A woman goes to the doctor, beaten black and Blue.
Doctor: "What the hell happened?"
Woman: "Doctor, I don't know what to do. Every time my husband comes home drunk he beats me to a pulp."
Doctor: "I have a real good medicine for that. When your husband comes home drunk, just take a glass of sweet tea and start gargling with it. Just gargle and gargle."
Two weeks later the woman comes back to the doctor looking fresh and reborn.
Woman: "Doctor, that was a brilliant idea! Every time my husband came home drunk, I gargled with sweet tea. I gargled and gargled, and nothing happened!"
Doctor: "You see how much keeping your mouth shut helps?"
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My next speaker is David Lowe - Vice President for Governmental and External Relations at The National Endowment for Democracy.
His topic is: " Was Churchill Right about Democracy?"
David speaks at 7:30, May 9th.
I cannot think of a more timely topic in view of the fact that Western nations have seemingly abdicated their culture, their political rationale and raison detre.
They cower in the face of their enemies and even our own president no longer even refers to them as such.
I guess Obama believes we live in a world where there are no lions only lambs.
The award winning author, Melanie Phillips, has written a new book: "The World Turned Upside Down" that exposes the current fraudulent trends in thinking. I have not, as yet, read it but intend to do so.
When I was a youth growing up I had heroes that I could look up to and even model myself after. Today we have idols. The problem is these idols have clay feet. Our idols make no pretense at trying to be heroes. They are mostly narcissistic, self indulged and on drugs of some sort. Our values have been 'rapped' in vulgarity and our culture is in decline. No civilization can destroy its culture and survive.
Obama personifies so much of what is wrong with our values, our attitudes and our judgment. (See 1 below.)
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A little commentary on working with bureaucrats. (See 2 below.)
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Lloyd Marcus and his participation with and observations of the liberal media's efforts to paint the Tea Party crowd as racists.
Because Marcus is black it is assumed he is also stupid enough to allowhimself to be used as the Tea Party token. (See 3 below.)
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Henninger see Democrats falling off a cliff based on polling attitudes and results.
Perhaps Henninger is right and the current polls tell the actual story but Americans are fickle and if the economy is showing signs of improvement, albeit below the standard type recovery, attitudes could shift.(See 4 below.)
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Our president's words are deciphered. The view of this editorial is that he is a devisive and arrogant president, who has contempt for large segments of our populace who disgree with him and challenge his actions.
In truth Obama is a thin skinned bully.(See 5 below.)
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Every once in a while an intelligent and calm assessment appears. A worthy read. (See 6 below.)
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Obama is tryng to buy time off a fast moving clock. I suspect Obama will fail because Iran remains relentless in their pursuit of their goal and its leaders believe Obama is an empty suit.
In the end Obama could be racing against himself. (See 7 below.)
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DUH! (See 8 below.)
Dick
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1)Exposing hypocrisy, cant, falsehood
By Isi Leibler
Award-winning columnist Melanie Phillips, recipient of the Orwell prize for journalism in 1996 and author of acclaimed Londonistan, has written an explosive new book systematically exposing chapter and verse of the hypocrisy, cant and blatant falsehoods which currently dominate much of contemporary Western thought. The World Turned Upside Down: The Global Battle Over God, Truth and Power will leave readers breathless as they follow her perceptive and ferocious exposé of the strains of insanity inherent in the "correct" attitudes currently being promoted by politicians, pseudo-academics and much of the Western media.
The book encompasses an extraordinarily wide range of prevailing public perceptions, which Phillips methodically demonstrates as not merely being utterly false but frequently deliberately fabricated as a vehicle to promote bizarre agendas. In addition to the author's commendable writing skills, what makes this book particularly impressive is her almost renaissance mastery of a multitude of complex issues - combined with a knack for communicating them in a form that most readers are able to comprehend.
In addition, she substantiates her assertions with research backed by meticulous documentation.
Phillips strongly repudiates the commonly accepted view that faith and reason are incompatible, persuasively demonstrating that in many cases the opposite is true. Her central thesis is that the trivialization of religious belief, rejection of the Judeo-Christian heritage and post-modernism, have all combined to erode the foundations upon which our civilization is based. This in turn created a vacuum which opened the floodgates for the emergence of a host of irrational cults and weird, even insane conspiracy theories.
Some of the bizarre examples cited by Phillips include the wacky belief that Princess Diana was assassinated to prevent her from marrying a Muslim; Tony Blair's wife's belief in the transcendent properties of stones and the utilization of her and her husband's hair and toenails to detect signs of "poisons and blockages" in their bodies; the allegation that AIDS was created in a CIA laboratory; the pagan practices of the "Kabbala" followers of Madonna, the icon of Western modernity, who wear red threads on their wrists to ward off the evil spirit and meditate on stem cells to achieve immortality of the body; the allegations that the 9/11 attacks were either created by the Mossad or were an inside job by the Bush administration; and the "post religious mythology" inherent in the hubris and narcissism employed in the Obama election campaign.
THE MORE significant practical implications of these trends are reviewed as separate sections of the book. The opening chapter titled "The Myth of Environmental Armageddon" deals with global warming which has swept the planet. Phillips ruthlessly dissects the lies and distortions employed to promote what she regards as one of the greatest scientific scams of the modern age, "reminiscent of a medieval witch-hunt," with dissenting scientists being hounded from their posts by the equivalent of a secular inquisition.
In relation to the Iraq war, she alleges that irrespective of the rights and wrongs of ridding the world of Saddam Hussein, the chattering classes have concocted bogus conspiracy theories in which legitimate differences over a divisive war have been reduced into accusations of a plot by neoconservatives to promote the interests of Israel. She claims that the UN and its Human Rights Council, which most Western progressives regard as the arbiter of acceptable behavior, exemplify the reversal of reason by "putting the foxes in charge of the henhouse."
She explains why the United Kingdom has emerged among the vanguard of countries which have repudiated rationality and reason.
A number of chapters are devoted to the most extreme example of the denial of reality - the double standards and shameless bias reflected in the attempts to demonize and delegitimize the embattled Jewish state. In the chapter titled "The Jihad against Western Freedom," Phillips highlights the double talk and refusal to relate to reality in the Middle East. She concludes that it is a byproduct of the lack of determination by the West to resisting new forms of "soft totalitarianism" in which the onward march of Islamic aggression is compromised, with the US becoming marginalized and the war on terror vilified.
Phillips points to the bizarre linkages and alliances forged between these irrational elements with conflicting agendas. They include veteran leftists, purported campaigners for human rights, neo-fascists and Islamists who have merged to form "the red-black-green-Islamic axis."
The World Turned Upside Down is a courageous expose of many of the myths and fallacies which are being imposed on us and which our society has absorbed.
One is not obliged to endorse each of the extraordinary individual case studies selected to recognize that Phillips makes a highly convincing case to substantiate her broad thesis about the corruption of rationality which now dominates much of liberal society. She is effectively sounding a clarion call for reversing the tidal waves threatening to overwhelm Western civilization by the collapse of modernity and rationalism in which verifiably false statements are continuously reiterated, while truth and lies, right and wrong, victim and aggressor are all reversed. Phillips warns that this brainwashing is threatening to lead us into a new anti-rational dark age.
In a concluding chapter summarizing her findings, Phillips observes that today as during the Middle Ages, if universalism has become the accepted dogma, Jews (substituted by Zionists and Israelis) have again become the contemporary heretics to be burned. "It was the Jews who gave the world the concepts of an orderly universe, reason and progress - the keys to science and our modern age. In repudiating Jewish teaching and its moral codes, the West has turned upon the modern world itself. The power of reason offers no protection against bigotry... Today it is once again among the most progressive and enlightened people... the secular rationalists and the most liberal Christians, who march behind the banners of human rights and high minded conscience, that one finds the most virulent hatred of Israel and medieval prejudice against Jews... In turning upon the State of Israel - the front line of the defense of the free world against Islamist assault on modernity - the West is undermining its defense against the enemies of modernity and the Western civilization that produced it. The great question is whether it actually wants to defend reason and moderation anymore, or whether Western civilization has now reached a point where it has stopped trying to survive."
This cri de coeur is a stunning and thought-provoking book that should be read by all who seek to understand the sources of the malaise of this generation in Western society.
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2) Working with bureaucrats!!!!
Part of rebuilding New Orleans caused residents often to be challenged with the task of tracing home titles back potentially hundreds of years.. With a community rich with history stretching back over two centuries, houses have been passed along through generations of family, sometimes making it quite difficult to establish ownership. Here's a great letter an attorney wrote to the FHA on behalf of a client:
You have to love this lawyer........
A New Orleans lawyer sought an FHA loan for a client. He was told the loan would be granted if he could prove satisfactory title to a parcel of property being offered as collateral. The title to the property dated back to 1803, which took the lawyer three months to track down. After sending the information to the FHA, he received the following reply.
(Actual reply from FHA):
"Upon review of your letter adjoining your client's loan application, we note that the request is supported by anAbstract of Title. While we compliment the able manner in which you have prepared and presented the application, we must point out that you have only cleared title to the proposed collateral property back to 1803. Before final approval can be accorded, it will be necessary to clear the title back to its origin." Annoyed, the lawyer responded as follows:
(Actual response):
"Your letter regarding title in Case No.189156 has been received. I note that you wish to have title extended further than the 206 years covered by the present application. I was unaware that any educated person in this country, particularly those working in the property area, would not know that Louisiana was purchased by the United States from France , in 1803 the year of origin identified in our application. For the edification of uninformed FHA bureaucrats, the title to the land prior to U.S. ownership was obtained from France , which had acquired it by Right of Conquest from Spain . The land came into the possession of Spain by Right of Discovery made in the year 1492 by a sea captain named Christopher Columbus, who had been granted the privilege of seeking a new route to India by the Spanish monarch, Queen Isabella. The good Queen Isabella, being a pious woman and almost as careful about titles as the FHA, took the precaution of securing the blessing of the Pope before she sold her jewels to finance Columbus's expedition...Now the Pope, as I'm sure you may know, is the emissary of Jesus Christ, the Son of God, and God, it is commonly accepted, created this world.Therefore, I believe it is safe to presume that God also made that part of the world called Louisiana . God, therefore, would be the owner of origin and His origins date back to before the beginning of time, the world as we know it, and the FHA. I hope you find God's original claim to be satisfactory.Now, may we have our damn loan?"
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3)Blacks, the Media, & the Tea Parties
By Lloyd Marcus
I am exhausted. I returned home after performing at tea parties in 42 cities, from Searchlight, NV to Washington, D.C., in nineteen days while on the Tea Party Express III tour. I'm black conservative singer/songwriter, entertainer, author, and spokesperson Lloyd Marcus.
I wish to share with you how the liberal mainstream media has dealt with my participation on the Tea Party Express III tour.
Liberal mainstream media all but call me an Uncle Tom. Their reports imply that I am a token black too stupid to realize that I am being used by the tea party movement. In typical liberal mainstream media arrogance, they are totally blind to the blatant racism of their reporting.
Because I do not fit the liberal mainstream media's "all blacks must vote Democrat and believe that America is racist and unjust" template, I must be an idiot. As a matter of fact, because I am a black man who loves his country and proclaims that America is the greatest land of opportunity on the planet for all who choose to go for it, much of the liberal media consider me dangerous and even wish me harm.
The liberal mainstream media are relentless in their quest to portray the tea party patriots as racist. And yet, I have performed my song, "American Tea Party Anthem," at over 150 tea parties, been treated like a rock star, and have even seen signs which read, "Lloyd Marcus for President!" Not one tea party attendee has ever called me the N-word.
Meanwhile, a Google search will reveal numerous liberal websites and blogs which freely and excessively call me a f-ing stupid N-word. The reason for their over-the-top anger and outrage against me: I express love for my country and refuse to be a hyphenated American.
The same liberals who accuse white conservative Republicans of being mean-spirited, racist, and intolerant are the hate-filled black and white Democrats who use the N-word every other word when writing about me and have even threatened me with physical harm.
After my performance at a tea party in Traverse City, Michigan, a white reporter approached me for an interview. The upbeat, mostly white audience loved me and my patriotic performance. Smiles were everywhere. With a stony face, the snooty female reporter asked me a series of annoying questions straight out of the liberal playbook.
But what really got my blood boiling was when she asked me the following question with the trademark liberal condescending edge: "Mr. Marcus, don't you think by calling yourself an unhyphenated American, you are encouraging white people to feel comfortable with their racism?"
I wanted to say, "Lady, what the heck are you talking about? You are obviously one miserable, bitter, and unhappy human being. Get away from me." Instead, I replied, "With all due respect, I strongly disagree." I turned and walked away from her, abruptly ending the interview.
Perhaps I should have stayed and argued my point of view. But I have lost patience with arrogant liberal reporters who think that they are so much smarter than us. This negative-spirited reporter had decided the spin of her story before interviewing me. My answers to her questions would not have made a difference.
At our Tea Party Express III tour rally in Buffalo, NY, four TV channels covering the rally had cameras in front of the stage. In the finale of each rally, we sing "God Bless The USA." Emotions were high in Buffalo as the audience waved U.S. flags, sang along, and many wept. All four camera techs had looks on their faces as if they were vampires who had just been shown a cross. They were not happy campers. What is with these folks in the media? Why such disdain for their country?
At the April 15th Tea Party in Washington, D.C., a reporter for Ebony (a prominent national black magazine) approached me for an interview after my performance. The reporter asked me the same two questions every other reporter has asked: Are the tea parties racist? Why are blacks not attending?
Without going into great detail in this article, I explained to the reporter the tea party movement is not about race, but about stopping an out-of-control administration from pushing our country towards socialism.
Frustratingly, the Ebony magazine reporter replied, "So why do you hate Barack Obama?" Then, outrageously, he asked me again, "Are these rallies racist?" It was as if he did not hear a word I said.
The liberal mainstream media obviously have an agenda and a paradigm to maintain. They say that the tea party movement is racist, and the facts will not change their reporting.
At the Traverse City, Michigan rally on the Tea Party Express III tour, a white woman approached me in a wheelchair. Extremely excited, she said, "Oh my gosh, it's Lloyd Marcus. May I have a picture with you? Thank you so much for all you are doing for our country. I love you!"
After a picture and hugs, I chatted with other fans.
Later, with tears in his eyes, Don, a Tea Party Express staff member, told me more about the woman in the wheelchair. The woman's daughter told Don that her mom was dying. The daughter said that her mom told her that all she wanted to do before dying was "to meet Lloyd Marcus."
Wow! I was blown away and humbled. Then I became extremely angry at the liberal mainstream media's and Democrats' vicious, shameful attempts to portray the tea party patriots as racist.
Just the other day, after my performance at a tea party in St Augustine, FL, an elderly white veteran thanked me and broke down in tears for our country. We embraced for several moments.
The liberal mainstream media and Democrats are attempting to racially divide and conquer our country. They are evil. As long as God gives me strength, I will continue to defend my fellow patriots who are white and fight to take back America.
- Lloyd Marcus, (black) Unhyphenated American
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4)Democrats at the Edge of the Cliff Democrats are spending trillions at the worst possible moment, with a new poll showing public trust in government at a historic low of 22%.
By DANIEL HENNINGER
There was always something eerie about the way the Democrats said their health-care legislation was what the American people had waited "70 years" for. Invoking the ghosts of 1939 was kind of creepy. Then when the moment in history finally arrived, history got no votes from the other party. Whatever the politics, there was something ominous about all this. One felt something else was going on.
A Pew Research Center report just out, the one that says trust in government is at an "historic low" of only 22%, looks like the something else.
Dig past the headline of the Pew study and one discovers why Bill Clinton is insinuating that "demonizing" government could cause another Oklahoma City bombing. If these numbers are at all close to reality, something one can hardly doubt just now, the American people have issued a no-confidence vote in government, at both the national and state level. To the extent one believes in the "consent of the governed," consent is being eroded.
Daniel Henninger says that the American people have issued a no-confidence vote in government.
.Podcast: Listen to the audio of Wonder Land. .This report isn't bad news for the Democrats. It's Armageddon.
The survey compares views sampled in 1997 with now. The "now" is the Democrats' problem. The survey took place this mid-March. After one year of the charismatic, ever-present Barack Obama, after passage of the party's totemic health-care bill, after spending zillions on Keynesian pump-priming, the American people—well beyond the tea partiers—have the lowest opinion ever of national government.
A year ago, 54% said government should exert more control over the economy; a year later it's 40%.
Some 58% say Uncle Sam is interfering too much in state and local affairs; 53% want "very major reform" of the federal government. After health care passed in March, Pew re-sampled in early April: Trust in government rose—to 25% from 22%. Inspector Clouseau would call that a "bmp."
Pew concludes: "A desire for smaller government is particularly evident since Barack Obama took office." That's pin-the-tail-on-the-donkey without blindfolds.
Democrats could cite one passage in Pew to mitigate this dire portrait. Historically, the report notes, whichever incumbent party is standing next to a big disaster gets pulled down in the undertow. Thus Bush and the Iraq war and Katrina. They can argue that Mr. Obama and the Democrats are getting hit with the legacy of the Bush downdraft and the after-shocks of the financial meltdown of September 2008. Once that passes, and after the inevitable November losses, the economy will stabilize and by 2012 the playing field will reset to normal.
.I don't buy this. Something unique happened in the first Obama year, about the last thing the Democratic Party needed: The veil was ripped from the true cost of government. This is the ghastly nightmare Democrats have always needed to keep locked in a crypt.
Before the Internet, that was easy. Washington, California, New York, New Jersey—who knew what the pols were spending? The Democrats (and their Republican pilot fish) could get away with this. Not now. Email lists, 24/7 newspapers, blogs, TV and talk radio—the spending beast is running naked.
When the financial crisis piled in atop a recession, the Democrats' academic/pundit economists blandly convinced the party to wave a $787 billion stimulus at the problem in early 2009. Then, on April 30, the Democrats passed an FY 2010 budget of $3.5 trillion. This year the FY 2011 budget hit $3.8 trillion, reaching a post-World War II high of 25% of GDP. In March, they passed the trillion-dollar health-care bill. Total headline spending commitments in one year: about $9 trillion. That's a lot of "trust" to ask for during a recession with 9% unemployment. And now a sense is building of some broad middle-class tax grab. After soaking the rich, comes the deluge.
Demonization? No need. They did it to themselves.
Barack Obama's speeches are filled with the Democrats' core claim to legitimacy: Government must and will do good. It must "act." But in a crucial period when voters across the political spectrum were losing faith in that core claim, the Democrats lost any self-protective sense of what they were doing with public budgets. Barack Obama took a rising reservoir of public trust for his party (62% said they liked the Democrats in January 2009), and emptied it. Since he took office, the percentage of people who want smaller government and fewer services has risen, to 50% from 42%.
A Quinnipiac poll released yesterday has the Obama presidential approval rating down to 44%—after health care, after the arms treaty with Russia, after the 47-nation, anti-proliferation convocation in Washington.
He insists on more government. People want less, and don't trust what they've got. They want reform. Here's the Pew blowout data:
In 1994 when the Democrats lost over 50 House seats at mid-term, the party's favorable rating was 62%, and for the Congress they controlled it was 53%. They still got killed. Now the party's favorable is 38% and Congress's approval is 25%. The Republicans' numbers are low, too, but they're not in charge.
The Democratic Party is on the edge of an electoral cliff with a long fall to the bottom. No wonder they're seeing a demon under every bed.
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5)On Presidential Rhetoric:Obama's ad hominem method and the politics of polarization
President Obama came to office promising an era of political comity, but even he has had to concede that his first 15 months in office haven't lived up to his campaign hope of transcending partisan divisions. While it takes two to tangle, we think the hyper-polarization owes more than a little to Mr. Obama's own rhetorical habits. More than any President in memory, Mr. Obama has a tendency to vilify his opponents in personal terms and assail their arguments as dishonest, illegitimate or motivated by bad faith.
A notable instance is Mr. Obama's ad hominem attack on Mitch McConnell at a California fundraiser for Barbara Boxer on Monday. The Senate Minority Leader "paid a visit to Wall Street a week or two ago," Mr. Obama said, and "met with some of the movers and shakers up there. I don't know exactly what was discussed. All I can tell you is when he came back, he promptly announced he would oppose the financial regulatory reform."
In other words, the Kentucky Republican is merely a mouthpiece for the bankers. Mr. Obama added that Mr. McConnell's objections to the bill were not merely "just plain false" but also "cynical"—and then he repeated the attack on motives at another event the following evening.
We can't recall anything close to this kind of language from, say, Ronald Reagan toward House Speaker Tip O'Neill, or even George W. Bush after Harry Reid called him a "liar." But it is an Obama staple.
A few hours after the Supreme Court's vindication of political speech last year in Citizens United, Mr. Obama called the decision "a major victory for Big Oil, Wall Street banks, health insurance companies and the other powerful interests that marshal their power every day in Washington to drown out the voices of everyday Americans."
