Fire Hydrant of Freedom

BAGHDAD – Gunmen forced their way onto a bus of traveling Shiite pilgrims Monday and shot all 22 men onboard as they traveled through western Iraq's remote desert on a trip to a holy shrine, security officials said.

The bodies were discovered late Monday night, hours after the gang of gunmen stopped the bus at a fake security checkpoint and told all the women and children to get off, according to one security official who interviewed a survivor.

The gunmen then drove the bus a few miles (kilometers) off the main highway between Baghdad and the Jordanian border in Iraq's Sunni-dominated Anbar province. The pilgrims were ordered off the bus and shot one by one, the security officials said.

"The terrorists stopped the bus at gunpoint and killed 22 men," said Maj. Gen. Abdul-Hadi Rizayig, the provincial police chief.

Read more: http://www.foxnews.com/world/2011/09/12/22-shiite-pilgrims-shot-dead-in-iraq/#ixzz1Xmi1APG4

For all its soaring rhetoric, President Obama's "jobs speech" last week didn't demonstrate a lick of insight into why economies grow or how wealth is created. It was merely trademark Obamanomics: using government diktat to move money that's over here, over there.

Having spent an hour the day before with Ron Liepert, the energy minister from the Canadian province of Alberta, I found it especially disturbing to hear nothing in the speech about reversing the administration's anti-fossil-fuels agenda. Canada has recovered all the jobs it lost in the 2009 recession, and Alberta's oil sands are no small part of that. The province is on track to become the world's second-largest oil producer, after Saudi Arabia, within 10 years. Meanwhile Mr. Obama clings to his subsidies for solar panels and his religious faith in green jobs.

U.S. unemployment is high because capital is on strike. Short-term offers to coax investors into taking new risks aren't going to cut it when they have been forewarned that the president intends to pay for it all by raising taxes in the out years. The market dropped over 300 points the day after Mr. Obama's speech.

On the regulatory front the picture is even gloomier. Much of America's vast untapped energy potential lies dormant because Mr. Obama's regulatory watchdogs have spent the past three years throwing sand in the gears of the permitting process for exploration and exploitation on federal lands. Separately, TransCanada has been trying since September 2008 to get a permit to build the Keystone XL pipeline from Alberta to the Gulf Coast. The Environmental Protection Agency has so far blocked it.

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TransCanada's Keystone XL pipeline could mean 118,000 American jobs, if the U.S. government ever issues the permit.
.A glimpse of what all this has cost the U.S. economy can be seen by looking north to Canada, where animal spirits have been unleashed in the energy sector. Canada's close economic ties to the U.S. have traditionally meant that when the U.S. gets the sniffles, Canada gets swine flu. This time it's been different. Part of the reason is that Canada's housing market was not poisoned by a federal government push to put unqualified borrowers into homes they could not afford. After the 2008 collapse of the housing bubble in the U.S., the Canadian financial sector remained strong.

That alone was not enough to protect Canada from the effects of the U.S. recession. The manufacturing sector was hit hard, and in the first quarter of 2009 the economy contracted by an annualized 7.9%.

Yet Canada has outperformed the U.S. since then. In 2010, according to the International Monetary Fund, Canada grew at 3.2% versus 2.9% in the U.S. In 2011, the IMF estimates Canada will grow at 2.9%; unemployment is now 7.3%. The IMF's U.S. growth forecast is 2.5% this year, and U.S. unemployment is 9.1%.

One explanation for Canada's more robust growth is its strong commitment to energy, which has become more valuable in U.S. dollar terms under Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke's inflationary policies. Alberta is now producing two million barrels per day but expects that number will grow to four to five million within a decade.

Alberta's oil and gas industry supports more than 271,000 direct jobs and hundreds of thousands of indirect jobs in sectors such as construction, manufacturing and financial services. The province has an unemployment rate of 5.6%. There are also some 960 American companies involved in Alberta energy, supplying equipment and technology, among other things. As an example, Mr. Liepert says, "dozens of Caterpillar tractors, made in Illinois and Michigan and costing $5 million a piece" work the oil sands. He says the region is on track to create more than 400,000 direct American jobs by 2035. The Bakken region of North Dakota, where private land ownership gives drillers relief from federal obstructionism, shares a similar, if smaller, story. Oil production there is booming, and North Dakota unemployment is 3.3%.

