovetails well with their perceived national interest.

In the end, though, the principle importance of this critique lies in the fact that it exists and is widespread. This is a measure of the growing degree of pluralism in Arab public life when compared with previous decades, and shows that the Arab liberal movement is starting to come into its own.



* Daniel Lav is the Director of the Middle East and North Africa Reform Project at MEMRI






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[1] For Hazem Saghieh see Wael Abu 'Uqsa, "Liberalism and Left in Contemporary Arab Thought: A Study in post-1992 Hazem Saghie Writings," unpublished MA thesis, Hebrew University of Jerusalem, 2007, esp. pp. 32-34; for Lafif Lakhdar, see Menahem Milson, "Lafif Lakhdar: A European Muslim Reformist," MEMRI Inquiry and Analysis No. 314, January 5, 2007, http://memri.org/bin/articles.cgi?Page=archives&Area=ia&ID=IA31407 ; for Georges Tarabishi, see interview in Al-Sharq Al-Awsat, January 23, 2008. For the first of these two, the origin of their disaffection with the left was specifically the civil war in Lebanon.

[2] The idea of a general worldwide convergence on liberal democracy was proposed by Francis Fukuyama, "The End of History," The National Interest, Summer 1989.

[3] Saleh Al-Rashed, "Shukran Bin Laden," www.elaph.com/Web/ElaphWriter/2008/8/355651, August 12, 2008.

[4] www.elaph.com.

[5] www.middleeasttransparent.com.

[6] www.aafaq.org.

[7] www.alawan.org.

[8] Sadik Jalal Al-'Azm, Al-Naqd al-dhati ba'd al-hazima, Damascus: Dar Mamduh 'Udwan, 2007; pp. 94-5.

[9] MEMRI Special Dispatch No. 1790, "Iraqi Liberals Attack Egyptian Reformer Sa'ad Eddin Ibrahim for Comparing Iraq to Vietnam and Algeria and for Expressing Sympathy for the Resistance," December 21, 2007, http://memri.org/bin/articles.cgi?Page=archives&Area=sd&ID=SP179007.

A comparable controversy erupted when another Egyptian liberal icon, Gamal Al-Bana, published an article on the fifth anniversary of the 9/11 attacks calling the suicide-pilots "extremely courageous" and portraying the attacks as America's just desserts for its foreign policy. This article stood in stark contrast to Al-Bana's Islamic liberalism and his habitual sharp criticism of Islamists far less extreme than Al-Qaeda; here, as in the case of Ibrahim, it appears that the classic Third-Worldist resentment of U.S. power trumped opposition to Islamism. Gamal Al-Bana, "La raha li-amrika ba'da al-yawm," Al-Masri Al-Yawm (Egypt), September 11, 2006, http://www.almasry-alyoum.com/article2.aspx?ArticleID=29955 ; A. Dankowitz and Y. Feldner, MEMRI Inquiry and Analysis No. 334, "Sheikh Gamal Al-Bana: Social and Religious Moderation vs. Political Extremism," March 16, 2007, http://memri.org/bin/articles.cgi?Page=archives&Area=ia&ID=IA33407#_edn25. Also see Shaker Al-Nabulsi, Sujun bi-la qudban, Beirut: Al-mu'assasa al-'arabiyya li'l-dirasat w'al-nashr, 2007, pp. 168-180.

[10] www.almanar.com.lb, July 17, 2008.

[11] Al-Hayat (London), June 23, 2008; www.almanar.com.lb, June 22, 2008.

[12] 'Ali Muhammad Fakhru, "Al-naqd al-zalim li'l-muqawama al-'arabiyya," Al-Quds Al-'Arabi (London), May 15, 2008.

[13] Hazem Saghieh, "Fi hija' al-silah w'al-muqawamat: tazawuj al-'adamiyya wa-wazifiyya la tahjubuha al-qadasa," Al-Hayat (London), June 21, 2007.