He later personalized his criticism by rebuking the Justices as they sat in front of him during the January State of the Union, accusing them of reversing "a century of law to open the floodgates for special interests—including foreign corporations—to spend without limit in our elections." So the Justices, too, are mere tools of corporate interests. Don't expect many of them at next year's SOTU.
The President is especially fond of employing this blunt rhetorical force against business. In a December interview, Mr. Obama said he "did not run for office to be helping out a bunch of fat cat bankers on Wall Street. . . . They're still puzzled why it is that people are mad at banks. Well, let's see," he continued. "You guys are drawing down $10, $20 million bonuses after America went through the worst economic year that it's gone through in—in decades, and you guys caused the problem."
Amid the Beltway panic during the AIG bonus bonfire in March 2009, Mr. Obama played directly to the public anger. "This is a corporation that finds itself in financial distress due to recklessness and greed," said the President, and asked, "How do they justify this outrage to the taxpayers who are keeping this company afloat?"
He did the same with the Chrysler bondholders who had initially resisted the White House's bankruptcy terms that squeezed them in favor of the United Auto Workers. Mr. Obama characterized these investors in April 2009 as "a small group of speculators" who "were hoping that everybody else would make sacrifices, and they would have to make none." They quickly caved.
Likewise, in his September address to Congress on health care, Mr. Obama did not merely disagree with opponents but accused them of being "cynical and irresponsible," spreading "misinformation," and making "bogus," "wild" or "false" claims through "demagoguery and distortion."
He added that "If you misrepresent what's in this plan, we will call you out." He later singled out Anthem Blue Cross by name, describing the California insurer's behavior "jaw-dropping" in February after it attempted to raise consumer premiums.
Politics ain't beanbag, but most Presidents leave this kind of political attack to surrogates or Vice Presidents. Mr. Obama seems to enjoy being his own Spiro Agnew. A President may reap a short-term legislative gain from this kind of rhetoric, but he also pays a longer-term price in ill-will and needless polarization.
Presidents speak to all of America and they best build consensus through argument and persuasion—not by singling out political targets, cultivating resentment, questioning motives and mocking differences of principle or political philosophy. Mr. Obama's bellicosity is no more attractive than Sarah Palin's attempts to pit "the real America" against the big-city slickers. And his rhetorical method seems especially discordant coming from a President who still insists, in between these assaults, that he is striving mightily to change the negative tone of American politics.
If the President and his advisers are wondering why his approval ratings are falling even as the economy is recovering, they might look to his own divisive conduct and the contempt he too often shows for anyone who disagrees with him.
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6)Professor Finds Many Fault Lines in Crisis
By DAVID WESSEL
The left has figured out who to blame for the financial crisis: Greedy Wall Street bankers, especially at Goldman Sachs. The right has figured it out, too: It was government's fault, especially Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac.
Raghuram Rajan of the University of Chicago's Booth School of Business says it's more complicated: Fault lines along the tectonic plates of the global economy pushed big government and big finance to a financial earthquake.
One lesson from the crisis: When nine of 10 experts say everything is fine, the press should devote more than 10% of its coverage to those who say it isn't fine. I should have paid more attention to Mr. Rajan, who famously ruined a 2005 Federal Reserve celebration of Alan Greenspan's career by suggesting that big banks might be steering the world economy off the cliff. ("I felt like an early Christian who had wandered into a convention of half-starved lions," he says.)
Mr. Rajan, a Massachusetts Institute of Technology Ph.D., sees the crisis through an unusual lens. He spent his childhood in India, studied electrical engineering there and still advises its government. He later did a few years as chief economist of the International Monetary Fund. More than most economists, he sees ways in which rich countries behave similarly to poorer ones and sees the roots of the crisis as global.
In a conversation a few days after the government pointed the finger of blame at Goldman Sachs, Mr. Rajan previewed arguments he'll make in a book ("Fault Lines: How Hidden Fractures Still Threaten the World Economy") to be published in July.
"We miss the point if we find a scapegoat in the financial sector. It was doing what so many people wanted. And not many people were asking questions," he says.
To him, this was a Greek tragedy in which traders and bankers, congressmen and subprime borrowers all played their parts until the drama reached the inevitably painful end. (Mr. Rajan plays Cassandra, of course.) But just when you're about to cast him as a University of Chicago free-market stereotype, he surprises by identifying the widening gap between rich and poor as a big cause of the calamity.
The first Rajan fault line lies in the U.S. As incomes at the top soared, politicians responded to middle-class angst about stagnant wages and insecurity over jobs and health insurance. Since they couldn't easily raise incomes—Mr. Rajan is in the camp that sees better education as the only cure and that takes time—politicians of both parties gave constituents more to spend by fostering an explosion of credit, especially for housing.
This has happened before: Farmers' grievances led to a U.S. government-backed expansion of bank credit in the 1920s; India's state-owned banks pump credit into poor constituencies in election years. But one thing was different: "When easy money pushed by a deep pocketed government comes into contact with the profit motive of a sophisticated, amoral financial sector, a deep fault line develops," Mr. Rajan writes. House prices shot up, banks borrowed cheaply and heavily to build leveraged mountains of ever more risky mortgage-linked securities.
When University of Chicago Professor Raghu Rajan warned of economic doom in 2005, it was roundly ignored. WSJ's David Wessel says next time, the media shouldn't be so quick to dismiss a dissenting voice.
.The second fault line lies in the relentless exporting of many countries. Germany and Japan grew rich by exporting. They built agile export sectors that compete with the world's best, but shielded or strangled domestic industries such as banking and retailing. These industries are uncompetitive and inefficient, and charge high prices that discourage consumer spending.
China and others got to a similar place by a different route. Financial crises in the 1990s showed them the dangers of relying on money flowing from rich countries through local banks to finance factories, office towers and other investment. So they switched strategies, borrowed less and turned to exporting more to fuel growth. This led them to hold down exchange rates (that makes exports more attractive to others). So doing meant building huge rainy day funds of U.S. dollars.
The result: A lot of money abroad looking for a place to go met a lot of demand for borrowing in U.S. A lot of foolish loans were made.
A third Rajan fault line spread the crisis. The U.S. approach to recession-fighting—unemployment insurance and the like—and its social safety net are geared for fast, quick recoveries of the past, not for jobless recoveries now the norm. That puts pressure on Washington to do something: tax cuts, spending increases and very low interest rates. This leads big finance to assume, consciously or unconsciously, that the government will keep the money flowing and will step in if catastrophe occurs.
Compounded by hubris, envy, greed, short-sighted compensation schemes and follow-the-herd habits, these expectations that the government will save us all leads big finance to borrow cheaply and take ever bigger risks. No democratic government can let ordinary folk suffer when the harshness of the market brings the party to an end, as it inevitable does. Big finance exploits what Mr. Rajan calls this "government decency" and bets accordingly.
If he's right, changing the rules, incentives and innards of major economies to reduce the risks of repeating the recent crisis is not going to be easy.
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7)U.S. Tries to Buy Time for Its Iran Strategy
By GERALD F. SEIB..
Iranian forces launched a big military exercise in the Persian Gulf Thursday, thereby underscoring a grim reality: The strategy for stopping Iran's nuclear program is turning into a race against time before options turn from mediocre to bad to worse.
The goal of American policy right now is to slow down the clock—that is, to stretch out the time Iran needs to become nuclear-arms capable. The hope is to buy time to give other kinds of pressure a better chance to work before military options move to the fore.
That's why the current foot-dragging in adopting new economic sanctions at the United Nations Security Council is so troublesome. In an ideal world, and in the Obama administration's original vision, a U.N. resolution imposing new economic penalties would have been passed two months ago.
So now, here's where things are headed: American officials say they hope a U.N. resolution will pass in the next few weeks. That would clear the way for step two, in which the U.S. and its European allies, with some help from Japan, would layer on additional sanctions of their own with more bite, clamping down on Iran's access to the international financial system and squeezing its Revolutionary Guards, the real power behind Iran's nuclear program.
Getting this economic squeeze in place is crucial. The hope is that when Iran's leaders see that economic pressure has moved from possibility to reality, they will return to negotiations over their nuclear program, which they contend is for producing energy, not weapons.
It's worth pausing here to note that having a credible military threat on the table is useful for both prongs of this strategy—getting biting sanctions, as well as getting Iran to take its predicament seriously. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, while feuding with the Obama administration on the Israeli-Palestinian peace process, is extremely useful on this front.
Already, informed sources say, the U.S. has essentially said to the recalcitrant Chinese: "Look, you'd better cooperate on sanctions, because if we don't do something, Netanyahu is just crazy enough to attack Iran." And if there's a silver lining to the military exercises Iran just launched, it's that they suggest Tehran is taking the military threat seriously.
If these combined pressures compel Iran's leaders back into negotiations, the goal would be to revive the kind of nuclear-swap deal Iran agreed to, then backed away from, last fall. Under that agreement, Iran was to ship about half of the low-enriched uranium it has accumulated to Russia and France for reprocessing into fuel for a nuclear reactor in Tehran.
The beauty of that deal was that, by taking potential nuclear-weapons material out of Iran's hands and turning it into something else, the world would know with confidence that it had slowed down Iran's march toward nuclear-weapons capability by a year or so. That would, in the words of one senior Obama administration official, "shift the timetable to the right," extending the time available to find a longer-term solution.
That breather would be crucial on several fronts. First, the U.S. would buy more time to build a real regional security arrangement under which it would help strengthen the defenses of friendly Persian Gulf states and work out a plan for a joint response to Iranian provocations. More time also would allow the U.S. to move ahead in building a defense system to knock out Iranian missiles that could carry nuclear warheads.
It's possible that the combination of a regional defense plan and a real American missile-defense shield would signal to Iran that acquiring nuclear arms wouldn't give it the power to intimidate its neighbors that it might envision, and help convince Tehran that developing nuclear weapons isn't worth the economic pain the world can inflict.
And if that doesn't work, slowing down the nuclear program would at least create more time to determine whether opposition forces within Iran have any hope of threatening the regime.
There's at least some reason to hope new pressure might pull Iran back into negotiations. U.S. officials suspect that President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, for all his bluster, actually wanted to do the nuclear-swap deal last fall, but was stopped by supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.
And in recent days, Iranian officials have been floating an alternative to last fall's deal, indicating they want to talk to other nations about it, perhaps at a meeting on nonproliferation in New York next month.
Meanwhile, though, nuclear centrifuges in Iran continue to spin out enriched uranium. Iran's ultimate goal may well be to leave the outside world paralyzed in a state of suspended animation by demonstrating it has developed the ability and material to make nuclear arms, while stopping just short of making the weapons themselves.
Even that nebulous outcome would compel the world to ponder two far less appealing options. One would be that military strike.
The second would be to accept that Iran has become a nuclear-capable state, and adopt a strategy of containing it while using economic pressure—perhaps even an economic blockade—to force a reversal or to bring down the regime. That's essentially what the West did to the Soviet Union during the Cold War. It did, however, take 50 years.
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8)When NASA first planned to send up astronauts, they
quickly discovered
that ball-point pens would not work in zero gravity.
To combat the problem, NASA scientists spent a decade
and $1.2 billion
to develop a pen that writes in zero gravity, upside
down, underwater,
on almost any surface including glass, and at
temperatures ranging from
below freezing to 300 Celsius.
Confronted with the same problem, the Israelis used a
pencil.
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Thursday, April 22, 2010
Wednesday, April 21, 2010
Israel Left To Bell The Cat? Carter Looking LIke Patton?
How do you take an option off a table that never existed? This is not the shot heard round the world but a whimper from an administration whose left hand and right hand remain un-coordinated.
Dis-information, I thought, was a technique used to confuse your adversary. In this administration it seems to be a consequence of our own confusion.
Is Israel left to 'bell the cat.'(See 1 below.)
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Is Israel willing to pull Obama's chestnuts out of the fire to avoid another war and if so can Obama be trusted? How far will/should Netanyahu go to buy the semblance of peace with Obama?
If Obama continues to demand the impossible from Netanyahu then the next war will be hard to avoid because the rift between Israel and America will create a vacuum which Iran will gladly fill.
And, if Obama's knees continue to weaken over Iran, Obama will have accomplished the impossible - he will make Jimmy Carter look like Patton. (See 2 and 2a below.)
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Ron Lauder was a college classmate of mine. He continues spraying Obama with unpleasant words rather than with his mother's sweet smelling perfume. (See 3 below.)
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The behind the scene person shaping public opinion for Obama with respect to the image of Muslims.
Years ago I attended a counter terrorist meeting. Ellen Cannon PHD was the speaker. Ellen explained how radical American Muslims would eventually bore their way into our society using the freedoms granted American citizens. She spoke about how they would eventually put up candidates running for school board positions, how their various charitable organizations would funnel money to radical Islamists.
What Ellen failed to speak about is how an American president would be their conduit and/or carrier pigeon. But that was then and that was over 10 years ago.
Ironically Ellen teaches, consults and lives in Chicago.(See 4 below.)
---
Dick
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1)US gives up military option, non-UN sanctions against Iran
US deputy defense secretary Michele Flournoy said Wednesday, April 21: "The US has ruled out a military strike against Iran's nuclear program any time soon." This is the first time a senior administration official has publicly admitted that America has dropped its military option against Iran. Instead, said Flournoy, the US is hoping that "negotiations and United Nations sanctions will prevent the Middle East nation from developing nuclear weapons."
Addressing a news conference in Singapore, she said clearly: "Military force is an option of last resort, it's off the table in the near term."
A few hours later, the Pentagon spokesman denied that a military strike against Iran was off the table, indicating confusion and polarization at the top of the Obama administration on its Iran policy.
Military sources report Flournoy's statement contradicts every public assertion by president Barack Obama, defense secretary Robert Gates and the chairman of the joint Chiefs of staff Adm. Mike Mullen, all of whom have insisted that all options are on the table if Iran fails to curb its current nuclear activities. Deputy Secretary Flournoy is regarded as a senior, serious and responsible Pentagon official who is too experienced to go out on a limb with a key policy statement to reporters without the highest authority.
The policy reversal amounts to a beckoning finger at America's open door for Iran to return to the negotiating table.
Monday and Tuesday, April 19-20, Iran's foreign minister Manouchehr Mottaki announced his government is willing to go back to talks with the United States and other powers on a deal for its enriched uranium. Turkey has offered its services as broker between Washington and Tehran.
But if anything, Iran's position on its nuclear program has hardened since the first round of negotiations ended in nothing, and the next round is likely to waste more precious months and end the same way. Tehran's only object in seeking to discuss an agreed outcome for the nuclear controversy is to buy time and push away Washington's drive for tough sanctions. This the Iranians have now achieved.
Fourney's statement that the United States is counting on UN sanctions to deter Iran likewise plays into Tehran's hands, because it removes the second bludgeon hanging over Iran's heads, that of US penalties outside the world body. This is the only remaining option since most of the informed sources quoted by US media in the past week view the administration's hopes of Russia and China coming around to tough UN sanctions as non-starters.
This wholesale US retreat on Iran leaves Israel as the only country still holding to a military option for putting the brakes on Iran's progress toward a nuclear bomb.
However, Wednesday, the Wall Street Journal reported that Israel's political and military leaders are divided on the wisdom of executing this option and attacking Iran without US support.
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------2)Israel, U.S. secretly working to bridge gaps in peace process
By Barak Ravid
Israel and the United States have conducted behind-the-scenes negotiations in recent days in an effort to find a formula that would bridge their differences over peace negotiations with the Palestinian Authority and America's demand that Israel halt construction in East Jerusalem for at least four months.
According to a senior Obama administration official, the top Middle East policy specialist at the White House, Dan Shapiro, arrived in Israel yesterday on a secret visit. Shapiro's delegation also included David Hale, who serves as deputy to U.S. Middle East envoy George Mitchell and is permanently based in Israel.
Shapiro and Hale held lengthy talks yesterday at Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's office in Jerusalem with the prime minister's envoy, Yitzhak Molcho, and Netanyahu adviser Ron Dermer. The talks will continue today.
Neither the White House nor the Prime Minister's Office have officially announced the talks or even Shapiro's arrival in Israel. Officially, total silence is being maintained, and the Prime Minister's Office therefore refused to comment yesterday.
But a senior Israeli official said talks with American officials have been conducted throughout the past week - by phone, via the Israeli embassy in Washington and with the White House officials who arrived in Israel yesterday. The Israeli source said Israel would not provide an official response to the American demands in the form of a position paper or even a verbal response, but the parties would try to reach an understanding on a joint approach for furthering the peace process.
This will be a lengthy process, the official added, and there will be no single "event" at which Israel will present its response.
Currently, the Israeli official said, Netanyahu's position is that Israel will not accede to Washington's demand that it suspend construction in Jewish neighborhoods of East Jerusalem. However, diplomatic sources predicted that Netanyahu would agree to promise to avoid provocative steps such as constructing houses for Jews in Arab neighborhoods in the eastern part of the city.
The dialogue between Israel and the Obama administration is to continue next week, when Defense Minister Ehud Barak visits Washington. Barak, who will leave for the U.S. on Sunday, is slated to deliver a speech at a conference sponsored by the American Jewish Committee, at which U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton will also speak.
He will also hold meetings with U.S. National Security Adviser Gen. James Jones, Clinton and other senior officials. The talks will deal with the peace process and the effort to bridge the disagreements between the U.S. and Israel, as well as the Iranian nuclear issue and weapons smuggling from Syria to Lebanon.
When Netanyahu visited Washington several weeks ago, U.S. President Barack Obama gave him a list of demands during their White House meeting. One of the demands was a construction freeze in East Jerusalem. Obama also demanded that Netanyahu make other confidence-building gestures to the Palestinians, such as allowing the opening of PA institutions in the eastern part of the city, transferring additional West Bank territory to Palestinian security control and agreeing to discuss all the core issues of the conflict during proximity talks with the PA, instead of insisting that these issues only be discussed in direct talks.
2a)Obama must stop demanding the impossible from Israel
By Ari Shavit
Will war break out in the summer? In Israel, people still want to believe that the powers stabilizing the Middle East are stronger than the powers destabilizing it. They believe in the ostensible deterrence achieved in the north and south during the Second Lebanon War and Operation Cast Lead. However, Jordan's King Abdullah is not the only one warning about war in the summer. Other international figures who know the region well fear a sudden military escalation. We can't know when the next war will break out, they say. We also can't know where, but the Middle East has become a powder keg. Between the summers of 2010 and 2011, that keg can catch fire.
The main war scenario is that of a conflict with Iran. If next year the United States or Israel uses force against Iran, Iran will strike back. The Iranian attack will be both direct and indirect. The indirect strike will be by Hezbollah. When Israel responds, Syria might not stand idly by. War between Israel, Iran, Syria and Hezbollah will not resemble any war we have known in the past. Hundreds of missiles will land on Tel Aviv. Thousands of people will be killed. Hundreds of missiles will hit air force bases and Israel Defense Forces command centers. Hundreds of soldiers will be killed. The crushing Israeli counterstrike will demolish Beirut and Damascus. Israel will win, but the victory will be painful and costly.
The second war scenario is that of a reconciliation with Iran. If next year U.S. President Barack Obama acts toward Iran the way George W. Bush acted toward North Korea, Iran will go nuclear. If Obama prevents Israel from acting against Iran and does not act itself, Iran will become a leading power in the Middle East. The outcome will be a loss of respect in the Sunni world for the United States and a loss of inhibitions in the Shi'ite and radical world vis-a-vis Israel. A serious conflict could then break out between Israel and Hamas, Israel and Hezbollah and perhaps even Israel and Syria. A violent deterioration could also occur between Israel and other neighbors.
A loss of U.S. strategic hegemony would mean that opponents of the West will shake up the Middle East. A loss of Israel's strategic monopoly would result in attacks on it by old and new enemies. The age of relative quiet that has typified Israeli-Arab relations for the past 35 years will be over forever.
The conclusion is clear: The essential task now in the Middle East is the prevention of war. That's not the same as pursuing peace. Sometimes it's precisely the attempt to achieve an unattainable peace that ignites a war. In the current sensitive situation, there must be no illusions and no mistakes. Political correctness must not be allowed to cause a historic disaster. And when the glasses of political correctness are taken off, a clear picture emerges. To prevent war in the Middle East, the United States and Israel must show strength and generosity, deterrence and moderation. Together they must promote a cautious and gradual diplomatic process that will weaken the region's extremists, strengthen its moderates and curb Iran. They must maintain the democratic alliance that has stabilized western Asia for two generations.