The Americas in the News
Get the latest information in Spanish from The Wall Street Journal's Americas page.
.TransCanada's Keystone XL pipeline, if the U.S. ever issues the permit, will mean $20 billion in investment. The company says the construction phase will require 13,000 direct hires and indirect new jobs could total 118,000 in the U.S.

But Keystone XL is only a fraction of the potential that could be released if Mr. Obama changed his energy policy. In a study commissioned by the American Petroleum Institute and released last week, the energy consultancy Wood MacKenzie estimates that pro-development policies could, by 2030, "support an additional 1.4 million jobs, and raise over $800 billion of cumulative additional government revenue."

On the other hand, according to the study, current policies "which slow down the issuance of leases and drilling permits, increase the cost of hydraulic fracturing through duplicative water or air quality regulations, or delay the construction of oil sands export pipelines such as Keystone XL, will likely have a detrimental effect on production, jobs, and government revenues."

A serious jobs proposal would address these issues. Mr. Obama doesn't have one.

 

  By CHESTER DAWSON
TOKYO—Japan's new defense minister said that while the American alliance remains the core of security policy, he wants to improve ties between Chinese and Japanese armed forces as a means of dealing with China's military rise.

"The U.S.-Japan security relationship is the cornerstone of our national security policy, but based on that foundation we need to improve relations with China," Yasuo Ichikawa said Monday in an interview with The Wall Street Journal, his first with a foreign media organization since taking office Sept. 2.

Mr. Ichikawa also said the contract for a next-generation fighter aircraft, a long-delayed and highly anticipated project sought by three global defense titans, will be awarded by year's end.

Sino-Japanese relations have been strained by a series of recent incursions by Chinese ships into Japan's territorial waters in the East China Sea. A war of words between Beijing and Tokyo followed the arrest of a Chinese fishing crew last year, raising alarms about China's intentions toward its Asian neighbors. The dispute came shortly after the resignation of Yukio Hatoyama, who as prime minister had made improved ties with China a central focus of policy.

Japan's new defense minister, appointed by Prime Minister Yoshihiko Noda, downplayed the territorial spat's impact and stressed the importance of opening communications channels with his counterparts in China.

"I'd like to work toward increasing interaction between Japanese and Chinese defense personnel," Mr. Ichikawa said, adding that he would try to visit China personally. He wouldn't be the first Japanese defense minister to do so, but a trip would signal a thaw.

That overture to Beijing evokes Mr. Hatoyama's embrace of China as a counterweight to the U.S., but Mr. Ichikawa said he has no intention of putting distance between Tokyo and Washington.

However, resolution of a long-simmering controversy involving plans to relocate a U.S. military base in Okinawa may take more time, he said. While Washington's desire to make progress is clear, the defense minister indicated Okinawan anti-base sentiment and budgetary limits might slow progress. The countries will share the cost of the move.

"We have to be mindful about the feelings of the Okinawan people and Japan's own schedule issues such as the deadline for budget requests" on defense-related allocations, he said.

In June, the U.S. and Japan agreed to postpone plans dating from 2006 to close a U.S. Marine Corps base at Futenma in Okinawa by 2014, citing cost concerns and local opposition to the proposed relocated Okinawa base.

At the same time, Japan's new defense minister signaled greater willingness to cooperate with the U.S. and other allies sharing the burden of developing advanced military technologies.

Noting the country's "three principles" banning arms exports has inhibited co-development of cutting-edge weapons, Mr. Ichikawa said he favors moving swiftly with the Japanese government's effort to "study" a relaxation of the ban.

"There's no set schedule, but it's not the kind of problem that we can take too long to consider," the defense minister said. "It's important to start taking gradual steps to sound out a direction as soon as possible." He added that relaxing the ban would bolster Japanese manufacturers who are struggling from weak domestic demand.