[14] "Liqa' ma'a al-mufakkir al-duktur 'Abd al-Razzaq 'Eid hawla thalatha ayyam min al-tahqiq fi far' al-aman al-'askari (filastin) fi dimashq," http://middleeasttransparent.com/old/texts/abdelrazak_eid/abdelrazak_eid_interview.htm, March 21, 2006; "Liqa' ma'a al-mufakkir 'Abd al-Razzaq 'Eid hawla tahdid jaridat al-siria niyuz [Syria News] wa-radd bayan i'lan dimashq," http://www.free-syria.com/loadarticle.php?articleid=23565, November 7, 2007.

[15] Jalal Al-'Azm, Al-Naqd al-dhati, pp. 91-110.

[16] 'Abd Al-Razzaq 'Eid, "Sajn Fida' Hourani khatt watani ahmar," http://middleeasttransparent.com/article.php3?id_article=3002, December 31, 2007.

[17] MEMRI Special Report No. 1897, "Iraqi Author 'Aref 'Alwan: The Jews Have an Historic Right to Palestine," April 15, 2008, http://www.memri.org/bin/latestnews.cgi?ID=SD189708.

[18] Elham Mane'a, "Man tuqawim ya Nasrallah," http://middleeasttransparent.com/article.php3?id_article=3839, May 11, 2008.

[19] Saghieh, Al-Hayat (London), op. cit.

[20] Basim Al-Ansar, "Mawt al-muqawama," www.elaph.com/Web/AsdaElaph/2008/8/354204.htm, August 5, 2008.

[21] Ibrahim Al-Khayr Ibrahim, "Injazat al-muqawama al-islamiyya al-qawmiyya," www.elaph.com/ElaphWeb/ElaphWriter/2007/5/232596.htm, May 10, 2007.

[22] Jamal Al-Khurasan, "Al-Muqawama min al-dhabh ila al-intiqam min al-jusur," www.elaph.com/ElaphWeb/AsdaElaph/2007/5/233335.htm, May 13, 2007.

[23] Saghieh, Al-Hayat (London), op. cit. For Fanon on the national bourgeoisie, cf. Frantz Fanon, The Wretched of the Earth, Presence Africaine, 1963, p. 121ff.

[24] Frantz Fanon, Toward the African Revolution, New York: Monthly Review Press, 1967, pp. 83-84.

[25] Fanon, The Wretched of the Earth, pp. 29-30.

[26] www.almanar.com.lb, July 17, 2008.

[27] Fakhru, "Al-Naqd al-zalim," op. cit.

[28] Saghieh, Al-Hayat (London), op. cit.

[29] Al-Ansar, "Mawt al-muqawama," op. cit.

[30] Pierre 'Akel, "Fi inqilab Hasan Nasrallah wa-hizbihi 'ala al-sulta al-shar'iyya wa-mithaq 1943 wa-ittifaq al-ta'if - mujaddadan," www.middleeasttransparent.com/imprimer.php3?id_article=3824, May 9, 2008; reposting of article from July 17, 2006.

[31] Al-Hayat (London), June 8, 2008.

9) Obama's America
By David Shribman

For more than a year, Barack Obama ran as the man from hope -- or at least a man of hope. The implicit notion was that Americans could feel free to hope again, that they could dare to believe, and that the very act of hoping could be redemptive, and effective, too. Obama has been in office for little more than a month, and it is clear that hope is the thing with feathers. It flew away.

Until last week. Hope is back, or at least it is back in the Obama repertoire.

The president is a luminous figure, a symbol of American possibility, the personification of decades of dreams, particularly for black Americans. (So was John F. Kennedy to Catholics, and Ronald Reagan to conservatives.) But for almost a month's time the world's most hopeful character had become one of the world's biggest downers.

Let's leave aside this morning any qualms we might have about a man who can pick up and then put down the hope handle with such apparent ease. Instead let's examine the tension between optimism and pragmatism, and the difficult equilibrium between rallying the country for a challenge and providing it with a sobering view of that challenge.