The main responsibility now rests with the United States. The Netanyahu government has made many mistakes over the past year, but so has the Obama administration. The latter has wasted 15 precious months in dialogue with Iran without imposing any sanctions and maintaining the illusion of an immediate Israeli-Palestinian peace. The open, unilateral pressure Washington has exerted on Jerusalem has both distanced peace and brought war closer. Therefore, if the Obama administration does not want the next war to be named after it, it must urgently change its policies. It must demand the possible from Israel, not the imaginary. It must demand what is essential from Iran. It must show determined and sober leadership that will prevent war now and lead to peace tomorrow.
The volcano that erupted last week in Iceland will be nothing compared to the volcano that could erupt in the near future in the Middle East. But the volcano here is a human one. People are stoking it and people can also cool it down. The lives of hundreds of millions now depend on the wisdom and careful consideration of one man: Barack Obama.
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
3)Words: Round 2: Lauder vs. Obama
Netanyahu's close associate Ron Lauder again publicly criticizes American president, says US policies toward Israel are 'disproportionate'
A week after publishing an open letter in which he criticized US President Barack Obama, Ron Lauder on Wednesday continued to slam the American president and his Middle East policies.
In an interview with the German Der Spiegel, Lauder - who serves as president of the World Jewish Congress and is considered a close associate of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu - said that Washington's criticism of Israel was "disproportionate."
First Round
Lauder to Obama: Palestinians to blame.
In open letter to American president, head of WJC Ron Lauder expresses concern over US-Israel rift, says Palestinians refuse to negotiate; letter calls on Obama to quit public criticism of Jewish state.
"The Obama administration is blaming Israel for the stalling peace process, but it is in fact the Palestinians which are opposed to negotiations," he said.
When asked whether the Israeli government can also be blamed for the recent deterioration between the two countries, following its announcement of a plan to build 1,600 new housing units in east Jerusalem during US Vice President Joe Biden's visit to Israel, Lauder noted the "bad timing."
However, he said that the Israeli government has made extraordinary concessions: "It has accepted the idea of a Palestinian state, a moratorium on settlement building, and it has removed over a hundred roadblocks in the West Bank."
Lauder stressed that despite his close relationship with the prime minister, he does not act as his spokesman.
"I don't represent my friend, but Jews worldwide. I would have written the same letter if someone else were prime minister in Jerusalem. Over his attempts to engage the Muslim world, Obama has strongly neglected the relationship with Israel," he said.
During the interview, Lauder rejected claims that the conflict in the Middle East was harming American national security and said that Washington's "main concern should be Iran. The regime in Tehran is threatening Israel and the entire Western world with its plans to build a nuclear bomb. That is why Obama should end his feud with Israel."
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4)Meet the pollster who works behind the scenes with radical Islamist groups to enhance their standing in the presidential council's activities
By Steven Emerson
Few American Islamists receive the kind of glowing media coverage given to Dalia Mogahed, executive director of the Gallup Center for Muslim Studies, who is sometimes described as the "most influential person" shaping the Obama Administration's Middle East message.
Mogahed, who claims to have played an important role in the drafting of President Obama's historic Cairo speech to the Muslim world, was appointed to serve on the President's Council on Faith-based and Neighborhood Partnerships. The council released its final recommendations last month.
When European Islamist Tariq Ramadan kicked off his U.S. tour earlier this month at Cooper Union in New York City, Mogahed and two journalists joined him for a panel discussion. Her remarks emphasized polling data showing that Muslim Americans are more affluent and socially content than their European counterparts.
Muslim Americans are no more likely to support political violence than the rest of the nation, Mogahed said. The minority of Muslim Americans who do support attacks on civilians base this position on politics, not religion.
It's a message that Mogahed attempts to drive home at every opportunity.
She routinely is depicted as a scholarly analyst monitoring public opinion on subjects like anti-Muslim prejudice in the United States or global Muslim attitudes toward America. On other occasions, she is treated as a pioneering Muslim celebrity or portrayed as a victim of anti-Muslim "smears."
But the reality is much more complicated. Mogahed is not some apolitical social scientist chronicling political trends in the manner of George Gallup, founder of the parent organization for her polling center. While Gallup strived to maintain his objectivity, Mogahed has followed a very different course. As we will explain in more detail below, she works behind the scenes with radical Islamist groups to enhance their standing in the presidential council's activities.
Mogahed is a protege of John Esposito, executive director of the Prince Alwaleed Bin-Talal Center for Muslim-Christian Understanding at Georgetown University and a longstanding apologist for the Muslim Brotherhood. The pair have worked together at the Gallup Center, and co-authored the book Who Speaks for Islam? What A Billion Muslims Really Think in 2007, which was subsequently turned into a film. Read the State Department website's coverage of the film premiere here.
Mogahed has been a tenacious defender of groups like the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) and the Islamic Society of North America (ISNA), both of which are tied to the Muslim Brotherhood. During a September 2008 appearance at the Religion Newswriters Association Annual Conference in Washington, D.C., she was asked about links between the two organizations and Islamic radicals. Mogahed replied that it would be unfair to have those groups "disenfranchised" because of "misinformation." Without offering evidence, she claimed "there is a concerted effort to silence, you know, institution building among Muslims. And the way to do it is [to] malign these groups. And it's kind of a witch hunt."
In CAIR's case, that "witch hunt" is rooted in the halls of the same government Mogahed now advises. It is the FBI's judgment, based upon evidence admitted in court in a Hamas-financing trial, that CAIR is a Hamas front and not "an appropriate liaison partner." Those Hamas connections appear to be the focus of an ongoing grand jury investigation into CAIR.
ISNA, like CAIR, was an unindicted co-conspirator in a terrorism-financing trial. Exhibits from the Holy Land Foundation for Relief and Development (HLF) trial showed that the North American Islamic Trust, an ISNA subsidiary, paid $30,000 to senior Hamas official Mousa Abu Marzouk and his wife, along with another $30,000 to the Islamic University of Gaza, a school long known to be controlled by Hamas. Five former HLF officials were found guilty of illegally routing more than $12 million to Hamas.
When the White House announced Mogahed's appointment in April, her selection was warmly welcomed by CAIR Executive Director Nihad Awad:
"Congratulations to Ms. Mogahed on this well-deserved appointment. Her knowledge and expertise will be an asset to this important council. The American Muslim community can feel confident that she will be a balanced and valuable resource on the vital issues the council must address."
Outreach to Islamists from White House
Since joining the White House council, Mogahed has worked quietly to ensure that CAIR and ISNA are active participants in its work. And she has reached out to radical Muslim groups like the Islamic Circle of North America (ICNA), the Muslim American Society (MAS) and the Muslim Public Affairs Council (MPAC) as well.
Viewed in isolation, these efforts may seem innocuous. But that line of reasoning ignores the harm that stems from such policies, which permit radical Islamist groups to ensconce themselves as the sole representatives of the larger Muslim community -- to the exclusion of Muslims with alternative views.
Zuhdi Jasser, head of the American Islamic Forum for Democracy (AIFD), says Mogahed's collaboration with CAIR, ISNA and other like-minded groups is harmful to Muslims seeking to provide a non-radical alternative for their co-religionists.
"The damage is immeasurable," he told the Investigative Project on Terrorism. Muslims "are going to say, 'Why bother?' "The government has chosen sides in the conflict."
Last May, Mogahed addressed the 34th convention of ICNA, an organization with long history of glorifying jihadist terror and radicalism. The conference was cosponsored by MAS, an organization founded as the U.S. chapter of the Muslim Brotherhood, which has provided the ideological underpinnings for virtually all modern Islamic terrorist groups.
In early July, Mogahed worked behind the scenes before ISNA's 2009 convention to tape promotional videos for the White House faith-based initiative. She sent a letter to ISNA officials urging them to pass on "My informational letter to the Muslim American Community about the President's summer of service initiative," along with "The one pager from the White House about the initiative."
MPAC, which has a long record of engaging in hate speech and defending terrorists, posted a letter from Mogahed to Muslim "leaders" on its website urging them to participate in United We Serve by "telling the world what you've done." In September, MPAC boasted that it was invited to a Pentagon iftar (fast-breaking dinner) keynoted by Mogahed. Islamic Relief USA, a charitable organization backed by CAIR and other radical groups, boasted that Mogahed attended its community iftar along with officials from Agriculture Department, the Department of Homeland Security and U.S. Institute of Peace. Also in attendance were representatives of CAIR, ISNA, MAS and MPAC.
Muslimserve's final report contains on its second page an introductory message from Mogahed thanking CAIR, MPAC, ISNA and Islamic Relief among others for their work on the project.
Page three shows the logos of those groups, along with ICNA, the Muslim Students Association, Life for Relief & Development and the Mosque Foundation, a Bridgeview, Illinois mosque with a long history of support for radical Islamists.
Page four consists of a letter from President Obama and First Lady Michelle Obama touting the administration's efforts to encourage volunteerism.
The remaining 48 pages consist of free publicity for these organizations - articles, charts and pictures explaining various projects carried out by these and other groups under Muslimserve's auspices. In October, Awad announced that Mogahed and Imam Siraj Wahhaj would be featured speakers at CAIR's 15th annual banquet. After a brief firestorm of controversy, Mogahed withdrew from the CAIR banquet on grounds that speaking there would violate "longstanding" Gallup policy against speaking to advocacy organizations.
Rationalizing Jihad, Covering for Islamists
When it comes to Muslims and jihad, Mogahed has two major themes: that only a small percentage of Muslims are radicalized, and that any radicalism that does exist results from perceptions that the West is "hostile" to Muslims, as demonstrated by support for Israel, the war in Iraq, or a tough stance against Iran's nuclear weapons efforts.
In her July 4, 2009 speech to the ISNA convention, Mogahed cited polling data from Who Speaks for Islam? In the book, Esposito and Mogahed claimed that just 7 percent of Muslims worldwide were "politically radicalized." In her ISNA speech, Mogahed defined this 7 percent as Muslims "who said 9/11 was completely justified."
Her polling found that many of the Muslims who condemned 9/11 said their moral objection was "rooted… in their religious beliefs," she said. But none of the 7 percent who said the attacks were justified "quoted the Quran to justify that view." Mogahed said "this empirical evidence completely turns on its head the common assumptions that were driving our interventions and our policies that meant to secure our country" may have "actually made things worse rather than better."
Mogahed portrayed the supporters of suicide terror as frustrated seekers of freedom and democracy who felt culturally and militarily "threatened" by the West. She said her polling data showed that those "who sympathize with terrorism don't hate our freedom; they actually want our freedom."
What distinguishes this group from other Muslims is "their sense of threat." These supporters of terror "believe more than do the mainstream that their society, their faith and their way of life is threatened, militarily threatened and in some ways even culturally threatened by the West," she continued. "They're more likely to believe that there is a war against their faith. They are also more likely to say that moving toward greater democracy will help Muslims' progress."
"Aren't you glad that Dalia is advising the President of the United States?" effused moderator Aakif Ahmad at the conclusion of Mogahed's remarks. Ahmad informed the ISNA audience that Esposito "personally" gave a copy of the book to President Obama when he spoke in Turkey and asked him to look at it prior to his June speech in Cairo.
"So, [Obama] is well aware of the information that's in this book," Ahmad said. "And that's amazing to know where we've come in the last few years."
Semantic Games and Questionable Numbers
Mogahed denies any connection between radical Islam and terrorism. Speaking to the Religion Newswriters Association in September 2008, she said that "'Islamic terrorism' is really a contradiction in terms" to mainstream Muslims "because terrorism is not Islamic by definition." As for the countless terrorist attacks that are committed in the name of Islam, Mogahed suggested that the linkage was ridiculous: "My response to that is, you know, Cuba calls itself a democracy, but that's not what we call it."
Mogahed told the journalists that the very act of mentioning jihadist violence is "counterproductive" and a "gift" to terrorists. By even raising role of Islam, she said, we permit terrorists to be seen as "legitimate" and "as moral freedom fighters."
In a 2007 speech in Aspen, Colorado, Mogahed said terrorists seek "to exploit broadly felt legitimate grievances" to win new recruits. She also appeared to suggest that the Muslim Brotherhood might be a peaceful alternative to jihadists.
Ayman al-Zawahiri, al Qaeda's second in command, "wrote a very important book" criticizing the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt for "trying to make change through political means by being inside a corrupt system," Mogahed said.
She suggested the jihadists are trying "to give people hope in a non-diplomatic, nonpolitical way to change things" like forcing the United States out of Iraq and Saudi Arabia. "The only way that I think you can combat this is to empower people who are trying to make the same changes" by "nonviolent means and to show the world that this is possible."
Another recurring theme in Mogahed's narrative is that Muslims feel a profound sense of "humiliation." A "sense of humiliation" is "something felt very strongly among Muslims as a whole," she said in Aspen.
Perhaps her most controversial argument has been that the public in majority-Muslim nations around the world is no more likely to support terrorism than the American public. In her September 2008 speech to the Religion Newswriters Association, Mogahed claimed that polling data shows that "in every society there's a certain percentage of people that thinks targeting civilians is a great idea."
Six percent of the U.S. population, compared with 4 percent in Saudi Arabia, and 2 percent each in Iran and Lebanon and favor "targeting civilians," Mogahed said. "So, it's not sort of a Muslim anomaly, this idea of sympathizing with terrorism. In fact, Muslims are no more likely than anyone to hold this view -- in some cases, slightly less likely."
But critics say the Mogahed/Esposito data is flawed -- in particular by massively undercounting the percentage of Muslims who endorse terror.
In Who Speaks for Islam? , the pair claim that approximately 91 million people, or 7 percent of Muslims worldwide (the percentage who believe the 9/11 attacks were completely justified), can be referred to as "politically radicalized."
One huge problem, as Robert Satloff of the Washington Institute for Near East Policy observed in May 2008, is that Mogahed and Esposito appear to have arrived at the 7 percent figure by understating by almost half the percentage of those who believe 9/11 was completely justified. And the pair completely ignored the additional 23.5 percent who believe 9/11 was partially justified.
When Satloff looked at their numbers more closely, he found that the percentage justifying 9/11 was closer to 36 percent, or more than 450 million people. That's about a third of the world's Muslim population.
The Pew Global Attitudes Project surveyed Muslims in the Palestinian territories and 15 countries, asking whether they viewed suicide bombings as "often or sometimes justified." The numbers varied widely - from lows of 8 percent in Egypt and 9 percent in Pakistan to 70 percent in the Palestinian territories. According to the survey, an average of 23.5 percent of Muslims supported suicide bombings in 2007.
Downplaying Brutality of Sharia
Mogahed has repeatedly sought to downplay the often brutal, coercive nature of Islamic law, or sharia. In a 2007 appearance on Link Television (an independent station based in San Francisco), Mogahed said that in virtually every country polled by Gallup, Muslims believe sharia should be "at least a source of legislation."
Interviewer Ray Suarez asked her about the fact that sharia often involves harsh punishments such as stonings, canings and cutting off hands. Mogahed replied that more Muslims associate sharia with "a more just society," "protection of human rights" and "rule of law" than with harsh punishments.
Muslims "primarily" believe sharia is "law that is going to make society more just, and that cannot be co-opted or thrown out at the whim of a despotic leader," she said.
During an October 2009 television interview in Great Britain, Mogahed joined a representative of Hizb ut-Tahrir (HT) in touting the purported benefits of sharia to women. HT is an extreme fundamentalist movement that seeks to establish a global Islamic state and expresses support for terrorism.
The program host noted that "the media" raises "issues of oppression, injustice" and "second-class citizenship" regarding sharia. "Why then do you feel that so many women in your survey specifically support sharia as the source of legislation for their countries in the Muslim world?" she asked Mogahed.
Mogahed replied that many Muslim women "associate…gender justice or justice for women with sharia compliance" When the host asked why sharia barred women from becoming heads of state, Nawaz defended the ban by belittling the record of Pakistani President Benazir Bhutto, who was murdered by jihadists. Mogahed failed to rebut this comment.
Mogahed later said she would not have agreed to the interview if she had been aware of Hizb ut-Tahrir's role in the program. She suggested that another member of Hizb ut-Tahrir had "misled us" to score propaganda points.
"I don't regret anything I said" on the broadcast, Mogahed stated. "My regret is that I went on the show."
Some reform-minded Muslims are troubled by Mogahed's perceived influence with President Obama. Yemeni feminist Elham Mane'a objected to the fact that in his June 5 Cairo speech, Obama stated that the United States has litigated cases "to protect the right of women and girls to wear the hijab and punish those who would deny it."
Attributing Obama's statement to Mogahed's influence, Mane'a contended that the wearing of the hijab outside of a Muslim country is a sign of coercion rather than free expression.
Mogahed has not responded to Mane'a's concerns. But judging from her dismissive reaction to criticisms expressed by Aayan Hirsi Ali, Mogahed does not appear terribly sympathetic to women who are oppressed by Islamists.
Ali, a native of Somalia, obtained political asylum in the Netherlands and was elected to Parliament. She renounced Islam and later wrote the screenplay for Dutch filmmaker Theo Van Gogh's film "Submission." After Van Gogh was murdered in 2004, Ali received death threats and went into hiding. She later migrated to the United States.
In her 2008 speech to the Religion Newswriters Association, Mogahed referred to Ali as "everyone's favorite pissed-off victim" and suggested she was part of a "vocal fringe" who believe that "adopting Western values will help their progress."
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Dis-information, I thought, was a technique used to confuse your adversary. In this administration it seems to be a consequence of our own confusion.
Is Israel left to 'bell the cat.'(See 1 below.)
---
Is Israel willing to pull Obama's chestnuts out of the fire to avoid another war and if so can Obama be trusted? How far will/should Netanyahu go to buy the semblance of peace with Obama?
If Obama continues to demand the impossible from Netanyahu then the next war will be hard to avoid because the rift between Israel and America will create a vacuum which Iran will gladly fill.
And, if Obama's knees continue to weaken over Iran, Obama will have accomplished the impossible - he will make Jimmy Carter look like Patton. (See 2 and 2a below.)
---
Ron Lauder was a college classmate of mine. He continues spraying Obama with unpleasant words rather than with his mother's sweet smelling perfume. (See 3 below.)
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The behind the scene person shaping public opinion for Obama with respect to the image of Muslims.
Years ago I attended a counter terrorist meeting. Ellen Cannon PHD was the speaker. Ellen explained how radical American Muslims would eventually bore their way into our society using the freedoms granted American citizens. She spoke about how they would eventually put up candidates running for school board positions, how their various charitable organizations would funnel money to radical Islamists.
What Ellen failed to speak about is how an American president would be their conduit and/or carrier pigeon. But that was then and that was over 10 years ago.
Ironically Ellen teaches, consults and lives in Chicago.(See 4 below.)
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Dick
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1)US gives up military option, non-UN sanctions against Iran
US deputy defense secretary Michele Flournoy said Wednesday, April 21: "The US has ruled out a military strike against Iran's nuclear program any time soon." This is the first time a senior administration official has publicly admitted that America has dropped its military option against Iran. Instead, said Flournoy, the US is hoping that "negotiations and United Nations sanctions will prevent the Middle East nation from developing nuclear weapons."
Addressing a news conference in Singapore, she said clearly: "Military force is an option of last resort, it's off the table in the near term."
A few hours later, the Pentagon spokesman denied that a military strike against Iran was off the table, indicating confusion and polarization at the top of the Obama administration on its Iran policy.
Military sources report Flournoy's statement contradicts every public assertion by president Barack Obama, defense secretary Robert Gates and the chairman of the joint Chiefs of staff Adm. Mike Mullen, all of whom have insisted that all options are on the table if Iran fails to curb its current nuclear activities. Deputy Secretary Flournoy is regarded as a senior, serious and responsible Pentagon official who is too experienced to go out on a limb with a key policy statement to reporters without the highest authority.
The policy reversal amounts to a beckoning finger at America's open door for Iran to return to the negotiating table.
Monday and Tuesday, April 19-20, Iran's foreign minister Manouchehr Mottaki announced his government is willing to go back to talks with the United States and other powers on a deal for its enriched uranium. Turkey has offered its services as broker between Washington and Tehran.
But if anything, Iran's position on its nuclear program has hardened since the first round of negotiations ended in nothing, and the next round is likely to waste more precious months and end the same way. Tehran's only object in seeking to discuss an agreed outcome for the nuclear controversy is to buy time and push away Washington's drive for tough sanctions. This the Iranians have now achieved.
Fourney's statement that the United States is counting on UN sanctions to deter Iran likewise plays into Tehran's hands, because it removes the second bludgeon hanging over Iran's heads, that of US penalties outside the world body. This is the only remaining option since most of the informed sources quoted by US media in the past week view the administration's hopes of Russia and China coming around to tough UN sanctions as non-starters.
This wholesale US retreat on Iran leaves Israel as the only country still holding to a military option for putting the brakes on Iran's progress toward a nuclear bomb.
However, Wednesday, the Wall Street Journal reported that Israel's political and military leaders are divided on the wisdom of executing this option and attacking Iran without US support.