The review of the restrictions on weapons exports is politically sensitive in Japan because of the country's pacifist constitution. First established as policy in 1967, the principles were originally designed to prevent military technology from falling into the hands of Communist Bloc countries.

Earlier this month, the policy chief of the governing Democratic Party of Japan, former foreign minister Seiji Maehara, ruffled feathers by openly calling for a review of the ban at a speech in Washington, apparently without first consulting with Cabinet officials, including Mr. Ichikawa.

The issue of Japan's ban on arms exports has loomed large as it invests in developing expensive advanced weapons such as ballistic-missile systems. It has also colored the debate on Japanese plans to procure a new generation of fighter planes, since Japan has not been able to co-develop one with allies and missed an opportunity to do so with the F-35 joint strike fighter program spearheaded by the U.S.

Mr. Ichikawa said that Japan will accept formal bids for its next-generation fighter on Sept. 26 and that he expects a decision to be reached by December as part of budgetary discussions for fiscal 2012, at least three years later than initially planned.

The fighter program, dubbed the FX in Japan, will likely call for the purchase of about 40 to 60 planes in a deal expected to total around $4 billion, according to industry officials.

In an era of declining defense budgets, the project has attracted three of the world's biggest defense contractors: Boeing Co. with its F-18 Super Hornet, Lockheed Martin Corp. with the F-35 JSF and Eurofighter GmbH with the Typhoon.

Mr. Ichikawa said it is too early to say who will prevail.

That latest delay in the FX program came earlier this year when the ministry, which had been expected to start vetting bids in March, postponed the process an additional six months due to the March 11 earthquake and tsunami. The new fighter will replace Japan's aging squads of F-4 Phantom fighters, made by McDonnell Douglas, now part of Boeing.

I will leave GM and JDN to work that particular point out, but in response to JDN's point about the fungibiity of oil and his assumption that therefor US oil will flow to the highest bidder, I could be wrong but I would interject that to the best of my recollection US law requires US oil to be sold in the US, though there may be an exception for Alaskan oil to Japan (and attendant purchases from Venezuela).  

I have some problems with this piece, but it makes some very interesting points:
================

Why the Dollar May Last For Much Longer Than We Expect
BY CHARLES HUGH SMITH09/08/2011Print

The only way to value the dollar is in the context of a mercantilist, export-dependent global economy anchored by a sole "importer of last resort," the U.S., which funds these vast imports with its fiat currency, the dollar.

Yesterday I explained why a gold-backed currency cannot replace the fiat dollar without fatally disrupting global Capitalism and the political Status Quo everywhere from China to Europe: Why the U.S. Dollar "Works" and Why a Gold-Backed Currency Doesn't (September 7, 2011).

Today we look at why the fiat dollar is the one essential currency, and as a result, why it will rise in value in the Eurozone crisis ahead. I know this is heresy and sacrilege to those who believe the dollar is doomed, and soon, but if you're not yet locked into one quasi-religious faith or another just yet, then please follow along as I trace out the dynamics of trade and currency valuation.

To understand the essential role of the dollar and how its value is derived via trade flows, let's start with a simplified model of global trade.

Country A manufactures surplus goods and generates surplus services. Since its domestic demand is structurally constrained (for example, a mere 35% of China's GDP is domestic demand), the only way Country A can keep its citizens employed and politically pliable is to sell its surplus in other countries.

This is the basic mercantilist export model of growth pursued by Germany, Japan, South Korea, China et al.: growth and value are created by generating surplus goods and services, and exporting those to other nations.

In sum: Country A has stuff it has to sell to other countries to keep its economy from spiraling into depression. It can demand whatever it wants: gold, moon dust, etc., but it is not in the driver's seat: it has no alternative to dumping its surplus in whatever markets will take it. Managing its exports boils down to getting the best deal possible, but saying "no" is not an option.

There is little demand for Country A's currency, as what it is trading isn't currency, it's stuff: it trades its surplus production (stuff) for somebody else's currency.