The president's nationally televised speech was something of a wedding reception. Something borrowed: His address subtly embedded phrases from two men who held the same seat in the Senate, Daniel Webster ("something worthy to be remembered") and Kennedy ("twilight struggle"). Something blue: He issued a clear warning of the dangers ahead.

But he combined all of that with a clarion call for action and an assurance -- this you might think of as Reaganesque -- that Americans could pull out of the current crisis and pull off something remarkable, like providing health care to all Americans. It's hard enough to do that rhetorically. It will be doubly difficult to do it realistically.

Yet last week marked a significant passage in the current crisis. Americans have known for some time that the economy was in turmoil, and they have seen their neighbors if not themselves lose jobs, savings, confidence and, yes, hope. But last week the crisis seemed to have been transformed from something transitory to something stubbornly resistant to reasonable and customary remedy.

That's why the Obama address in the House chamber Tuesday was so important -- one of those moments, like Franklin Roosevelt's speech after Pearl Harbor or Lyndon Johnson's speech after the Kennedy assassination, when the nation welcomed a big speech in a big venue about a big topic. Never mind that the Obama speech had strains of his Iowa caucus victory remarks and his acceptance speech at the Denver convention. The president had the nation's attention, and with his speech he scratched on the wall of history.

For all the talk of the president's Lincoln obsession -- one cannot fault the man's taste, though perhaps his hubris -- this was a speech that seemed deliberately to use FDR as its model. The president pointedly used the word "rebuild," but in truth the blueprint he set out last week was not only to rebuild the country, but also to build a different country.

Roosevelt's task, too, was to rebuild a country wracked by Depression and hobbled with hopelessness. (Obama's challenge, right now at least, is not quite as great.) But Roosevelt used the crisis to construct a different kind of country entirely, one where the federal government no longer intruded on the ordinary citizen's life only when he went to the post office (the model used by the three Republican presidents who preceded FDR) but instead played an activist role in stimulating the economy and perhaps actually running the economy, or at least some sectors of it.

The irony is that some of the modern equivalent of FDR's New Deal began under perhaps the most devoutly conservative president since William McKinley; it was George W. Bush's administration, after all, that put Washington in such a commanding position over the nation's banks. But Obama, deftly building on the idea that an economic crisis is a political opportunity, clearly wants the country that emerges from the current upheaval to be a different country, with substantially different financial, health and educational infrastructures.

Last week's speech was the functional equivalent of a State of the Union address, though Obama technically won't give one of those for another 10 months. But State of the Union addresses generally are dreary affairs, important sounding but not really significant, long laundry lists of programs and proposals that everyone knows are going nowhere. Not so the Obama address.

The Republicans are diminished and in disarray -- don't let their near unanimity on the stimulus fool you -- and polls show that the country clearly wants its young president to succeed. The public is giving him a break. But it is also giving him more leeway than any president of our time.

We don't yet know what Obama's America will look like, just as no one, not even Roosevelt, knew in March 1933 what New Deal America would look like when the president was finished. But if the current president has his way, the country will not look like the America of February 2009. That is the real meaning of last week.

"Last week marked an end to three years of a nation's drifting from bad to worse, an end to helpless acceptance of a malign fate," said the editorial page of The Wall Street Journal after FDR took power. "For an explanation of the incredible change which has come over the face of things here in the United States in a single week we must look to the fact that the new administration in Washington has superbly risen to the occasion."

Neither of those sentences quite applies to Obama's Washington, not quite yet, and it surely won't be the Journal's inclination to salute Obama quite that way anytime soon. Though Roosevelt didn't precisely know where he was leading the country, it was clear in the winter of 1933 that he was at the very least leading it somewhere. Three quarters of a century later, Americans have reason to feel the same way.

10) Obama buries Reaganomics under $3.6 trillion mountain
By Sarah Baxter

The president has killed off the idea of small government with a vast schedule of tax and spend to combat recession and in the porcess, is bringing sweeping change to the country and the White House


AS Barack Obama prepared to deliver his speech to a joint session of Congress last week, his aides raced to television studios to deliver the official spin.