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------2)Israel, U.S. secretly working to bridge gaps in peace process
By Barak Ravid
Israel and the United States have conducted behind-the-scenes negotiations in recent days in an effort to find a formula that would bridge their differences over peace negotiations with the Palestinian Authority and America's demand that Israel halt construction in East Jerusalem for at least four months.
According to a senior Obama administration official, the top Middle East policy specialist at the White House, Dan Shapiro, arrived in Israel yesterday on a secret visit. Shapiro's delegation also included David Hale, who serves as deputy to U.S. Middle East envoy George Mitchell and is permanently based in Israel.
Shapiro and Hale held lengthy talks yesterday at Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's office in Jerusalem with the prime minister's envoy, Yitzhak Molcho, and Netanyahu adviser Ron Dermer. The talks will continue today.
Neither the White House nor the Prime Minister's Office have officially announced the talks or even Shapiro's arrival in Israel. Officially, total silence is being maintained, and the Prime Minister's Office therefore refused to comment yesterday.
But a senior Israeli official said talks with American officials have been conducted throughout the past week - by phone, via the Israeli embassy in Washington and with the White House officials who arrived in Israel yesterday. The Israeli source said Israel would not provide an official response to the American demands in the form of a position paper or even a verbal response, but the parties would try to reach an understanding on a joint approach for furthering the peace process.
This will be a lengthy process, the official added, and there will be no single "event" at which Israel will present its response.
Currently, the Israeli official said, Netanyahu's position is that Israel will not accede to Washington's demand that it suspend construction in Jewish neighborhoods of East Jerusalem. However, diplomatic sources predicted that Netanyahu would agree to promise to avoid provocative steps such as constructing houses for Jews in Arab neighborhoods in the eastern part of the city.
The dialogue between Israel and the Obama administration is to continue next week, when Defense Minister Ehud Barak visits Washington. Barak, who will leave for the U.S. on Sunday, is slated to deliver a speech at a conference sponsored by the American Jewish Committee, at which U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton will also speak.
He will also hold meetings with U.S. National Security Adviser Gen. James Jones, Clinton and other senior officials. The talks will deal with the peace process and the effort to bridge the disagreements between the U.S. and Israel, as well as the Iranian nuclear issue and weapons smuggling from Syria to Lebanon.
When Netanyahu visited Washington several weeks ago, U.S. President Barack Obama gave him a list of demands during their White House meeting. One of the demands was a construction freeze in East Jerusalem. Obama also demanded that Netanyahu make other confidence-building gestures to the Palestinians, such as allowing the opening of PA institutions in the eastern part of the city, transferring additional West Bank territory to Palestinian security control and agreeing to discuss all the core issues of the conflict during proximity talks with the PA, instead of insisting that these issues only be discussed in direct talks.
2a)Obama must stop demanding the impossible from Israel
By Ari Shavit
Will war break out in the summer? In Israel, people still want to believe that the powers stabilizing the Middle East are stronger than the powers destabilizing it. They believe in the ostensible deterrence achieved in the north and south during the Second Lebanon War and Operation Cast Lead. However, Jordan's King Abdullah is not the only one warning about war in the summer. Other international figures who know the region well fear a sudden military escalation. We can't know when the next war will break out, they say. We also can't know where, but the Middle East has become a powder keg. Between the summers of 2010 and 2011, that keg can catch fire.
The main war scenario is that of a conflict with Iran. If next year the United States or Israel uses force against Iran, Iran will strike back. The Iranian attack will be both direct and indirect. The indirect strike will be by Hezbollah. When Israel responds, Syria might not stand idly by. War between Israel, Iran, Syria and Hezbollah will not resemble any war we have known in the past. Hundreds of missiles will land on Tel Aviv. Thousands of people will be killed. Hundreds of missiles will hit air force bases and Israel Defense Forces command centers. Hundreds of soldiers will be killed. The crushing Israeli counterstrike will demolish Beirut and Damascus. Israel will win, but the victory will be painful and costly.
The second war scenario is that of a reconciliation with Iran. If next year U.S. President Barack Obama acts toward Iran the way George W. Bush acted toward North Korea, Iran will go nuclear. If Obama prevents Israel from acting against Iran and does not act itself, Iran will become a leading power in the Middle East. The outcome will be a loss of respect in the Sunni world for the United States and a loss of inhibitions in the Shi'ite and radical world vis-a-vis Israel. A serious conflict could then break out between Israel and Hamas, Israel and Hezbollah and perhaps even Israel and Syria. A violent deterioration could also occur between Israel and other neighbors.
A loss of U.S. strategic hegemony would mean that opponents of the West will shake up the Middle East. A loss of Israel's strategic monopoly would result in attacks on it by old and new enemies. The age of relative quiet that has typified Israeli-Arab relations for the past 35 years will be over forever.
The conclusion is clear: The essential task now in the Middle East is the prevention of war. That's not the same as pursuing peace. Sometimes it's precisely the attempt to achieve an unattainable peace that ignites a war. In the current sensitive situation, there must be no illusions and no mistakes. Political correctness must not be allowed to cause a historic disaster. And when the glasses of political correctness are taken off, a clear picture emerges. To prevent war in the Middle East, the United States and Israel must show strength and generosity, deterrence and moderation. Together they must promote a cautious and gradual diplomatic process that will weaken the region's extremists, strengthen its moderates and curb Iran. They must maintain the democratic alliance that has stabilized western Asia for two generations.
The main responsibility now rests with the United States. The Netanyahu government has made many mistakes over the past year, but so has the Obama administration. The latter has wasted 15 precious months in dialogue with Iran without imposing any sanctions and maintaining the illusion of an immediate Israeli-Palestinian peace. The open, unilateral pressure Washington has exerted on Jerusalem has both distanced peace and brought war closer. Therefore, if the Obama administration does not want the next war to be named after it, it must urgently change its policies. It must demand the possible from Israel, not the imaginary. It must demand what is essential from Iran. It must show determined and sober leadership that will prevent war now and lead to peace tomorrow.
The volcano that erupted last week in Iceland will be nothing compared to the volcano that could erupt in the near future in the Middle East. But the volcano here is a human one. People are stoking it and people can also cool it down. The lives of hundreds of millions now depend on the wisdom and careful consideration of one man: Barack Obama.
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3)Words: Round 2: Lauder vs. Obama
Netanyahu's close associate Ron Lauder again publicly criticizes American president, says US policies toward Israel are 'disproportionate'
A week after publishing an open letter in which he criticized US President Barack Obama, Ron Lauder on Wednesday continued to slam the American president and his Middle East policies.
In an interview with the German Der Spiegel, Lauder - who serves as president of the World Jewish Congress and is considered a close associate of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu - said that Washington's criticism of Israel was "disproportionate."
First Round
Lauder to Obama: Palestinians to blame.
In open letter to American president, head of WJC Ron Lauder expresses concern over US-Israel rift, says Palestinians refuse to negotiate; letter calls on Obama to quit public criticism of Jewish state.
"The Obama administration is blaming Israel for the stalling peace process, but it is in fact the Palestinians which are opposed to negotiations," he said.
When asked whether the Israeli government can also be blamed for the recent deterioration between the two countries, following its announcement of a plan to build 1,600 new housing units in east Jerusalem during US Vice President Joe Biden's visit to Israel, Lauder noted the "bad timing."
However, he said that the Israeli government has made extraordinary concessions: "It has accepted the idea of a Palestinian state, a moratorium on settlement building, and it has removed over a hundred roadblocks in the West Bank."
Lauder stressed that despite his close relationship with the prime minister, he does not act as his spokesman.
"I don't represent my friend, but Jews worldwide. I would have written the same letter if someone else were prime minister in Jerusalem. Over his attempts to engage the Muslim world, Obama has strongly neglected the relationship with Israel," he said.
During the interview, Lauder rejected claims that the conflict in the Middle East was harming American national security and said that Washington's "main concern should be Iran. The regime in Tehran is threatening Israel and the entire Western world with its plans to build a nuclear bomb. That is why Obama should end his feud with Israel."
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4)Meet the pollster who works behind the scenes with radical Islamist groups to enhance their standing in the presidential council's activities
By Steven Emerson
Few American Islamists receive the kind of glowing media coverage given to Dalia Mogahed, executive director of the Gallup Center for Muslim Studies, who is sometimes described as the "most influential person" shaping the Obama Administration's Middle East message.
Mogahed, who claims to have played an important role in the drafting of President Obama's historic Cairo speech to the Muslim world, was appointed to serve on the President's Council on Faith-based and Neighborhood Partnerships. The council released its final recommendations last month.
When European Islamist Tariq Ramadan kicked off his U.S. tour earlier this month at Cooper Union in New York City, Mogahed and two journalists joined him for a panel discussion. Her remarks emphasized polling data showing that Muslim Americans are more affluent and socially content than their European counterparts.
Muslim Americans are no more likely to support political violence than the rest of the nation, Mogahed said. The minority of Muslim Americans who do support attacks on civilians base this position on politics, not religion.
It's a message that Mogahed attempts to drive home at every opportunity.
She routinely is depicted as a scholarly analyst monitoring public opinion on subjects like anti-Muslim prejudice in the United States or global Muslim attitudes toward America. On other occasions, she is treated as a pioneering Muslim celebrity or portrayed as a victim of anti-Muslim "smears."
But the reality is much more complicated. Mogahed is not some apolitical social scientist chronicling political trends in the manner of George Gallup, founder of the parent organization for her polling center. While Gallup strived to maintain his objectivity, Mogahed has followed a very different course. As we will explain in more detail below, she works behind the scenes with radical Islamist groups to enhance their standing in the presidential council's activities.
Mogahed is a protege of John Esposito, executive director of the Prince Alwaleed Bin-Talal Center for Muslim-Christian Understanding at Georgetown University and a longstanding apologist for the Muslim Brotherhood. The pair have worked together at the Gallup Center, and co-authored the book Who Speaks for Islam? What A Billion Muslims Really Think in 2007, which was subsequently turned into a film. Read the State Department website's coverage of the film premiere here.
Mogahed has been a tenacious defender of groups like the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) and the Islamic Society of North America (ISNA), both of which are tied to the Muslim Brotherhood. During a September 2008 appearance at the Religion Newswriters Association Annual Conference in Washington, D.C., she was asked about links between the two organizations and Islamic radicals. Mogahed replied that it would be unfair to have those groups "disenfranchised" because of "misinformation." Without offering evidence, she claimed "there is a concerted effort to silence, you know, institution building among Muslims. And the way to do it is [to] malign these groups. And it's kind of a witch hunt."
In CAIR's case, that "witch hunt" is rooted in the halls of the same government Mogahed now advises. It is the FBI's judgment, based upon evidence admitted in court in a Hamas-financing trial, that CAIR is a Hamas front and not "an appropriate liaison partner." Those Hamas connections appear to be the focus of an ongoing grand jury investigation into CAIR.
ISNA, like CAIR, was an unindicted co-conspirator in a terrorism-financing trial. Exhibits from the Holy Land Foundation for Relief and Development (HLF) trial showed that the North American Islamic Trust, an ISNA subsidiary, paid $30,000 to senior Hamas official Mousa Abu Marzouk and his wife, along with another $30,000 to the Islamic University of Gaza, a school long known to be controlled by Hamas. Five former HLF officials were found guilty of illegally routing more than $12 million to Hamas.
When the White House announced Mogahed's appointment in April, her selection was warmly welcomed by CAIR Executive Director Nihad Awad:
"Congratulations to Ms. Mogahed on this well-deserved appointment. Her knowledge and expertise will be an asset to this important council. The American Muslim community can feel confident that she will be a balanced and valuable resource on the vital issues the council must address."
Outreach to Islamists from White House
Since joining the White House council, Mogahed has worked quietly to ensure that CAIR and ISNA are active participants in its work. And she has reached out to radical Muslim groups like the Islamic Circle of North America (ICNA), the Muslim American Society (MAS) and the Muslim Public Affairs Council (MPAC) as well.
Viewed in isolation, these efforts may seem innocuous. But that line of reasoning ignores the harm that stems from such policies, which permit radical Islamist groups to ensconce themselves as the sole representatives of the larger Muslim community -- to the exclusion of Muslims with alternative views.
Zuhdi Jasser, head of the American Islamic Forum for Democracy (AIFD), says Mogahed's collaboration with CAIR, ISNA and other like-minded groups is harmful to Muslims seeking to provide a non-radical alternative for their co-religionists.
"The damage is immeasurable," he told the Investigative Project on Terrorism. Muslims "are going to say, 'Why bother?' "The government has chosen sides in the conflict."
Last May, Mogahed addressed the 34th convention of ICNA, an organization with long history of glorifying jihadist terror and radicalism. The conference was cosponsored by MAS, an organization founded as the U.S. chapter of the Muslim Brotherhood, which has provided the ideological underpinnings for virtually all modern Islamic terrorist groups.
In early July, Mogahed worked behind the scenes before ISNA's 2009 convention to tape promotional videos for the White House faith-based initiative. She sent a letter to ISNA officials urging them to pass on "My informational letter to the Muslim American Community about the President's summer of service initiative," along with "The one pager from the White House about the initiative."
MPAC, which has a long record of engaging in hate speech and defending terrorists, posted a letter from Mogahed to Muslim "leaders" on its website urging them to participate in United We Serve by "telling the world what you've done." In September, MPAC boasted that it was invited to a Pentagon iftar (fast-breaking dinner) keynoted by Mogahed. Islamic Relief USA, a charitable organization backed by CAIR and other radical groups, boasted that Mogahed attended its community iftar along with officials from Agriculture Department, the Department of Homeland Security and U.S. Institute of Peace. Also in attendance were representatives of CAIR, ISNA, MAS and MPAC.
Muslimserve's final report contains on its second page an introductory message from Mogahed thanking CAIR, MPAC, ISNA and Islamic Relief among others for their work on the project.
Page three shows the logos of those groups, along with ICNA, the Muslim Students Association, Life for Relief & Development and the Mosque Foundation, a Bridgeview, Illinois mosque with a long history of support for radical Islamists.
Page four consists of a letter from President Obama and First Lady Michelle Obama touting the administration's efforts to encourage volunteerism.
The remaining 48 pages consist of free publicity for these organizations - articles, charts and pictures explaining various projects carried out by these and other groups under Muslimserve's auspices. In October, Awad announced that Mogahed and Imam Siraj Wahhaj would be featured speakers at CAIR's 15th annual banquet. After a brief firestorm of controversy, Mogahed withdrew from the CAIR banquet on grounds that speaking there would violate "longstanding" Gallup policy against speaking to advocacy organizations.
Rationalizing Jihad, Covering for Islamists
When it comes to Muslims and jihad, Mogahed has two major themes: that only a small percentage of Muslims are radicalized, and that any radicalism that does exist results from perceptions that the West is "hostile" to Muslims, as demonstrated by support for Israel, the war in Iraq, or a tough stance against Iran's nuclear weapons efforts.
In her July 4, 2009 speech to the ISNA convention, Mogahed cited polling data from Who Speaks for Islam? In the book, Esposito and Mogahed claimed that just 7 percent of Muslims worldwide were "politically radicalized." In her ISNA speech, Mogahed defined this 7 percent as Muslims "who said 9/11 was completely justified."
Her polling found that many of the Muslims who condemned 9/11 said their moral objection was "rooted… in their religious beliefs," she said. But none of the 7 percent who said the attacks were justified "quoted the Quran to justify that view." Mogahed said "this empirical evidence completely turns on its head the common assumptions that were driving our interventions and our policies that meant to secure our country" may have "actually made things worse rather than better."
Mogahed portrayed the supporters of suicide terror as frustrated seekers of freedom and democracy who felt culturally and militarily "threatened" by the West. She said her polling data showed that those "who sympathize with terrorism don't hate our freedom; they actually want our freedom."
What distinguishes this group from other Muslims is "their sense of threat." These supporters of terror "believe more than do the mainstream that their society, their faith and their way of life is threatened, militarily threatened and in some ways even culturally threatened by the West," she continued. "They're more likely to believe that there is a war against their faith. They are also more likely to say that moving toward greater democracy will help Muslims' progress."
"Aren't you glad that Dalia is advising the President of the United States?" effused moderator Aakif Ahmad at the conclusion of Mogahed's remarks. Ahmad informed the ISNA audience that Esposito "personally" gave a copy of the book to President Obama when he spoke in Turkey and asked him to look at it prior to his June speech in Cairo.
"So, [Obama] is well aware of the information that's in this book," Ahmad said. "And that's amazing to know where we've come in the last few years."
Semantic Games and Questionable Numbers
Mogahed denies any connection between radical Islam and terrorism. Speaking to the Religion Newswriters Association in September 2008, she said that "'Islamic terrorism' is really a contradiction in terms" to mainstream Muslims "because terrorism is not Islamic by definition." As for the countless terrorist attacks that are committed in the name of Islam, Mogahed suggested that the linkage was ridiculous: "My response to that is, you know, Cuba calls itself a democracy, but that's not what we call it."
Mogahed told the journalists that the very act of mentioning jihadist violence is "counterproductive" and a "gift" to terrorists. By even raising role of Islam, she said, we permit terrorists to be seen as "legitimate" and "as moral freedom fighters."
In a 2007 speech in Aspen, Colorado, Mogahed said terrorists seek "to exploit broadly felt legitimate grievances" to win new recruits. She also appeared to suggest that the Muslim Brotherhood might be a peaceful alternative to jihadists.
Ayman al-Zawahiri, al Qaeda's second in command, "wrote a very important book" criticizing the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt for "trying to make change through political means by being inside a corrupt system," Mogahed said.
She suggested the jihadists are trying "to give people hope in a non-diplomatic, nonpolitical way to change things" like forcing the United States out of Iraq and Saudi Arabia. "The only way that I think you can combat this is to empower people who are trying to make the same changes" by "nonviolent means and to show the world that this is possible."
Another recurring theme in Mogahed's narrative is that Muslims feel a profound sense of "humiliation." A "sense of humiliation" is "something felt very strongly among Muslims as a whole," she said in Aspen.
Perhaps her most controversial argument has been that the public in majority-Muslim nations around the world is no more likely to support terrorism than the American public. In her September 2008 speech to the Religion Newswriters Association, Mogahed claimed that polling data shows that "in every society there's a certain percentage of people that thinks targeting civilians is a great idea."
Six percent of the U.S. population, compared with 4 percent in Saudi Arabia, and 2 percent each in Iran and Lebanon and favor "targeting civilians," Mogahed said. "So, it's not sort of a Muslim anomaly, this idea of sympathizing with terrorism. In fact, Muslims are no more likely than anyone to hold this view -- in some cases, slightly less likely."
But critics say the Mogahed/Esposito data is flawed -- in particular by massively undercounting the percentage of Muslims who endorse terror.
In Who Speaks for Islam? , the pair claim that approximately 91 million people, or 7 percent of Muslims worldwide (the percentage who believe the 9/11 attacks were completely justified), can be referred to as "politically radicalized."
One huge problem, as Robert Satloff of the Washington Institute for Near East Policy observed in May 2008, is that Mogahed and Esposito appear to have arrived at the 7 percent figure by understating by almost half the percentage of those who believe 9/11 was completely justified. And the pair completely ignored the additional 23.5 percent who believe 9/11 was partially justified.
When Satloff looked at their numbers more closely, he found that the percentage justifying 9/11 was closer to 36 percent, or more than 450 million people. That's about a third of the world's Muslim population.
The Pew Global Attitudes Project surveyed Muslims in the Palestinian territories and 15 countries, asking whether they viewed suicide bombings as "often or sometimes justified." The numbers varied widely - from lows of 8 percent in Egypt and 9 percent in Pakistan to 70 percent in the Palestinian territories. According to the survey, an average of 23.5 percent of Muslims supported suicide bombings in 2007.
Downplaying Brutality of Sharia
Mogahed has repeatedly sought to downplay the often brutal, coercive nature of Islamic law, or sharia. In a 2007 appearance on Link Television (an independent station based in San Francisco), Mogahed said that in virtually every country polled by Gallup, Muslims believe sharia should be "at least a source of legislation."
Interviewer Ray Suarez asked her about the fact that sharia often involves harsh punishments such as stonings, canings and cutting off hands. Mogahed replied that more Muslims associate sharia with "a more just society," "protection of human rights" and "rule of law" than with harsh punishments.
Muslims "primarily" believe sharia is "law that is going to make society more just, and that cannot be co-opted or thrown out at the whim of a despotic leader," she said.
During an October 2009 television interview in Great Britain, Mogahed joined a representative of Hizb ut-Tahrir (HT) in touting the purported benefits of sharia to women. HT is an extreme fundamentalist movement that seeks to establish a global Islamic state and expresses support for terrorism.
The program host noted that "the media" raises "issues of oppression, injustice" and "second-class citizenship" regarding sharia. "Why then do you feel that so many women in your survey specifically support sharia as the source of legislation for their countries in the Muslim world?" she asked Mogahed.
Mogahed replied that many Muslim women "associate…gender justice or justice for women with sharia compliance" When the host asked why sharia barred women from becoming heads of state, Nawaz defended the ban by belittling the record of Pakistani President Benazir Bhutto, who was murdered by jihadists. Mogahed failed to rebut this comment.
Mogahed later said she would not have agreed to the interview if she had been aware of Hizb ut-Tahrir's role in the program. She suggested that another member of Hizb ut-Tahrir had "misled us" to score propaganda points.
"I don't regret anything I said" on the broadcast, Mogahed stated. "My regret is that I went on the show."
Some reform-minded Muslims are troubled by Mogahed's perceived influence with President Obama. Yemeni feminist Elham Mane'a objected to the fact that in his June 5 Cairo speech, Obama stated that the United States has litigated cases "to protect the right of women and girls to wear the hijab and punish those who would deny it."
Attributing Obama's statement to Mogahed's influence, Mane'a contended that the wearing of the hijab outside of a Muslim country is a sign of coercion rather than free expression.
Mogahed has not responded to Mane'a's concerns. But judging from her dismissive reaction to criticisms expressed by Aayan Hirsi Ali, Mogahed does not appear terribly sympathetic to women who are oppressed by Islamists.
Ali, a native of Somalia, obtained political asylum in the Netherlands and was elected to Parliament. She renounced Islam and later wrote the screenplay for Dutch filmmaker Theo Van Gogh's film "Submission." After Van Gogh was murdered in 2004, Ali received death threats and went into hiding. She later migrated to the United States.
In her 2008 speech to the Religion Newswriters Association, Mogahed referred to Ali as "everyone's favorite pissed-off victim" and suggested she was part of a "vocal fringe" who believe that "adopting Western values will help their progress."
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Tuesday, April 20, 2010
Sweet Tammys Debut' & Build and They Will Qom!
Sweet Tammy's, Pittsburgh's eclectic and premier bakery, makes its debut today in three of Giant Eagles' signature grocery stores. Beginning with 7 SKU's - 5 various challah and two of their fabulous cookies, the plan is to place their products, over the ensuing months, into 12 stores, one of which will be out of state.
Sweet Tammy's is building a national brand and items can be mail ordered by going to Sweet-Tammys.Com
When you consider the quality of their ingredients, taste and cost 'ST' cannot be beat.
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Now this is what I call clever advertising. (See image below.)
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And I thought it was Goldman Sachs' fault.
Build and they will QOM! But then they will also destroy everything they build including your own society. (See 1 below.)
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This nurse would like our president to grow up but that might be asking more than is humanly possible. (See 2 below.)
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As I wrote yesterday. We lost the battle without having to fire a shot. (See 3 below.)
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Defining Liberalism. (See 4 below.)
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To hear 'Obamaites' tell it, it is Israel not Iran that is the greatest threat to world peace.
Obama seems to have a stranger 'lap dog ally' in Howard Berman who is gumming up the works and being paid back with campaign appearances by Emanuel.
I have often said Jews, Liberal ones, make the Jew's best enemies. FromKissinger to Berman. (See 5 below.)
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Alas, there never was a table! All Obama puffery!
Like I wrote - Mother Hubbard diplomacy - the cupboard was always bare!
But Ignatius believes Obama is artfully laying a trap. Maybe our president should work for ORKIN!(See 6 and 6a below.)
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Is Israel the only nation in the world not entitled to self-preservation and free to take actions in its own self-interest? Ayalon does not think so nor do I.
But Indyk warns, Israel must go it alone if it's self-interests do not mesh with America's. Of course, before Obama, America and Israel's interests were closely aligned. (See 7 below.)
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Harvey fears the recent SEC attack on Goldman Sachs is for the 'Pitts.' (See 8 below.)
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We are trying to warm up to Syria and the question remains will Assad come in out of the cold?
From my vantage point, we have no leverage over Syria as long as we remain soft on Iran.
Against tyrannical regimes you cannot play soft-ball.(See 9 below.)
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Is South Korea's policy towards N Korea a useful diplomatic guide on how to deal with rogue states?
I once was on the Woodrow Wilson Center for International Scholars' Board. Quite an impressive organization but I found there was little I could do to help their cause so I voluntarily resigned. I was grateful for the opportuity and met some fine and interesting people . (See 9a below.)
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Leaving for Europe April 28. Hope it is not another Ash Wednesday. returning on May 21 and then leaving for two grandchildren's graduations so memos will truly be infrequent. You need a rest just as much as I do.
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Dick
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1) Iranian cleric blames quakes on promiscuous women More than 25,000 people died in the Bam quake Women who wear revealing clothing and behave promiscuously are to blame for earthquakes, an Iranian cleric says. Hojjat ol-eslam Kazem Sediqi, the acting Friday prayer leader in Tehran, said women should stick to strict codes of modesty to protect themselves. "Many women who do not dress modestly lead young men astray and spread adultery in society which increases earthquakes," he explained. Tens of thousands of people have died in Iran earthquakes in the last decade.
Mr Sediqi was delivering a televised sermon at the Tehran University campus mosque last Friday on the need for a "general repentance" by Iranians when he warned of a "prevalence of degeneracy". "What can we do to avoid being buried under the rubble? There is no other solution but to take refuge in religion and to adapt our lives to Islam's moral codes," he said. 'Disappoint God' Correspondents say many young Iranians sometimes push the boundaries of how they can dress, showing hair under their headscarves or wearing tight-fitting clothes.
Mr Sediqi also described the violence following last year's disputed presidential election - the result of which prompted thousands of people to hold mass protests - as a "political earthquake". "Now if a natural earthquake hits Tehran, no one will be able to confront such a calamity but God's power, only God's power. So lets not disappoint God." More than 25,000 people died when a powerful earthquake hit the ancient city of Bam in 2003. Seismologists have warned that the capital, Tehran, is situated on a large number of tectonic fault lines and could be hit by a devastating earthquake soon. President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has said many of Tehran's 12 million inhabitants should relocate.
There are plans to build a purpose built new capital near Qom.
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2)The President Who Won't Grow Up
By Carol Peracchio
Everything I need to know about Barack Obama I learned as a Cub Scout den leader.
Last week I watched an American president and a Russian leader sign a START treaty. I almost checked the calendar, wondering if I'd been transported back to 1980. In news stories of the summit I found a link to an article Barack Obama had written in 1983 while at Columbia University titled "Breaking the War Mentality." Back then, Obama was firmly in the nuclear freeze camp. It's true that many of us held views as college students that seem quaint and naïve after two or three decades. But compare the (nearly incomprehensible) writing of the 22-year-old Obama to the news reports last week. Incredibly, Obama's worldview has not changed. The Soviet Union is kaput, he is the leader of the free world, and he's still thinking the same way. He's the president who won't grow up.
Years ago, R. Emmett Tyrell characterized Bill Clinton as the "Boy President." In Barack Obama, I believe we are seeing the return of the little boy as president. As a former Cub Scout den leader, I spent a lot of time around boys. It struck me that the president exhibits classic little boy behavior. Here are a few examples:
Boys are bored by day-to-day work. Almost immediately after his inauguration, Obama started complaining. At a photo op at a school in February, 2009 he said, "We were just tired of being in the White House." The First Couple constantly leave the White House, putting the "frequent" into frequent flier.
Anyone who has been a Scout leader, coach, or teacher knows how quickly boys get bored. I used to plan extra activities, just in case the Cubs got fidgety. But an amazing thing happens as boys grow up: They are able to stay put for an hour. They stop whining, "This is boring!" and put in the necessary work to earn a merit badge or progress to the next rank. President Obama, however, reminds me of the Scout who would goof off and refuse to work during the meetings but return the next week with all the requirements for the merit badge signed off by his parents. Everyone, even his fellow Scouts, knew he didn't do the work. Which brings us to:
Boys don't respect things they haven't earned. Every parent I know has a story of a child given an expensive toy who treats it carelessly. But the toy that he has saved his allowance for months to purchase is treated with respect and reverence.
Barack Obama doesn't respect the presidency because he didn't earn it. He had a wafer-thin résumé, no paper trail, and a suspect autobiography. It took massive lifting from the media, Hollywood, and his PR team to put him over the top. He is like the college student whose mom is writing his papers. He doesn't value the education he's receiving because he isn't earning it, and he certainly isn't paying for it. He also doesn't respect the professors who are letting him get away with it. Note how President Obama treats the media.
Boys love snack and game time. It didn't matter how much I lectured or how formal the occasion -- as soon as grace was over, my Cubs shot to the front of the buffet line like a horse heading back to the barn. The best way to get them to pay attention to me during meetings was by threatening withholding of the cupcakes.
I've been fascinated by what foodies the First Couple are. Last year, we were treated to breathless reports on the gourmet food being served at the White House and the hot restaurants the Obamas were jetting off to. Even pizza became a "big f-ing deal" (as the Vice President would say). Perhaps the Republicans could coax Obama into listening to them by threatening to withhold the Wagyu beef.
As far as games are concerned, boys are always ready to play. Red Light Green Light, marbles, even paper football across the dining room table brought joy to den meetings. The president also loves game time, whether he's playing or watching. When an unexpected day opened up last weekend, he hit the links. I'll never forget an interview I saw when Obama was President-Elect. He was answering questions in that serious, dull manner, when the interviewer asked him about college sports. The change in Obama's demeanor was startling. He sat up straight, his voice became animated, and for the first time, he seemed interested in the conversation.
Boys have difficulty grasping the importance of tradition and protocol. We had a strict rule for our Cub Scouts: When we were in public as a den, they had to wear their uniforms. We discovered that the simple act of wearing the traditional uniform encouraged the boys to behave and to be proud of being a Scout. As the boys got older, we would rejoice to see them teach the Tiger Cubs to take their hats off during prayer, or stand and salute when the flag passed by. The boys learned these traditions were part of what made them Scouts.
It breaks my heart to see our president making a serious statement without a tie, or giving the British Prime Minister a cheap, thoughtless gift. By belittling tradition, he diminishes the magnificence of the office of which he's been given temporary stewardship. This past weekend, the president was unable to attend the funeral of the Polish president. Instead of visiting the Polish embassy to sign the condolence book, or even staying quietly out of sight, President Obama decided to play golf.
Boys are always in a hurry. Watch any boy at a computer. It doesn't matter how fast the connection speed is, he'll soon be tapping his foot and sighing in frustration as he waits for a page to load. By the time they start crawling, boys are hardwired to hurry up.
A President who hasn't grown up says "We don't have a moment to spare" concerning his nearly trillion-dollar stimulus bill. He tells a pro-health care reform rally:
My question to them is, 'When's the right time? If not now, when? If not us, who? Is it a year from now or two years from now or five years from now or ten years from now?' I think it's right now ...
Hurry up! Do it now! There's no time -- to read, to discuss, to compromise, to think. Cub Scouts have den leaders to slow them down, to teach them about tradition, to reinforce the rewards of work. But there are no den leaders surrounding our president. That could change in November, however. If Republicans win the Congress, Representative Boehner and Senator McConnell will be leaders. Hopefully they can encourage our Cub Scout president that it's time to grow up.
Carol Peracchio is a registered nurse.
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------3)Soft Power and No Plan for Iran
By G. Murphy Donovan
Anyone who remembers the Vietnam War might be having hot flashes of déjà vu today. We are again engaged in a grand campaign to "win the hearts and minds" of an implacable foe in a place where we do not understand the language, the religion, the culture, or the opportunity costs. The macro-strategy is "nation building," a policy that explicitly admits, unlike Vietnam, that there are no "kinetic," or military, solutions to the Afghan insurgency.
So strategy begins with an oxymoron: 100,000 troops deployed to secure, police, and train -- not to kill and break things. The assumptions here are twofold: that Afghan troops or cops will serve for reasons other than pay, and that NATO troops are best used as secular missionaries -- teachers and social workers first, warriors only as necessary. Put aside for a moment the practical difficulties of such tactics. The purpose of this nation-building is to convince a semiliterate peasantry coming off years of theocracy that a corrupt central government in Kabul, and a bevy of naïve NATO philanthropists, has the best interests of the locals at heart.
It gets worse.
Flawed premises are a stone's throw from false assumptions. Spokesmen from Kabul, through Brussels, and on to Washington argue that a little (or a lot, depending on who is counting) of nation-building might drive a wedge between the "people" and the Taliban/al-Qaeda axis -- an axis underwritten by powerful shadow sponsors with deep pockets. Saudi Arabia, the Emirates, and Pakistan are just some of the players behind the scrim. These are states that NATO is unable or unwilling to confront for their support for Islamist incitement, insurgency, and terrorism in the Mid-East, South Asia, and elsewhere.
Nation-builders earnestly argue that the Taliban and al-Qaeda are "foreign" radicals not native to Afghanistan; fair enough, yet it is still only a half-truth. The Taliban, literally religious "students," are mostly native to Pastunistan, a tribal area of six million souls that includes parts of Afghanistan and Pakistan. Arab sponsors are indeed foreigners, but compared to whom? Surely Pashtun fellaheen have more in common with native mullahs and Arabian imams than they do with Americans and Europeans. NATO and the elites in Kabul are playing on the slippery slope, and the radical coalition of Islamists is the home team with the high ground.
Reasons for not confronting Arab and Persian sponsor states are clear enough: fears about energy, debt, and nuclear proliferation. Western politicians are reluctant to put their pecuniary or kilowatt excesses in play. Arabia owns many of the mortgages on Western furnaces and sovereign debts; Sunni Pakistan, another erstwhile "ally," remains a safe haven for serial nuclear proliferation and serial terror. Recall the recent Mumbai massacre.
Nonetheless, wishful thinkers on both sides of the allied political spectrum insist that they know the minds of illiterate tribesmen in Afghanistan, most of whom live under the Taliban thumb. The reliability of opinion polls in places where we can't drive a Hummer, much less take a political pulse, is more than a little suspect. However, there are many other polls in the Ummah (community of Muslim nations) that put the lie to the myth of moderation among Muslims.
Recent opinion surveys taken by the Pew Global Attitudes Project in the Arab/Muslim world indicate that terror groups and their tactics (jihad) have enjoyed significant support in many countries for years. These figures would surely be higher still if countries like Saudi Arabia, the Sudan, Somalia, Ethiopia, Yemen, Libya, and Iran were included in the polling. Anti-Jewish (not anti-Israeli) sentiment consistently comes in at 90-plus percent in the Arab world. Selective as they are, the Pew surveys clearly show that support for Islamism is hardly a "fringe" phenomenon in the Muslim world.
Beliefs of Muslims in general, and Arabs and Persians in particular, are guideposts to a larger question of opportunity costs, questions that four successive American administrations have been unwilling to confront. If the "war choice" in Iraq was a diversion from the "war of necessity" in Afghanistan, how is the war in Afghanistan not a distraction from the sufficient threat from Iran? The Tehran menace is not simple nuclear proliferation; the entire Levant is slipping its strategic moorings under the fog of a banal debate about micro tactics, like "soft power," in South Asia.
Exhibit one is Turkey, a NATO member state. Ankara is distancing itself from Israel and mending fences with Arab and Persian neighbors. Visa restrictions have been lifted among Turkey, Syria, and Iran. More ominous is the recent purge and persecution of military Kamalists (secular Turks) by the ruling religious party of Prime Minister Tayyip Erdogan.
Exhibit two would be Iraq, where the Shiite majority, using democratic elections and Persian financing, could become the permanent majority and make Iraq the second Shia state, forging another link in a theocratic Islamist crescent.
Exhibit three would be the unholy trinity on the flanks of Israel itself: Hezb'allah (in Lebanon) to the north, Hamas (in Gaza) to the south, and Fatah (on the West Bank) to the east. All three terror groups are now supported by Persian and Arab donors. Shiite and Sunni activists make common cause when it comes to the elimination of Israel.
Exhibit four would be the Persian nuclear program, where every day that passes lowers the threshold for a strategic war that would make Iraq and Afghanistan irrelevant overnight. Persians have taken the point and picked up the gauntlet of Muslim militancy after fifty years of Arab incompetence.
Picture now yet another war where Israel and Iran are involved in an aerial exchange, while Israeli borders are besieged by Islamist irregulars on three sides. NATO forces could not be easily redeployed without tedious international dithering, assuming the West supports Israel at all. Geography, space, and time are not IDF allies. The risk of another Holocaust is the most obvious opportunity cost of the Iraq and Afghanistan sideshows.
The renaissance of theocratic militancy within Islam worldwide is a rapidly escalating peril to believers and infidels alike. The subway bombings in Moscow on 29 March again underline the global scope of the problem. The nexus of the threat is political, yet the varied instruments are lethal. Religion is the burkha for an ideology that seeks to use and then curtail democratic processes, eliminate secularism, and ultimately replace democracies with a kind of utopian monoculture. Surely such totalitarian schemes must fail; the damage they do in the interim is the danger.
The most immediate existential threat comes from Iran. A recent Department of Defense memo addressed to the National Security Council expresses alarm that the Obama administration has no contingency plan should sanctions against Tehran fail. Secretary of Defense Robert Gates claims that the "the United Sates does not have an effective long-range policy for dealing with Iran's steady progress toward nuclear capability." According to the 17 April NY Times report, unnamed White House officials have dismissed the "wake up call" from DOD.
National security analysts have been looking at the evolution of "modern" Islamic irredentism for fifty years now. As the recent correspondence between DOD and the NSC suggests, experts remain reluctant to clarify the threat or prioritize the targets therein. Riflemen refer to such navel-gazers as "poges," military slang for useful idiots -- unwitting apologists who campaign vigorously for flaccid or ambiguous policies that put deployed allied soldiers, partners like Israel, and true democracy in harm's way.
The author is a Vietnam veteran and former intelligence officer. Blogs at Anacostia Angst and Jenkins Hill.
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4)Leaving Liberalism
By Chuck Rogér
With the classroom lights down low, our teacher Julie asked, "Feel that?"
I looked at my empty hands and, echoing the class, I responded, "Oh...yeah."
Julie whispered, "Move your hands closer together. Feels like you're squishing a ball."
Yep, an invisible purple ball. Assuming the I-know-this-to-be-true look common to enlightened teachers in enlightened schools, Julie informed us that we were sensing the "body's natural energy." We partnered with other students to feel their energy.
A very pleasant female student took an enthusiastic approach, and I felt energized. A guy sporting ear, nose, and lip rings headed my way, and my energy vanished.
By the end of the "Polarity Therapy" course, most students swore that they'd learned to detect people's energy with hand gestures resembling a priest giving absolution. Never did I experience anything that I couldn't explain. But people believe what people want to believe. Weak correlations prompt weak minds to preach weak theories to anyone who'll listen.
Observe.
"I believe what feels good to me," proclaimed Mr. Twenty-Something. A tiny bat darted from my physiology student's ear as he added, "The full moon's powerful gravity makes people behave weirdly." I explained that our moon's gravity is unaffected by how much we see lit by the sun. Briefly dazed, the student retreated to the protection of an air of superiority. "That's your science."
Suddenly, mini-bats filled the room. I saw students' eyes glaze and heads nod, all-knowing smiles filling self-assured faces. From basic enlightened swaggerers to lost wanderers, students and instructors in the alternative health care school where I taught for three years exhibited the most irrational thought process I'd ever encountered.
What drew me into "alternative" health care in the first place? Why did I take polarity classes? The answers -- perhaps another time. Suffice it to say that the polarity and moon gravity affairs were two of many odd encounters in the course of my journey through strangeness. I learned a great deal about liberals during my liberal period.
Imagine a worldview that licenses the student to claim to be "different" while hanging on every pronouncement by self-important gurus. The student (and the teacher) get to espouse "critical thinking" while succumbing to emotion. Neither can resist calling attention to contrived virtuousness and proclaiming, "I love new ideas. See how the echo-chamber embraces me?"
Picture yourself radiating intellectual and moral superiority. You burst with inspiration on how to run government and society -- or more accurately, how you should run society. Feel how easily you brush aside reality and seize moral high ground on issues about which you know nothing.
My insight into high ground-grabbing amoral liberals leaped when I studied eighteenth-century philosopher Immanuel Kant, who declared that "devils" can productively rule nations "so long as they possess understanding." The philosopher was right. Moral rascals make strong leaders. Kant reasoned that reality holds no relevance toward conceiving morals, which must evolve from pure thought. Only when we apply morals must we consider what's happening around us[1]. I know. Confused me too, until I nailed the liberal modus operandi: Ignore truth when spouting theory, but embrace truth that favors your agenda. Ah, the liberal "thought process."
During my liberal period, I accepted a thought process that it now pains me to admit: "I think, therefore I am...always right." I remember a teacher in the alternative health care school -- a psychologist, of course -- claiming that simply by choosing to attend the school, the men in class were "more evolved than most men." Yes, evolved. I felt proud, giddy -- which is what liberalism is about: finding a way to feel good about myself no matter what was happening around me.