Evoking the cheerful optimism in tough times of a fondly remembered president, White House press secretary Robert Gibbs predicted his boss would be “Reaganesque”. No matter how dire the global meltdown, “there would always be better days ahead”.

The Great Communicator of the 1980s would have recognised his successor’s upbeat tone, but not his policies. When Obama unveiled his eye-popping $3.6 trillion (£2.5 trillion) budget proposal two days later, it was clear he had come not to praise Ronald Reagan, but to bury him.

“I don’t think we can continue on our current course,” Obama said. “I work for the American people and I’m determined to bring the change that the people voted for last November.” Democrats, who have been conditioned for years to expect their leaders to renege on their left-wing campaign promises, were jubilant.


The scale of Obama’s ambition has only just begun to sink in. If his budget for 2010 passes through Congress largely unscathed, it will represent the “the biggest redistribution of income from the wealthy to the middle class and poor this nation has seen in more than 40 years”, said Robert Reich, a former secretary of labour under Bill Clinton who has been advising Obama.

Reich told The Sunday Times: “It is the boldest budget we have seen since the Reagan administration, and drives a nail in the coffin of Reaganomics. We can basically say goodbye to the philosophy espoused by Ronald Reagan and Margaret Thatcher.”

Obama’s $3.6 trillion budget proposal includes $770 billion in tax cuts over 10 years for the “middle class”, America’s term for everyone from the moderately well-off to the working poor; $150 billion for funding “green” energy sources, and $634 billion towards the introduction of universal healthcare.

The numbers are almost beyond the power of imagination, but it is clear somebody will have to pick up the bill. A hefty $1 trillion or so will come from new taxes on the rich, paid for by families earning over $250,000 a year, increases in capital gains tax and limits on America’s generous tax deductions, including those for charitable contributions.

An extra $80 billion a year is predicted to come from auctioning off carbon permits under yet-to-be determined cap-and-trade legislation — if and when it actually happens.

None of this will be nearly enough to cover the gaping hole in America’s public finances. Even if the economy recovers at a clip over the next 10 years, America will still be running a deficit of 3% of GDP by 2019. The president’s daughters Malia, 10, and Sasha, 7, along with other members of their generation, are likely to emerge into adulthood saddled with debt.

The politics of “tax and spend” — or rather taxing the rich to spend on everyone else — is not only back in vogue, but has become an essential component of America’s economic recovery plan. Obama has seized on the “once in a generation” crisis to fulfil his campaign pledges on cutting taxes for lower wage earners, expanding education and health, and greening the economy with scant regard for the ballooning deficit — the largest, relative to the size of government, since the second world war.

Reagan once said: “The nine most terrifying words in the English language are, ‘I’m from the government and I’m here to help’.” Obama has made just such a promise to restore America’s fortunes, and the rest of the world, including Britain, can only pray that it works.

“So the revolution has come,” one US commentator noted. “Now, will it bring a new égalité? Or will we simply lose our heads?”

Republicans believe Obama has finally emerged in his true colours. Peter Wehner, a former White House aide to George W Bush and senior fellow at the Ethics and Public Policy Center in Washington, said the budget was “a frontal assault on every tenet of Reaganism from the size of government to taxes, the attitude towards entrepreneurs, small businesses and pro-growth policies”.

America “was on a glide path to European-style democracy”, Wehner said. Those who had wondered during the two-year election campaign who Obama really was — “a centrist throwing bones to the left or a leftist throwing bones to the right?” — now had their answer. He was an out-and-out leftist worthy of an “ism” of his own: Obamaism.

The economic crisis has given the Republicans a cause after their crushing electoral defeat, but not yet a politician to take on Obama. Bobby Jindal, 37, the much-hyped governor of Louisiana, embarrassed his own side with the lameness of his response to Obama’s speech.