Liberals vigorously guard the feel-good. And so we find that rational people who methodically weigh evidence are shouted down by virtue-flaunting ideologues. Take the global warming hoax. Pope Al, Bishop Boxer, and other Church of Global Warming officials still preach the doctrine even though their cathedrals are burning down. The grand scam marked a first: Mainstream media adopted a religion other than liberalism. The media and the Church perpetuated wacky beliefs based on bogus theories that created bogus projections derived from bogus studies. The world witnessed liberals playing in top form.
You've seen the liberal game face: anger suppressed by enlightened arrogance wrapped in confusion. Were you to try to live the liberal's hell, you'd seek relief the same way that liberals seek relief. You'd ignore reality and act as though your theories were reality. Clear thinking would serve no purpose because logically weighing data, facts, and evidence risks exposure to two nightmarish conclusions that liberals won't accept: There are bad people who do bad things, and most "victims" victimize themselves. Liberals cannot abide unpleasant realities.
My echo-chamber mates' inability to grapple with unpleasant realities startled me when I dwelled among liberals. I discovered that I wasn't supposed to let data, common sense, or a scheme's likely failure stop me from falling in love with the scheme. I was supposed to let the misplaced love make me feel good about myself.
I should expand the feel-good angle.
If during your youth you had gotten little worthwhile moral guidance from Mom and Dad but enjoyed plenty of marginally-deserved stroking, how would you behave as an adult? You'd flit from cause to cause, thriving on smiles and applause, groping for childhood's defining feeling. You'd push any scheme, speak any nonsense, and feign any emotion that might impress people with your wonderfulness -- and to hell with consequences.
Looking back, I know that I could have taken a heck of a ride had I not recovered from liberalism. Surfing the global warming scam's bow wave alone might have been worth relinquishing my respect for truth and giving up my sanity, my ability to judge right from wrong, good from bad, and success from failure. The wild time might have made up for sacrificing my integrity. I probably missed a lot of fun.
A physicist, former high tech executive, and writer, Chuck Rogér invites you to visit his website, http://www.chuckroger.com. Email Chuck at swampcactus@chuckroger.com.
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[1] Immanuel Kant, "Critique of Pure Reason," in Basics Writings of Kant edited by Allen W. Wood, The Modern Library, 2001, pp. 3-115.
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------5)Who Is Obstructing the Iran Refined Petroleum Sanctions Act?
By John Appleton
Iran is the number-one terror-sponsoring nation in the world; it has been killing Americans for years. The country is led to by mad mullahs who see nuclear weapons as a ticket to paradise. Why would one key congressman spend the last year and a half trying to derail plans to stop Iran's nuclear program? Perhaps because he is doing so at the behest of Barack Obama.
Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has messianic dreams that view nuclear Armageddon as a means to bring about the return of Shia Islam's Hidden Imam and usher in a new age. For years, the Iranian regime has boasted of its plans to destroy the little Satan (Israel) and the big Satan (America).
For the past few years, Congress has worked on bills to erect a sanctions regime designed to moderate that Iran's behavior and slow, if not stop, its nuclear program. Over the years, various sanctions have been put in place and have not yet worked. Therefore, efforts have been made in both the Senate and the House to toughen the sanctions. A key focus has been efforts to shut off the export of refined petroleum products (gasoline, heating oil) into Iran. Despite having vast crude reserves, the nation cannot refine its own crude -- leading in the past to riots.
The Senate has a version of what is called the Iran Refined Petroleum Sanctions Act; the House has its own separate, somewhat weaker version.
Before these bills are voted on separately by both Houses of Congress, they must first be voted out of the foreign affairs committees of each house. In the Senate, this would be the Foreign Relations Committee, chaired by Democratic Senator John Kerry (D-MA). In the House, it would be the Foreign Affairs Committee, chaired by Howard Berman (D-CA). Both have been accused of working with the White House to slow passage of these bills. Nevertheless, eventually and through the hard work of many advocates, both bills were voted out of the committee and then passed in both the Senate and the House.
But for the bills to become law, the bills have to be "reconciled" in a conference composed of both congressmen and senators, usually chosen by the chairmen of the committees who oversee the area involved in the legislation.
This type of reconciliation is not the controversial type of reconciliation used to pass ObamaCare, but refers to the process of melding the two separate bills into one single bill that can then be voted upon by both the House and the Senate. Then it would be passed on to the president for signing, becoming law.
But there seems to be a roadblock: Chairman Howard Berman.
John Kerry chose his conferees on March 11, 2010. Howard Berman has chosen to sit this one out -- he has not yet chosen his conferees from the House. The obduracy became so bad that steps were taken to elevate the matter to House leadership. They seem to be exasperated enough with Berman's delays to take the naming of the conferees upon themselves this week. Meanwhile, the clock is ticking and the centrifuges are spinning.
This led me to suspect that something may be amiss with Congressman Berman, who professes to be, among other things, a strong supporter of the America-Israel relationship. There are reasons to question this view. Berman seems to be more devoted to doing the bidding of Barack Obama than to defending America and our allies from a nuclear Iran.
As noted above, the progression of the bill through the House has been a slow one. Clearly, the White House did not want a bill to interfere with its outreach towards Iran. There have been reports that Howard Berman worked with the White House to "gum up the works." His reward may very well have been help with fundraising.
From Politico (December 8, 2009):
Rahm Emanuel -- who has done no fundraising events for House members, or even for the congressional committees, since he left the body to become White House chief of staff -- will headline a Los Angeles fundraiser for Rep. Howard Berman tonight in Los Angeles, according to the invitation.
The event may be, in part, a thank you to Berman -- chairman of the House Foreign Affairs Committee -- for staying so closely in step with the White House on crucial issues, notably sanctions against Iran, on which the committee moved more slowly than some of its members would have liked as the White House sought to negotiate.
This was during the heat of the ObamaCare fight, yet the White House chief of staff -- for the first time -- takes a break to raise some funds for Berman. We shouldn't be surprised. The boys from Chicago have routinely treated Democrats as dogs in need of training: They can get the stick, such as a threat that they are "keeping score" regarding who supports them in Congress, or the carrot: fundraising help. Threats and bribes are the Chicago way.
But sadly, there are more grounds to be suspicious.
Howard Berman seems to have adopted the President's line of "reasoning". Before Barack Obama became president, Howard Berman spoke in June 2008 of the need for quickly passing a very tough sanctions regime. However, after Obama became president, Howard Berman changed his views and downgraded the importance of sanctions. In October of last year, sanctions became just one of many options for dealing with Iran. Actually, they became the fourth-best option. The first option would be continued (fruitless) engagement by Barack Obama, then U.N. resolutions, then other multilateral efforts. The very last option became sanctions. Berman seems to have done an about-face, all the while saluting Barack Obama.
An aversion to sanctions -- especially those that with bite that would crimp the import of gasoline by Iran -- is an Obama policy. Months ago, the administration made clear that it did not want sanctions that would affect the Iranian people, even though such sanctions would "heighten popular anger against the regime" (as a Washington Post editorial noted).
The steady weakening of the resolve of the administration to confront Iran (deadlines ignored by the mullahs and by Barack Obama; the devolution of sanctions from being "crippling" to "biting to "smart" to actually "non-existent") is an appalling but not surprising abdication of responsibility by our commander-in-chief.
Howard Berman seems to have gone along for the ride down that slippery slope -- endangering America and our imperiled ally, Israel.
One sign that Berman's weak approach matches Obama's agenda is that J Street -- an appeasement oriented lobby that declared it will serve as the "president's blocking back" regarding his policies towards Israel -- specifically endorsed Berman's approach towards Iran. Not a good sign that his approach has teeth.
There is more.
Congressman Mike Pence (R-IN) attempted to introduce a resolution in the House that strongly supported Iranian protesters and freedom-fighters during last year's massive protests throughout Iran. The Obama White House was feckless, and its aversion to helping the Iranians even led them to chant the question in the streets of Iran whether Obama was "with us." By now, the answer to that is clear. In any case, Pence's resolution was gutted by Howard Berman, who preferred to dilute the resolution. Was this at the behest of the White House?
A further sign that Howard Berman is just following marching orders from the White House is an act that has nothing to do with Iran but is indicative that he wants to curry favor with the Oval Office. The president of Honduras, Manuel Zelaya, was legally removed from power and escorted out of that nation. Barack Obama objected, as did Hugo Chávez and a Nazi-sympathizer ally of Zelaya's inside Honduras. The Law Library of Congress ruled that his ouster was legal -- frustrating Obama. Howard Berman (and John Kerry) then both wrote letters demanding that the opinion be retracted and "corrected"
Berman even went so far as to pen an op-ed for the Los Angeles Times advocating that the legal removal be characterized as a "military coup" and that foreign aid be terminated as a way to pressure Honduras to reinstall Zelaya. Berman is known for his left-wing sympathies, but is there something more at work here -- perhaps a bit of sycophancy?
Howard Berman appears to be doing the president's bidding as chairman of the House Foreign Affairs Committee. In doing so, he is following an agenda that puts America at risk, as well as putting Israel in peril. His district in California covers part of Los Angeles, a lot of San Fernando Valley, and a bit of Hollywood. The survival of Israel just may be one of the concerns of many of his constituents.
There may be a number of constituents there who might wonder why their representative seems to be serving the interests of Barack Obama instead of looking after their concerns and goals. They might judge him now -- as history will later.
John Appleton a pen name.
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6)U.S.: Iran military strike is 'off the table'
The U.S. has ruled out a military strike against Iran's nuclear program any time soon, hoping instead negotiations and United Nations sanctions will prevent the Middle East nation from developing nuclear weapons, a top U.S. defense department official said Wednesday.
"Military force is an option of last resort," Undersecretary of Defense for Policy Michele Flournoy said during a press briefing in Singapore. "It's off the table in the near term."
The U.S. and its allies fear Tehran is using its nuclear program to build
arms. Iran denies the charges, and says its program only aims to generate
electricity.
"Right now the focus is a combination of engagement and pressure in the form of sanctions," Flournoy said. "We have not seen Iran engage productively in response."
Iran has rejected a 2009 U.N.-backed plan that offered nuclear fuel rods to Tehran in exchange for Iran's stock of lower-level enriched uranium. The swap would curb Tehran's capacity to make a nuclear bomb.
Iran has proposed variations on the deal, and Foreign Minister Manouchehr
Mottaki said Tuesday that a fuel agreement could be a chance to boost trust with the West.
Earlier this week, he said Iran wants direct talks about the deal with all the U.N. Security Council members, except one with which it would have indirect talks - a reference to the United States, which with Tehran has no relations.
The U.S. is lobbying heavily in the Security Council for sanctions against Iran over its nuclear program.
Earlier Wednesday, Iran's supreme leader denounced U.S. "nuclear threats" against the Islamic Republic, and its elite military force said it would stage war games in a waterway crucial for global oil supplies.
The Revolutionary Guards' exercises in the Gulf and the Strait of Hormuz this week take place at a time of rising tension between Iran and the West, which fears Tehran's nuclear program is aimed at developing bombs. Iran denies the charge.
Iran has also reacted angrily to what is sees as U.S. President Barack Obama's threat to attack it with nuclear arms.
Obama made clear this month that Iran and North Korea were excluded from new limits on the use of U.S. atomic weapons -something Tehran interpreted as a threat from a long-standing adversary.
"The international community should not let Obama get away with nuclear threats," Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei said on Wednesday.
"We will not allow America to renew its hellish dominance over Iran by using such threats," he told a gathering of Iranian nurses, the semi-official Fars News Agency reported. Iran was a close U.S. ally before its 1979 Islamic revolution.
Brigadier General Hossein Salami, also quoted by Fars, said three days of maneuvers would start on Thursday and would show the Guards' naval strength.
"Maintaining security in the Persian Gulf and the Strait of Hormuz, as the world's key economic and energy routes, is the main goal of the war games," he said. "This war game is not a threat for any friendly countries."
Naval, air and ground forces from the Guards would take part, Fars said. The Islamic Republic's armed forces often hold drills in an apparent bid to show their readiness to deter any military action by Israel or the United States, its arch foes.
Nicole Stracke, a researcher at the Gulf Research Center in Dubai, said that with the "current threat to Iran increasing" the Guards were showing their capability and strength.
"The Revolutionary Guard is sending a message that we are ready and able to counter the threat," Stracke said in an e-mail to Reuters. But she added the force regularly held such drills and they were unlikely to increase regional tension.
Washington is pushing for a fourth round of UN sanctions on Tehran over its refusal to halt sensitive nuclear activities as demanded by the U.N. Security Council, including moves against members of the Guards.
Israel, widely believed to have the Middle East's only atomic arsenal, has described Iran's nuclear program as a threat to its existence. Although it says it wants a diplomatic solution, Washington has also not ruled out military action.
Iran, a predominantly Shi'ite Muslim state, has said it would respond to any attack by targeting U.S. interests in the region and Israel, as well as closing the Strait of Hormuz. About 40 percent of the world's traded oil leaves the Gulf region through the strategic narrows.
Salami made no reference to this in his comments, stressing Iran's "efficient and constructive role" for Gulf security.
"Peace and friendship, security, tranquility and mutual trust are the messages of this war game for neighboring countries in the Persian Gulf region," the general added.
Sunni-led Arab countries in the Gulf are concerned about spreading Iranian influence in the region and also share Western fears about Tehran's nuclear ambitions.
Cliff Kupchan, a director of Euroasia Group, said in a note on Wednesday that he still believed that Israel was unlikely to strike Iran, but "the risk will grow as prospects for successful sanctions diminish". China and Russia, veto-wielding Security Council members, are reluctant to back tough sanctions on Iran
6a)Setting the Trap on Iran
By David Ignatius
The Obama administration's goal as it devises sanctions for Iran is to build a sticky trap -- so that the harder the Iranians try to wriggle out of the sanctions, the more tightly they will be caught in the snare.
It's a clever idea. But even if it works with mousetrap precision, it's unlikely to stop the Iranian nuclear program. That's why Defense Secretary Bob Gates and other officials are pressing to explore the "what-ifs" about Iran -- and to accelerate planning for contingencies that could arise as the confrontation deepens.
The White House didn't like The New York Times' characterization of a memo Gates wrote in January as a "wake-up call," given all the work the administration has already done on Iran. But the Times' story captured the urgency with which Gates and other officials see the problem -- and their fear that sanctions, however well constructed, may not do the trick.
Gates' memo called specifically for "prudent planning and preparation" for the showdown with Iran, according to one senior official quoting from the text. The defense secretary requested that the "principals committee," the top officers of the National Security Council, discuss the range of issues and options that might arise.
The next step in this pressure campaign is the sanctions regime being crafted by Stuart Levey, the undersecretary of the Treasury for terrorism and financial intelligence. This will have several interlocking components: The showpiece will be a new U.N. Security Council resolution to add sanctions against the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps and its affiliated companies, along with other Iranian firms involved in manufacturing, transporting and financing weapons shipments and other illicit activities. But that's just the beginning.
The administration knows the resolution will be watered down by Russia and China, but it wants the U.N. sanctions anyway -- as a platform for additional measures by the U.S. and its allies. It's these private and unilateral sanctions that will have real bite: As the Iranians try to evade them, their deception will trigger additional punitive measures.
"If you focus on bad conduct, their evasion doesn't undermine sanctions but escalates them," explains one senior official.
An example of how the sticky trap can work is the case of the state-owned Bank Sepah. The U.S. imposed sanctions in January 2007, alleging that the bank had financed development of missiles that could carry nuclear weapons. The U.N. added its own sanctions against the bank in March 2007.
The Iranians allegedly then turned to two other state-owned institutions to finance nuclear activities, Bank Melli and Bank Mellat. The U.S. hit them with sanctions, too, and pressured international banks to stop doing business with them. Banks that allegedly helped the Iranians evade controls were whacked with big fines. To settle U.S. government charges last December, the British bank Lloyds agreed to pay $217 million and Credit Suisse agreed to pay $536 million. Most global banks have decided that doing business with Tehran isn't worth the risk.
The trap also squeezed the state-owned Islamic Republic of Iran Shipping Line, which was cited in 2008 sanctions by the U.S. The company allegedly tried to escape the dragnet by renaming some of its ships. The British stripped the shipping line of its insurance; the Iranians sought coverage in Russia and then Bermuda, but they were pursued by U.S. monitors who argued that the company's deceptive conduct was evidence of its unreliability as an insurance risk.
Yet for all this aggressive pressure, Iran continues to conduct both banking and shipping -- which illustrates the difficulty of using sanctions to force a change in policy. The track record is spotty, from Cuba to Iraq.
For policymakers, the discussion is now beginning to shift to the sensitive area suggested by Gates' memo -- the space between sanctions and outright military action. What options would the United States and its allies have, short of war, to raise the cost to Iran of pursuing a nuclear-weapons program? Are there means of subverting, sabotaging or containing such a program without actually bombing Iranian facilities?
We won't be hearing a lot of public discussion about this gray area. But that's where senior officials will focus more of their energy in coming months, as they prepare for the possibility that Levey's clever trap won't work.
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7)Ayalon to US: Pressure will prevent peace
By Roni Sofer
Deputy foreign minister says 'if Palestinians had done half of what Israel has, there would be peace'
Deputy Foreign Minister Danny Ayalon said in a message to the US Wednesday, "We must ensure Israel's existence as a Jewish State. Not only will pressure not support peace, it will prevent it."
In New York Times article, former US ambassador to Israel addresses root of political crisis between Washington and Jerusalem, says Obama views Iranian nuclear program, Israeli-Palestinian conflict as two sides of same coin while Netanyahu believes construction dispute only boosts Iran
In a speech before the Israel Bonds delegation in Jerusalem Ayalon said, "We desire peace – but not at the cost of Israel's national interests."
Ayalon was responding to recent reports that the US intends to present a conclusive Middle East peace plan, to which it will hold both Israel and the Palestinians.
Former US Ambassador to Israel Martin Indyk said Tuesday that Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu must choose between the US president and his right-wing allies.
"The shift in America’s Middle East interests means that Netanyahu must make a choice: Take on the president of the United States, or take on his right wing." Indyck said in an article published by the New York Times.
"If he continues to defer to those ministers in his cabinet who oppose peacemaking, the consequences for US-Israel relations could be dire."
To this Ayalon responded, "Resolving the conflict with the Palestinians is a principal Israeli interest, and no one may moralize with us on this issue. We desire peace, and have proved it more than once. If the Palestinian leadership had done half of what Israel has done for peace, we would have achieved peace with our neighbors by now. In response to Israel concessions, we must also see Palestinian concessions."
He added, "Peace is our goal, and if the means to achieving that goal is the creation of a Palestinian state, then that is what must be done – not by an artificial schedule and enforced solution, but by building a platform of trust and confidence between the two sides. This trust should be built by direct talks rather than proximity talks, and it is a pity that the Palestinians are creating obstacles on this issue."
Ayalon also added a post-Independence Day message. "Yesterday, the State of Israel celebrated its 62nd Day of Independence. Independence, which I am sorry to say, is not obvious to much of the world," he said.
"Israel faces security, social and economic challenges, but there are global extremists who threaten not only Israel but also the entire world. Israel has the capability to defend itself, and can be proud of its achievements in its 62 years of independence."
The deputy foreign minister also called on the international community to put an end to the Iranian threat.
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------8)The SEC's Dangerous Gamble
By Harvey Pitt
The agency, already badly scarred by the financial crisis, runs the risk of blowing its credibility with the Goldman case, writes former SEC chairman Harvey Pitt.
The SEC’s recent action against Goldman Sachs gives new meaning to the expression “betting the farm.” That phrase signifies actions accompanied by huge risk, especially financial. In litigation, the expression references risks for one party to civil litigation, most frequently the defendant. It suggests a party risks losing everything if it gambles and follows a path to its logical conclusion. The expression rarely references plaintiffs, and certainly not government-plaintiffs litigating against regulated entities.
The problem with litigation is losing. But even if the SEC prevails, its reward may prove ephemeral.
But to quote Jimmy Breslin, in suing Goldman Sachs, the SEC “received immediate lacerations of the credibility.” This begs the question why, considering that this SEC litigation takes it places it hasn’t been before—
• challenging the premier firm of Goldman Sachs,
• about a synthetic derivative transaction,
• on which Goldman lost millions of dollars,
• where the parties were sophisticated and not in obvious need of SEC protection,
• after a year-and-a-half investigation,
• filed immediately after the President threatened vetoing financial reform legislation that doesn’t strongly regulate derivatives,
• and a few hours before release of the Inspector General’s Report on SEC inadequacies in attacking Alan Stanford’s Ponzi scheme,
• but apparently without giving Goldman advance notice of the filing,
• or exploring possible settlement, and
• splitting 3-2 along political lines in a major enforcement action.
More significantly, it comes when the SEC is badly in need of “unlacerated credibility.” Since January 2009, the SEC has done an admirable job of laying a solid foundation for restored credibility. But, its suit against Goldman could undo much—if not all—of that effort if the litigation doesn’t turn out satisfactorily, and even if it does, if reports about dissension and political splits are accurate.
• Tina Brown: Ghouls of Wall Street Reduced to bare essentials, the SEC alleged a garden variety securities fraud, but for the elements listed above. It claims Goldman sold synthetic securities but didn’t disclose the package was structured by an investor intending to short it, and affirmatively misrepresented who structured it. If the SEC prevails, it might reassert its position as a player in the current financial regulatory scene. But the lawsuit carries big stakes if the SEC loses—among other things, this case will influence the reputations of both Chairman Mary Schapiro, and Enforcement Division chief, Rob Khuzami.
The problem with litigation is losing. But even if the SEC prevails, its reward may prove ephemeral. After all, there aren’t any widows or orphans in the immediate vicinity of the central transaction, and even victory could be tarnished by questions about its potential motivations regarding the manner and timing of the SEC’s decision to sue. Is that worth the potential risk? The question answers itself.
The problem isn’t—as some suggest—with the substance of the suit. If the SEC’s allegations are proved, they seem to allege fraud. Nor is there a problem with the SEC pursuing a case where the alleged victims were able to fend for themselves. After all, if a broker defrauds sophisticated investors, it might also defraud unsophisticated investors. And, many sophisticated investors represent unsophisticated investors. Moreover, there’s no entitlement under the federal securities laws to defraud sophisticated investors.
One problem is that it was in the SEC’s interest to let Goldman react before filing a lawsuit. If Goldman had had a chance to settle before being sued, the SEC could have reaped everything it wanted to achieve, without the risks it now faces. Another problem is that filing litigation on a partisan split raises questions about agency motivations. Perhaps there was no way all five Commissioners could agree. But there’s no prior history of tension among them, while news reports indicate there was just a single meeting, and then a 3-2 vote.
With rules or policy decisions, some divided votes may be inevitable. But, the agency usually doesn’t split on enforcement actions, and especially not along party lines. Could more time have produced a different result? We won’t know. But, what was the rush? After a year-and-a-half of investigation, eight months after receiving Goldman’s “Wells Submission,” was there a need to file the litigation when it was filed? Why didn’t the five Commissioners take more time to try and find common ground? What was the need that compelled the filing of the action last Friday, instead of, say, this Friday, or next? These aren’t matters that will necessarily affect the ultimate outcome, but judges pay attention to news reports, and the possibility that an action was politically motivated won’t redound to the agency’s advantage, even if it isn’t something directly contested in the courtroom.
Goldman’s lawyers should have ensured they received notice before the lawsuit was actually filed. There are no assurances, under the SEC’s Wells procedures, that notice will be given before a suit is filed, although that’s the practice. But experienced counsel often seek assurances they’ll have at least one last clear chance to settle before confronting the SEC in court. If that assurance was sought and rejected, that should have signaled to Goldman it was looking at something unusual. If no assurances were sought, that was an error of judgment.
Government suits affect the target’s share price, as occurred here, and also adversely affect its reputation and potential business. In those respects, Goldman has already lost. Arthur Andersen ultimately prevailed in the Supreme Court, after losing in the lower courts. But its victory was Pyrrhic, and came long after the real stakes had been decided. Goldman’s a strong firm with an illustrious history. But if the economic collapse of 2007-2008 demonstrated anything, any firm can falter if its credibility is called into question.
In this litigation, either the SEC, or Goldman, is betting the proverbial farm, or perhaps, they both are.
Harvey Pitt, a former chairman of the SEC, is the Chief Executive Officer of Kalorama Partners, LLC.
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
9)Will Syria come in from the cold?
By KENAN MORTAN
Will the recent rapprochement between the United States and Syria mark a new era in Syria's international standing?
Syria can hope for two major changes following the restoration of full diplomatic relations with the U.S. First, it will be removed from America's informal blacklist of "Axis of Evil" countries, which will substantially improve its chances to enter the World Trade Organization. Second, Syria will probably receive the go-ahead for a pipeline to bring Iraqi oil across its territory to Turkey. Such a link to Turkey's economy — and thus possibly to the European Union — would encourage Syria to open its economy even more to foreign investment.
But all of this will undoubtedly come at a price. Syria's side of the bargain will invariably need to be an end to its support for Hezbollah in Lebanon, for which it will likely seek the return of the Golan Heights. Israel would presumably resist this outcome, and Iran — as leader of the "Shiite crescent" spreading from Lebanon to Tajikistan — would strongly, and perhaps violently, oppose such a bargain as well.
During Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's visit to Syria earlier this year, Syrian President Bashar Assad and he reiterated their unyielding cooperation in the face of "Western manipulations." But Assad is under growing pressure from the ranks of his Ba'ath Party to modernize the country and its infrastructure, which is impossible without improved ties to the West.
Syria's economy is a rust pile. With a per capita income of $2,000, it has been closed to the outside world until recently. Rationing is pervasive. But, in order to secure public support, Assad's government has allowed for greater domestic consumption, so foreign imports are rising fast. Indeed, the country has run a trade deficit since 2005, with no path back to balance in sight.
Supposedly "friendly" countries like Iran have been giving a helping hand, but almost always in the form of oil — and not even refined oil — rather than cash. The effort to liberalize foreign investment has not taken up the slack in investment from the regime's regional political partners. For example, the Foreign Investment Law of 2007, which fixed a 15-day deadline for projects to be authorized, has resulted in only $200 million in new inward investment.
This lack of investment has left the economy, particularly the oil industry, in a shambles. A member of OPEC, Syria is now a net importer of oil.
The ruling Shiite elite that surrounds Assad — and that, together with the military oligarchy, retains almost total control of the economy — appears to be interested mainly in preserving the stagnant status quo. In opposition stand Syria's Sunni traders, who are joined in demanding a change in the rules of the game by the country's various minorities, composed of two million Christians, 1.7 million Kurds and 400,000 Druse. The combined economic weight of the Christians — Nestorians, Maronites, Catholic Greeks, and Syriacs — is greater than their actual number, and the Ba'athist regime has always sought to accommodate these minorities. But it was only with the accession to power of Assad that they were given more economic and political breathing space.
Assad has good reason to do so, because the unequal distribution of wealth, combined with an official unemployment rate of 15 percent, is fueling social pressure. The $3 fare for a bus ride between Aleppo and Damascus might look cheap to someone from outside Syria, but, given that a well-trained technician may earn only $150 monthly, it is almost prohibitively expensive.
A warming of relations with the U.S. could set in play two types of dynamics: One originates with the OECD's development initiative for the Middle East and North Africa (MENA), created in 2004. For the first time, the OECD became directly involved with non-member countries in the Middle East, and in 2009 Syria was included in its development cooperation master plan.
The second positive dynamic may come from improved Turkish-Syrian economic ties. Bilateral relations started to thaw 12 years ago, when Syria expelled the leader of the violent Kurdish separatist PKK movement, Abdullah Ocalan. A Turkish-Syrian Business Council was established soon after with the hope of developing economic relations, but little impact has been felt, owing to Turkey's lingering suspicion of Syria's political alignment. The only Turkish investment was made in the textile field by the firm Akteks.
Last year, however, as Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan pushed forward on strengthening Turkey's Middle Eastern ties, visa requirements between the two countries were eased, with cross-border car traffic increasing 22 percent in five months. Regular bus lines have been opened, and, according to a high-ranking Turkish bank official, "We were hesitating about opening a branch in Syria because of the U.S. embargo, so the sending of an envoy is like a green light to us."
For Syria, the choice now is between seizing this opportunity to open its economy, or retreating back into its Ba'athist shell. The benefits of such an opening are clear. The question is whether Syria's rulers can make the political choices necessary to obtain them.
Kenan Mortan is a professor of applied economics at Istanbul Mimar Sinan University. His latest book is on Istanbul's Grand Bazaar. © Project Syndicate 2010.
9a)Engaging North Korea: The Clouded Legacy of South Korea’s Sunshine Policy
By Sung-Yoon Lee
The most prominent news out of the Korean peninsula in 2009 came from the North, where Kim Jong Il's regime continued its policy of military provocation, capped by a long-range missile test in April and a second nuclear test in May. But 2009 also marked the passing of two former South Korean leaders, Presidents Kim Dae Jung and Roh Moo Hyun--the former succumbing to natural causes in his mid-eighties, the latter to a suicide in the face of a mounting personal scandal. Both leaders had staked their respective presidencies on engaging North Korea through the Sunshine Policy initiated under Kim Dae Jung a decade earlier and continued under Roh, albeit under a different name. From our vantage point today, nearly a decade after its implementation, the Sunshine Policy looks increasingly ineffective in light of Pyongyang's unmitigated nuclear threat and continued oppression of its population.
Key points in this Outlook:
•The Sunshine Policy, an effort to engage North Korea initially implemented under South Korean president Kim Dae Jung, appears increasingly ineffective in light of North Korea's continued nuclear threat and oppression of its people.
•Despite his work for human rights in South Korea, Kim Dae Jung chose not to address grievous human rights violations in the North in any meaningful way.
•In light of Kim Dae Jung's failure to fight for basic human rights for North Koreans, future generations of Koreans are likely to see Kim Dae Jung and his Sunshine Policy in an increasingly negative light.
Designed to further peaceful cooperation and short-term reconciliation with North Korea in hopes of achieving eventual reunification of the Korean peninsula, the Sunshine Policy swung into full force following a dramatic inter-Korean summit in June 2000 between Kim Jong Il and Kim Dae Jung. In the decade that followed, South Korea provided copious amounts of economic aid and made a series of diplomatic concessions to the North, with little more than domestic political gains to show for its efforts. As the global diplomatic stage is once again set for the resumption of six-party talks in 2010--despite Pyongyang's intermittent protests to the contrary--it is important to reflect on the precedents, motivations, and potential legacy of South Korea's Sunshine Policy, which is perhaps the most deliberate and sustained effort of "engagement" with North Korea to date.
What will be the historical legacy of the Sunshine Policy? One possible answer, of course, would be akin to Chinese premier Zhou Enlai's supposed reply to Henry Kissinger's query about the impact of the French Revolution: "It's too soon to tell." The full effect of the Sunshine Policy will not be known until the Kim Jong Il regime either is no longer in existence or has undergone revolutionary changes. Indeed, even following unification of the two Koreas, it would probably be many years before a full accounting could be made of how the Kim Jong Il regime used Kim Dae Jung's unconditional aid to North Korea and what impact, if any, such generous aid had on modifying the regime's behavior or improving living conditions inside the famine-stricken, isolationist, totalitarian state. But we can, and should, make some preliminary assessments, if only to help the public and their representatives avoid repeating mistakes of the immediate past.
Kim Dae Jung's Sunshine
Kim Dae Jung is perhaps the most well known South Korean outside of South Korea. Few would deny that his international fame stems largely from the sensational June 2000 summit with Kim Jong Il and his receipt of the Nobel Peace Prize later that year in recognition of his highly publicized overtures to Pyong?yang. It is possible that Kim Dae Jung will always be remembered favorably outside Korea as the symbol of inter-Korean reconciliation that he so assiduously aspired to be. For many Koreans at home, too, Kim Dae Jung symbolizes what the Korean nation has sought ever since the partition in 1945: unification. The overriding sense of collective Korean ethnic identity--one nation, one ethnicity, one language, and one culture--resonates in both the private and public realm on both sides of the border. The Korean term for the singularity of their divided country's nationhood is minjok, a concept that carries enormous emotional power for Koreans of all ideologies. The notion of minjok is particularly pronounced in--indeed, often central to--the politics of inter-Korean relations. For instance, it is enshrined in the 2000 Joint Declaration between Kim Dae Jung and Kim Jong Il.[1] More broadly, the Korean impulse toward unity is evoked with powerful pathos in the pan-Korean anthem, "Our Nation's Wish." The song was composed in 1947, only two years after the partition at the thirty-eighth parallel in the last phase of the Second World War.[2] In short, the lingering positive image of Kim Dae Jung in the Korean popular imagination is principally due to the fact that he appeared to embody the aspirations of a people, aspirations that have remained a powerful current in Korean political culture for over sixty years.
The majority of Koreans may ultimately remember Kim Dae Jung's Sunshine Policy most prominently for the hubristic adventurism with which Kim Dae Jung approached the North Korean regime.But minjok may ultimately prove to be a double-edged sword for the Sunshine Policy, for history is not always kind to those who presume upon a people's deep historical yearnings for short-sighted or immediate political objectives. The majority of Koreans, those in the North and South as well as abroad, may ultimately remember Kim Dae Jung's Sunshine Policy most prominently for the hubristic adventurism with which Kim Dae Jung approached the North Korean regime, and they may question the astounding absence of humanism in that approach as official records during his administration--intelligence reports on the North's military threat level, internal memos on the potential costs of propping up Pyongyang, and corresponding policy recommendations--become available.
For much of his adult life, Kim Dae Jung espoused humanitarian ideals. As South Korea's leading dissident for much of the 1960s, 1970s, and 1980s, Kim Dae Jung enjoyed a favorable image abroad, notably in Japan and the United States, based on his prodemocracy and anti?authoritarian stance toward governance. Kim Dae Jung's kidnapping by South Korean intelligence agents in Japan in 1973 and the subsequent U.S. intervention on Kim Dae Jung's behalf naturally cast him in a sympathetic light. Indeed, Kim Dae Jung became a symbol of what the South Korean nation aspired to become--a functioning democracy where constitutional liberalism could take root. In those times, Kim Dae Jung represented the hopes of a people and an era.
By the time Kim Dae Jung assumed the presidency in 1998, South Korea had enjoyed years of increasing international prestige on a variety of counts: the success of the 1988 Seoul Olympics, the country's simultaneous and decisive transition from military rule to constitutional democracy, South Korea's accession to membership in the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development, and, not least important, its post-cold war normalization of relations with almost all Communist states (North Korea and Cuba, still Communist in name, are notable exceptions). The growing economic gap between North and South Korea in the 1990s, as the South forged new trade relations while the North grappled with autarky, effectively marked the end of the economic component of the systemic inter-Korean contest.
With such a favorable formation of geopolitical forces, and with disturbing reports of a catastrophic famine in the early 1990s in the North intermittently making international news, Kim Dae Jung had an opportunity to engage the ever-more isolated Pyongyang in a manner that would reflect and even define the great will of his time. Instead, despite the tremendous economic and political levers at his disposal, once he became president, he courted Pyongyang--the world's most exemplary criminal, totalitarian regime--in a manner that can be described only as fantastic. Kim Dae Jung believed he could win North Korea's trust with patience and generosity while ignoring the fundamental political dynamics on the Korean peninsula--the ongoing pan-Korean contest for legitimacy and the threat South Korea, by its sheer existence, poses to the impoverished North Korean system. Much like Aesop's fable "The North Wind and the Sun," from which the name "Sunshine Policy" is derived, Kim Dae Jung's engagement policy was oddly optimistic, one-dimensional, and patronizingly didactic.
Ironically, North Korea initially perceived elements of coercive diplomacy in Kim Dae Jung's carrot-centered Sunshine Policy. Pyongyang at first averred that Kim Dae Jung was trying to scorch their skin through their clothing with his sunshine. The irony here lies not in the North's apprehensions about the Sunshine Policy's implicit intention of changing their regime's behavior, but in the fact that it soon became apparent that there was no element of coercion in this curious latter-day variant of "classical" coercive diplomacy. That is to say, the element of punishment in addition to rewards--particularly the sense of urgency that needs to be instilled in the state in order for coercive diplomacy to take effect--was utterly absent in the Sunshine Policy.[3] On the contrary, South Korea felt an urgent political need to continue the policy even in the face of naval skirmishes in 1999 and 2002; a missile firing over Japan in 1998; and deep, growing, and ultimately justified suspicions about North Korea's ongoing nuclear weapons programs.
Kim Dae Jung believed he could win North Korea's trust with patience and generosity while ignoring the fundamental political dynamics on the Korean peninsula.Following Kim Dae Jung's Pyongyang summit with Kim Jong Il in June 2000, sunshine became a shibboleth in South Korea. Later, under Roh's watch, this South Korean sense of urgency to keep sunshine alive and well reached full flower in the face of North Korea's multiple missile blasts and its first nuclear test in 2006. What had begun as a means to an end had become an end itself--an end from which there could be no deviation and a dogma to which, as the Sunshine Policy approached its denouement, there could be no official denunciation.[4]
The Possibility of "Peace"
As president, Kim Dae Jung often oversold his role in advancing peace in the Korean peninsula. Forging peace with North Korea, he said, was a "matter of survival,"[5] although none of the articles in the joint statement Kim Dae Jung signed with Kim Jong Il in June 2000 contains the word "peace."[6] In April 2000, South Korean media reports on the upcoming first inter-Korean summit highlighted Kim Dae Jung's declared intention to conclude a "peace declaration" with the North.[7] In 2001, in his March First Independence Movement commemorative address, Kim Dae Jung called for a "peace regime,"[8] an issue he also brought up with the United States during his visit to Washington, D.C., the following week.[9] Despite such stated intentions and overtures, no signal of interest in an inter-Korean peace declaration came forth from Pyongyang.
Beyond Kim Dae Jung's repeated insistence on the need for a peace declaration and the seemingly contradictory claim that it was he who had brought genuine peace to Korea, the so-called peace agenda is a matter of continuing relevance and grave consequence for South Korean and regional security. At the same time, the Sunshine argument for a peace treaty is predicated on a number of questionable assumptions: first, that a paper agreement is a guarantor against war; second, that the absence of such a peace treaty, or even diplomatic relations, is an impediment to diplomatic progress on the North Korean problem; and third, that in the absence of a peace treaty, there has been something resembling continual war in Korea since the 1953 armistice.
A cursory overview of international history over the past century would reveal the first assumption to be patently false. The second assumption is debatable, especially in an alternative world that ignores the nature of the Pyongyang regime, the North-South dynamics on the Korean peninsula, and the manifest lack of progress toward a comprehensive resolution of the North Korean problem despite the lapse of nearly ten years since Pyongyang's normalization of diplomatic relations with virtually every European state, as well as most of its adversaries in the Korean War. As for the third assumption, de facto peace by virtue of the combined U.S.?-South Korea deterrent, specifically the presence of U.S. troops in South Korea, has been in place in the Korean peninsula since the end of the Korean War in 1953.
The issue of U.S. troop deployment in South Korea and the future of the U.S.-South Korea alliance lies at the center of any negotiations on replacing the armistice with a peace treaty or building a new "peace regime" in Korea.[10] Any peace treaty between the United States and North Korea would call into question the rationale for the continued deployment of U.S. troops in South Korea and thereby advance North Korea's strategic interests. Seoul would increasingly come under political scrutiny at home as well as in the United States--a point that would not be lost on Pyongyang in all its multifaceted dealings with South Korea, the United States, and Japan. Should the political forces surrounding the Korean peninsula align so as to lead to the withdrawal of U.S. troops from South Korea, the balance of power between the two Koreas would undergo a fundamental shift in Pyongyang's favor. Conversely, if North Korea were ever to reconcile itself to the continued presence of U.S. troops in the South, that would indicate, more than any peace agreement on a piece of paper, a fundamental shift in North Korea's national policy toward reconciliation and peaceful coexistence with South Korea.