It is not a problem for now, said Wehner. “Obama is a magnetic figure and tremendously charismatic. He is the dominant force in American politics. The Republicans are secondary actors. What they can do is to prepare themselves so that if this monstrosity fails, people can look to the Republicans and say, ‘They’re ready’.”

Ultimately, he predicted, it could “bring back Reaganomics quicker than one thinks”.

Obama has not only turned his back on Reaganomics but has ditched Clintonomics too. It was Bill Clinton who declared “the era of big government is over” when he lost Congress to the Republicans in 1994 and began to roll back welfare entitlements. Now almost any spending that can keep consumption going is viewed as a public good.

Some of Obama’s closest White House advisers, including Larry Summers, the head of the National Economic Council, were members of Clinton’s inner circle. They were among those who encouraged the roaring stock markets and multi-million-dollar bonuses for chief executives in the 1990s, but have been obliged to adjust their thinking.

“The idea of a self-regulating market seems quaint if not outright ludicrous in the wake of the biggest crash since the Great Depression,” said Reich.

Summers may not have had so much a change of heart, as a change of president, according to Reich. “It doesn’t really matter what anybody thinks. Obama is the boss and it is his budget,” he said.

There was a time on the campaign trail when Obama offended Clinton by suggesting he wanted to emulate Reagan’s “transformational” presidency rather than Clinton’s “incremental” changes. It was viewed as a conservative pitch for the votes of Republican moderates and independents, as well as a swipe at the Clinton legacy.

But the collapse of the economy has given Obama the chance to emulate the sweeping changes made by two earlier Democratic presidents: Franklin D Roosevelt’s New Deal in the 1930s and Lyndon Johnson’s Great Society measures in the 1960s.

This time, however, the transformation is aimed not at those at the bottom of society but at “middle-class” workers squeezed by rising health costs, diminishing pensions, the implosion of the housing market, unaffordable higher education and growing unemployment — who have seen the wealthiest in society enjoy the greatest gains in recent decades.

Obama is gambling he can extend his support among moderate Republicans and so-called Reagan Democrats, blue-collar workers who had begun to see government as a scam to take their hard-earned tax dollars and hand them to the underclass, and tap into their resentment towards the extravagance and incompetence of the super-rich.

A Gallup tracking poll showed Obama is winning the argument for now: his support rose from 27% to 42% among Republican voters after his televised address to Congress last week. And he was careful to retain the support of voters concerned with America’s national security by promising a slow but steady troop withdrawal from Iraq over 19 months that would still leave 50,000 US forces in the country.

In a victory for bipartisanship, John McCain, his Republican opponent for president, said he could go along with that.

The danger with Obamaism, however, is that the success or failure of his presidency is coming to rest entirely on the rise and fall of the economy.

There are worrying indications that Obama’s budget relies on a batch of false assumptions and the eternal politician’s temptress, known as “Rosy Scenario”. When confronted with rapidly rising deficits, it is all too easy for politicians to predict they will be resolved by rising growth and mythical savings.

Even as Obama was rolling out his budget proposal, new figures released by the commerce department last week showed the economy had contracted at the fastest pace in 25 years at the end of 2008. GDP shrank at an annualised rate of 6.2%. The crisis is spreading more quickly than any stimulus package or budget thrown together by the White House.

Greg Mankiw, a professor of economics at Harvard University, noted on his blog that Obama was projecting about 6% higher GDP in 2013 than most “blue chip” private forecasters.

White House economist Christina Romer acknowledged that the economy was a “supertanker, and it doesn’t turn quickly”. “I’d reject the premise that we’re noticeably rosier,” she said. “We certainly are somewhat more optimistic, but nothing out of the ball park.”

If Obama’s arithmetic is fuzzy, then it will not only be the wealthy picking up the tab. Economists of almost every stripe predict that, if and when the recession ends, everyone’s taxes will have to rise — either on earned income or in the form of Vat. It will no longer be a question of soaking the rich, but socking the poor as well.