Remarkably, upon returning home from his Pyong?yang summit in June 2000, Kim Dae Jung announced that he had persuaded Kim Jong Il to agree to the continued long-term stationing of U.S. troops in South Korea.[11] Had Kim Dae Jung truly persuaded Kim Jong Il to accept the continued deployment of U.S. troops in the South, it would have marked a breakthrough of near biblical proportions. Yet, immediately thereafter, official statements from North Korea, including statements by Kim Jong Il, repeatedly and explicitly called for the withdrawal of U.S. troops. On June 16, 2000, the day after Kim Dae Jung's return home from the highly touted Pyongyang summit, the Rodong Sinmun, the official newspaper of the Workers' Party of Korea, called for the "withdrawal of U.S. troops" as the "first step" in "Korea's reunification."[12] The next day, June 17, the Korean Central News Agency (KCNA), the official North Korean government news agency, stated that "the peaceful reunification of Korea requires the U.S. troops' pullback from South Korea."[13]
Had Kim Dae Jung truly persuaded Kim Jong Il to accept the continued deployment of U.S. troops in the South, it would have marked a breakthrough of near biblical proportions.In July 2001, Kim Jong Il told the Russian news agency Itar-Tass that "the United States is constantly threatening us by occupying a half of our country by force of arms."[14] Then, on August 4, 2001, as if to erase all doubt regarding the glaring variance at which North Korea's official position and Kim Dae Jung's protestations stood, Kim Jong Il, along with Russian president Vladimir Putin, signed the Moscow Declaration, of which Article 8 carried the following unequivocal statement: "the pullout of the U.S. forces from South Korea is a pressing issue which brooks no delay in ensuring peace and security in the Korean Peninsula and Northeast Asia."[15]
Throughout 2000 and into the following year, North Korea repeatedly stated its longstanding position that U.S. troop deployments in South Korea are a major detriment to its national interest. On June 15, 2001, the anniversary of the South-North Joint Declaration, the Rodong Sinmun declared that "the U.S. should not run wild, seized with the ambition for hegemony, but [should] do things helpful to the implementation of the declaration for reunification of the Korean nation as a party directly responsible for the division of the Korean peninsula."[16] Lest the subtleties of Pyongyang's position be lost on the international audience, on June 30, 2001, KCNA stated that "since the North and the South of Korea declared they would reunify the country independently by the concerted efforts of the nation, there is no more ground for the U.S. forces to remain in South Korea. The U.S. forces should get out of South Korea at once."[17] Again, on July 18, 2001, the Rodong Sinmun, describing the continued presence of U.S. troops in South Korea as "a criminal act going against the trend of history and the times," "categorically" called for "the unconditional withdrawal of the U.S. imperialist aggression troops from South Korea."[18]
Despite what Kim Dae Jung repeatedly claimed, North Korea did not waver in its position regarding U.S. troops in the South. Moreover, North Korea saw the June 2000 summit--as did many South Korean critics of the summit declaration--as the basis for the North's repeated demands for the withdrawal of U.S. troops. The aforementioned July 18, 2001, Rodong Sinmun article pointedly noted that in the 2000 South-North Joint Declaration, the two Koreas had "stated their will to achieve the independent and peaceful reunification of the country on the basis of reconciliation and unity."[19] The article specifically cites the June 2000 joint declaration as the reason the United States must "drop its criminal hostile policy toward the DPRK [Democratic People's Republic of Korea] and immediately withdraw its aggression troops from South Korea."[20] Indeed, the joint declaration Kim Dae Jung and Kim Jong Il signed is a one-sided affair; that is, it overwhelmingly favors Kim Jong Il's North Korea, especially in article 1, which implicitly calls for the withdrawal of U.S. troops from South Korea,[21] and in article 2, which contravenes the South Korean constitution.[22]
Kim Dae Jung's faith that a secret--and ultimately, in the verdict of South Korean courts, illegal--$500 million gift and several other concessions to North Korean demands offered just prior to the summit would induce Kim Jong Il to reciprocate stems from Kim Dae Jung's own hubris that he could change the North Korean regime despite its strategic interests, which stood directly contrary to those of South Korea.
If he had not executed the Sunshine Policy in the manner he did--that is, through financial bribes for and a disposition toward appeasing an implacably hostile North Korean state--Kim Dae Jung's place in Korean history would most likely have been secure.Ironically, if he had not executed the Sunshine Policy in the manner he did--that is, through financial bribes for and a disposition toward appeasing an implacably hostile North Korean state--Kim Dae Jung's place in Korean history would most likely have been secure. In assuming that he could succeed in changing the North Korean regime though all other South Korean and Western leaders before him had failed, Kim Dae Jung conflated his personal ambitions, his considerable powers of persuasion, and his own political hopes and dreams with the national and security interests of the South Korean state, and, by extension, the interests of the entire ethnic Korean nation. In this respect, Kim Dae Jung was a visionary of sorts: he saw things that did not exist in reality.
The Shadow of Human Rights
While the $500 million cash gift, larger than North Korea's annual export earnings, abetted the Kim Jong Il regime and was thereby tantamount to treason, there is another reason Kim Dae Jung's Sunshine Policy will come to be evaluated as a failure. Kim Dae Jung executed his Sunshine Policy while assiduously ignoring the massive human suffering in North Korea. He had fought for human rights in South Korea, but as president, he chose to ignore them in the North, where the scale, severity, and duration of human rights violations bear no comparison to those in the South.
Alleviating human suffering and advancing human rights requires a long-term commitment and significant economic and political capital. Evidently, the Sunshine Policy chose not to address such costly undertakings, opting instead for illusions of diplomatic progress and atmospherics of summit pageantry. The shadow of human rights in Kim Dae Jung's Sunshine Policy presents an irreconcilable conflict that will lead to a cold historical verdict on the man and his policy. In his effort to prevent the collapse of the North Korean system, Kim Dae Jung abetted and sustained the Kim Jong Il regime, a government programmatically committed to:
•"Ensur[ing] the complete victory of socialism in the northern half of the Democratic People's Republic of Korea and the accomplishment of the revolutionary goals of national liberation and the people's democracy on the entire area of the country, with the ultimate goal of the indoctrination of the entire society with Juche philosophy and the establishment of a communist society . . . [and] oppos[ing] imperialism and hegemonism at the vanguard of which stands the U.S., and struggl[ing] to win the victory of the collective feats of peace, democracy, ethnic independence, and socialism."[23]
•Building a nuclear arsenal through military-first (songun) politics, while taking a consistent position on the irreversibility of its nuclear weapons program. For instance, the North Korean Foreign Ministry stated in June 2009, "It has become an absolutely impossible option for the DPRK to even think about giving up its nuclear weapons."[24]
•Denying its population the most basic human rights by blocking out cultural infiltration[25] and forces of globalization; North Korea describes the latter as "a basic way for the imperialists to build a neo-colonialist international order" that the "progressive people of the world" must unite to "thoroughly frustrate,"[26] or, variously, "resolutely smash."[27]
To the North Korean people, victims of the most systematic totalitarian oppression in the modern world, Kim Dae Jung offered no vision, no hope, and no future. When asked about human rights problems in North Korea at the American Enterprise Institute on March 8, 2001, three months after being awarded the Nobel Peace Prize, Kim Dae Jung said, "To affront North Korea with human rights issues in their face, with criticism, would not be wise--the greatest human rights issue on the Korean peninsula is that of the 10 million members of the separated families."[28] Such pronounced reluctance to address human rights issues set the tone for Kim Dae Jung's Sunshine era, which remained firmly in place throughout the term of his successor, Roh, despite rapidly expanding public information about North Korea's vast political-prisoner concentration camps and the inhumane conditions the North Korean state willfully maintained in those camps.
The shadow of human rights in Kim Dae Jung's Sunshine Policy presents an irreconcilable conflict that will lead to a cold historical verdict on the man and his policy.At the same time, to some, Kim Dae Jung continued to carry the mantle of humanitarianism as president. On October 23, 1998, he apologized on behalf of his country to twenty-nine invited South Korean-born adoptees from eight different countries for having sent abroad tens of thousands of Korean children over the course of the previous five decades.[29] It was the first official recognition of some two hundred thousand transnationally adopted Koreans. The apology itself on behalf of the country by an incumbent head of state may have been inappropriate, but the gesture was well-intentioned and generally well-received. Then, obvious questions arise. Why did Kim Dae Jung not officially recognize the tens of thousands of North Korean refugees in China, meet North Korean refugees who had made their way to South Korea, or, most importantly, call on Kim Jong Il to dismantle his vast system of political-prisoner concentration camps?
The Legacy of Kim Dae Jung
Robin George Collingwood, the Oxford philosopher and historian, writes in The Idea of History: "For history, the object to be discovered is not the mere event, but the thought expressed in it. To discover that thought is to already understand it. . . . All history is the history of thought . . . and therefore all history is the re-enactment of past thought in the historian's own mind."[30] In the case of Kim Dae Jung's Sunshine Policy, how will future historians come to interpret the thought expressed in the event?
History to date has not been kind to South Korean leaders. While "Great Leader" Kim Il Sung, the sole former North Korean leader, reposes in the world's most extravagant mausoleum, no former South Korean leader has been free of denouncement or controversy. Syngman Rhee, Chang Myun, Park Chung Hee, Chun Doo Hwan, and Roh Tae Woo all faced either a less-than-statesmanlike exit from office or postoffice ignominy. Most recently, Roh Moo Hyun, having served as president from 2003 to 2008, a time when South Korea was declared a full democracy, killed himself in May 2009 while facing investigation for graft.
Yet, in varying degrees, each South Korean leader defined and embodied the single greatest national task of his time and achieved it. For Rhee, it was nation founding and nation building in the 1940s and postwar reconstruction in the 1950s; for Park, eradicating abject poverty and widespread hunger while defending the nation against continued North Korean threats throughout the 1960s and 1970s; and for Chun and Roh Tae Woo, continued economic growth and the consolidation of a stable, educated urban middle class--the sine qua non in a functioning democracy--in the 1980s and in the wake of the cold war.
As future generations reflect upon the single greatest national challenge facing Kim Dae Jung's South Korea--an affluent democracy in a post-cold war era--in the late 1990s and in the early years of the new millennium, it will become increasingly apparent that the challenge was (as it remains today) the task of saving North Korean lives and alleviating the unspeakable suffering of the North Korean people. If my assessment is correct, future generations of Koreans will come to see Kim Dae Jung's Sunshine Policy in an increasingly negative light. As North Korea's political-prisoner concentration camps open up to outside scrutiny and the horrific conditions of life inside North Korea become universally known, Kim Dae Jung will increasingly be viewed not as a symbol of unification but as a misguided leader who, despite his intentions, ultimately abetted the world's cruelest totalitarian nuclear regime at the cost of his own country's security and tens of thousands of innocent Korean lives.
If my assessment is correct, future generations of Koreans will come to see Kim Dae Jung's Sunshine Policy in an increasingly negative light.Kim Dae Jung's last words at his Nobel Prize lecture in Oslo on December 10, 2000, ring with a tone that is at once prophetic and disingenuous. He noted, "He who wins by injustice may dominate the present day, but history will always judge him to be a shameful loser. There can be no exception. I shall give the rest of my life to human rights and peace in my country and the world, and to the reconciliation and cooperation of my people."[31] Considering the failure of the Sunshine Policy and the persisting tyranny of the North Korean regime, history will most likely judge Kim Dae Jong as that very shameful loser who dominated the present day by pursuing false peace while sacrificing the human rights of his fellow Korean minjok.
Sung-Yoon Lee (sung-yoon.lee@tufts.edu) is an adjunct assistant professor of international politics at the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy at Tufts University and an associate in research at the Korea Institute at Harvard University. This Outlook is based on remarks delivered at the Woodrow Wilson Center for International Scholars on December 2, 2009.
Notes
1. Minjok is not a term native or exclusive to Korea. It is the Korean pronunciation of the Chinese characters 民族 (minju), meaning ethnic nation. At the same time, in the Korean context, and particularly in the common lexical configuration Uri minkokggiri (by the Korean ethnic nation ourselves), the term has an unmistakable connotation of Korean exceptionalism and exclusivity. In fact, the latter formulation is featured in the first article of the South-North Joint Declaration signed by Kim Dae Jung and Kim Jong Il at the 2000 Pyongyang summit. The same Korean words transliterated slightly differently, Uri minzokkiri, are the official name of a website run by the Committee for the Peaceful Unification of the Fatherland, a major arm of the North Korean propaganda machinery founded in 1961 under the auspices of the Workers' Party of Korea. See United States Institute of Peace: Peace Agreements Digital Collection, "South-North Joint Declaration," June 15, 2000, available at www.usip.org/files/file/resources/collections/peace_agreements/n_skorea06152000.pdf (accessed April 7, 2010).
2. The song, composed by Ahn Byung Won, with lyrics by his father, Ahn Suk Young, for the commemoration of the 1919 March First Independence Movement in 1947, is known by virtually every South Korean above kindergarten age. Known in North Korea as "Our Nation's Wish Is Unification," it was sung at the summit meeting between Kim Dae Jung and Kim Jong Il in June 2000 and also played at Kim Dae Jung's state funeral on August 23, 2009.
3. See Alexander George, Forceful Persuasion: Coercive Diplomacy as an Alternative to War (Washington, DC: United States Institute of Peace Press, 1991).
4. On October 11, 2006, just two days after North Korea's first nuclear test, Kim Dae Jung, in a lecture at Chonnam National University, defended his Sunshine Policy and squarely laid the blame for the North's nuclear test on the George W. Bush administration: "North Korea is developing nuclear programs because the U.S. is refusing to enter into a dialogue with it and impose economic sanctions without giving it an exit to find a way to live otherwise. Why are people pestering the Sunshine Policy? Why are people pestering the [faultless] Sunshine Policy? Don't even think that the Sunshine Policy is your easiest punching bag on which you can place any blame." See Sunny Lee, "South Korea's Sunshine Policy Strikes Back," Asia Times Online, May 7, 2008, available at www.atimes.com/atimes/Korea/JE07Dg02.html (accessed March 29, 2010). For a contemporaneous report in Korean, see Young-Soo Kang and Soo-Hyun Choi, "DJ: 'Haetbyeot jeongchaek silpae' neun haegwoehan iron" [DJ Calls 'Failure of Sunshine Policy' a Bizarre Theory], Chosun Ilbo, October 11, 2006, available at www.chosun.com/politics/news/200610/200610110205.html (accessed March 29, 2010).
5. Kim Dae Jung, "Ciampi Italia Daetong-ryeong naewoe juchae gukbin manchan dapsa" [Address to President Carlo Azeglio Ciampi during a State Visit to Italy, March 2, 2000], in Kim Dae Jung Daetongryeong Yeonseolmunjip Jaesamgweon [Selected Speeches of President Kim Dae Jung] (Seoul: Office of the President of the Republic of Korea, 2001), 3:102.
6. See United States Institute of Peace: Peace Agreements Digital Collection, "South-North Joint Declaration."
7. See "Gidae dwoeneun nambuk pyeonghwa seoneon" [Looking Forward to the North-South Peace Declaration], Kookmin Ilbo, April 14, 2000; Young-Sun Lee, "Nambuk 'pyeonghwa seoneon' mu-eol damna?" [What Will Be Featured in the North-South Peace Declaration?] Hankook Ilbo, April 13, 2000; and Hwa-Kyung Chang and Ho-Yeon Cho, "'Nambukhan peyonghwa seoneon' chujin" [Suing for Inter-Korean Peace Declaration], Kyunghyang Shinmun, April 13, 2000.
8. Kim Dae Jung, Kim Dae Jung Daetongryeong Yeonseolmunjip Jaesamgweon, 4:95.
9. See David E. Sanger, "Bush Tells Seoul Talks with North Won't Resume Now," New York Times, March 8, 2001.
10. The phrase "peace regime" is mentioned in the September 19, 2005, "Joint Statement of the Fourth Round of the Six Party Talks." Paragraph four contains the following: "The directly related parties will negotiate a permanent peace regime on the Korean Peninsula at an appropriate separate forum." See U.S. Department of State, "Joint Statement of the Fourth Round of the Six Party Talks," September 19, 2005, available at www.state.gov/p/eap/regional/c15455.htm (accessed April 4, 2010).
11. For example, see Kim Dae Jung, "North and South Korea Find Common Ground," New York Times, November 28, 2000. Kim writes in the op-ed, "North Korea has consented to the South's view that U.S. troops should continue to stay on the Korean Peninsula. Korea is the only country in the world surrounded by four big powers--the United States, Japan, China and Russia. I have long been convinced that the U.S. military presence on the peninsula is necessary for the stability and balance of power there and in Northeast Asia. I explained this to Kim Jong Il, and he readily concurred, for the safety of the Korean people." Kim Dae Jung repeated this claim at his lecture when he received the Nobel Peace Prize in December 2000, claiming that "the two sides concurred that the U.S. military presence on the Korean peninsula should continue for stability on the peninsula and Northeast Asia." See Kim Dae Jung, "Nobel Lecture" (lecture, Nobel Peace Prize, Oslo, December 10, 2000), available at http://nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/peace/laureates/2000/dae-jung-lecture.html (accessed March 29, 2010).
12. See "Preparatory Committee to Remember Kim Il Sung Formed in Peru," Korean Central News Agency (KCNA), June 17, 2000, available at www.kcna.co.jp/item/2000/200006/news06/17.htm#7 (accessed April 8, 2010).
13. See "U.S. Urged Not to Stand in Way of Korea's Reunification," KCNA, June 17, 2000, available at www.kcna.co.jp/item/2000/200006/news06/17.htm#9 (accessed April 5, 2010).
14. "Kim Jong Il Answers Questions Raised by Russian Itar-Tass," People's Korea, July 24, 2001.
15. For the full declaration, see "DPRK [Democratic People's Republic of Korea], Russia Reconfirm Revitalized Traditional Ties; Kim Jong Il Meets V. Putin Again in Moscow," People's Korea, August 11, 2001.
16. See "1st Anniversary of North-South Joint Declaration Observed," KCNA, June 15, 2001, available at www.kcna.co.jp/item/2001/200106/news06/15.htm#1 (accessed April 5, 2010).
17. See "U.S. Troop Pullout from S. Korea Urged," KCNA, June 30, 2001, available at www.kcna.co.jp/item/2001/200106/news06/30.htm#5 (accessed April 5, 2010).
18. See "U.S. Forces' Pullback from S. Korea Urgently Demanded by Times and Nation," KCNA, July 18, 2001, available at www.kcna.co.jp/item/2001/200107/news07/18.htm#6 (accessed April 5, 2010).
19. Ibid.
20. Ibid.
21. Article 1 of the declaration states that the two sides have agreed to resolve the question of unification "independently by the concerted efforts of the Korean ethnic nation ourselves." "Independently" and "by the Korean ethnic nation ourselves" (Uri minkokggiri) are not-so-subtle North Korean terms for "free of U.S. imperialist interference." See "South-North Joint Declaration," art. 1.
22. See article 1 of South Korea's constitution, which defines the Republic of Korea as a "democratic republic" whose sovereignty "resides in the people"; article 3, according to which, "The territory of the Republic of Korea shall consist of the Korean peninsula and its adjacent islands"; and article 4, which stipulates: "The Republic of Korea seeks unification and formulates and carries out a policy of peaceful unification based on the principles of freedom and democracy." See Constitution of the Republic of Korea, art. 1, 3, and 4.
23. Chosun Rodongdang Gyuyak Jeonmun [Preamble to the Charter of the Workers' Party of Korea], 6th revision, October 13, 1980, author's translation from the original Korean.
24. Statement by an unidentified spokesman for the North Korean Foreign Ministry in response to United Nations Security Council (UNSC) Resolution 1874, which passed in the wake of North Korea's second nuclear test on May 25, 2009. The statement concludes with the following: "It is the Songun idea-based mode of counter-action for the DPRK to decisively counter 'sanctions' with retaliation and 'confrontation' with all-out confrontation." See "DPRK Foreign Minister Declares Strong Counter-Measures against UNSC's 'Resolution 1874,'" KCNA, June 13, 2009, available at www.kcna.co.jp/item/2009/200906/news13/20090613-10ee.html (accessed April 5, 2010).
25. See "DPRK's Socialist Constitution (Full Text)," People's Korea, available at www1.korea-np.co.jp/pk/061st_issue/98091708.htm (accessed March 29, 2010). Article 41 reads: "In building a socialist national culture, the State shall oppose the cultural infiltration of imperialism and any tendency to return to the past, protect its national cultural heritage, and develop it in keeping with the existing socialist situation."
26. See "Talk about 'Priority to Human Rights' and 'Liberalization,'" KCNA, January 12, 2000, available at www.kcna.co.jp/item/2000/200001/news01/12.htm#10 (accessed April 5, 2010).
27. See "Rodong Sinmun Calls for Smashing Imperialists' 'Globalization,'" KCNA, August 31, 2000, available at www.kcna.co.jp/item/2000/200008/news08/31.htm#10 (accessed April 5, 2010). Elsewhere, in 2007, North Korea describes globalization as "nothing but a yoke of exploitation and plunder, domination and subjugation as it is intended to put other countries under their tight control and bleed the world people white to the maximum under the spurious signboard of 'co-prosperity' and a neo-colonial system whereby to completely obliterate the Juche character and national identity of other countries." See "Imperialists' Moves for 'Globalization' under Fire," KCNA, February 25, 2007, available at www.kcna.co.jp/item/2007/200702/news02/26.htm#6 (accessed April 5, 2010).
28. Kim Dae Jung, "The Prospect of Peace on the Korean Peninsula" (speech, AEI, Washington, DC, March 8, 2001), available through www.aei.org/event/407.
29. See Tobias Hubinette, "President Kim Dae Jung and the Adoption Issue," Korean Quarterly (Spring 2003).
30. See Robin George Collingwood, The Idea of History (London: Oxford University Press, 1977), 214-15. Collingwood goes on to observe: "To the scientist, nature is always and merely a 'phenomenon,' not in a sense of being defective in reality, but in the sense of being a spectacle presented to his intelligent observation; whereas the events of history are never mere phenomena, never mere spectacles for contemplation, but things which the historian looks, not at, but through, to discern the thought within them."
31. Kim Dae Jung, "Nobel Lecture."
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