Country B has a something called "the world's reserve currency" which is a fancy name for paper money that is universally recognized as a placeholder of value that can be traded everywhere from Burma (pristine $100 bills preferred) to Bolivia (cocaine-laced $100 bills OK) and accepted without question (even counterfeit bills are OK as long as they're the high-quality North Korean counterfeits). Let's call Country B's currency the doru.

Country B has exports, but its demand for imports far exceeds the value of its exports. For all imports over and above the value of its exports, it exchanges its paper money for the imported real goods and services.

Country C has no reserve currency and no gold-backed currency. It has paper money which it can print in unlimited quantities. Country C has exports, but its demand for imports far exceeds the value of its exports. For all imports over and above the value of its exports, it exchanges its paper money for the imported real goods and services.

Country C has a tricky problem. Since its paper money has no intrinsic value, the only value it can possibly have is scarcity value: the supply must be strictly limited so that exporting nations will accept County C's currency (let's call them quatloos) in exchange for tangible goods like oil and iPads.

In effect, Country C is asking exporters to accept a premium on the intrinsically worthless paper, a premium "earned" by scarcity: if there are relatively few quatloos floating around the world, then quatloos may well retain some scarcity value, even though their value based on other factors is basically zero.

The best way for Country C to finance its import trade is to exchange its intrinsically worthless quatloos for "the world's reserve currency," the doru, which is accepted everywhere.

Some would argue that Country C should buy gold with its quatloos, and that would certainly be an excellent trade: worthless paper for gold. But in terms of trade, shipping gold about is hazardous and costly: every nation engaged in trade needs an electronically traded currency that can be transferred, loaned, borrowed and so on, all in the blink of an eye.

Gold is a reliable store of value but it is a cumbersome means of exchange, especially globally.

Furthermore, gold's value in currency or other goods has a history of fluctuating wildly. Those managing quatloos could easily get burned, as the trade they're really managing is quatloos to gold to the reserve currency which can actually be traded globally for goods and services.

Any such commodity-based transactional chain is rife with risk from geopolitics and speculation. From the managers of the quatloo's perspective, the easiest way to lower risk is to cut out the middle step of buying and selling gold, and just buy the reserve currency (the doru) directly.

All this works until Country C succumbs to the temptation to print money to the point it is in surplus rather than scarcity. And what a temptation it is, to "increase our wealth" magically by printing quatloos.

But exporters, forced by circumstance to constantly assess the tradable value of all currencies they trade goods for, will quickly detect that the scarcity value of the quatloo--it's only real value--has rapidly declined.

The cost of imports priced in quatloos in Country C shoots up as quatloos lose scarcity value, and the residents of Country C find they can no longer afford to buy imports. The sales of imports collapses down to match Country C's exports.

These are the key dynamics of trade and currency valuation. Now let's consider Country B, owner of "the world's reserve currency," the doru.

Superficially, it might seem that the only value in dorus is also their scarcity value, and since Country B prints/creates large quantities of dorus every year, many observers make the understandable mistake of claiming the value of the doru should be zero, since it is has little to no scarcity value.

But the value of "the world's reserve currency" is not simply a matter of scarcity, as it is for other lesser fiat (paper) currencies. One factor is the nature of scarcity is different for the doru and the quatloo: the quatloo has only one use in terms of global trade: the imports and exports of Country C.

Since Country C's GDP is a thin sliver of global GDP, then demand for quatloos is limited to importers and tourists.

Compare that to "the world's reserve currency," which is in constant demand as a means of exchange in the entire $60 trillion global economy.

"The world's reserve currency" (in our example, the doru) has another unique feature: everybody eventually needs to exchange quatloos and all other currencies for doru, because that is the only universally accepted means of global exchange. Sure, Country C and its cronies can set up an exchange which only accepts gold and quatloos, but as soon as they need wheat, electronics, and everything else the cronies don't manufacture or harvest, then they will need to exchange the gold or quatloos for "the world's reserve currency."

As a result, the demand for doru ("the world's reserve currency") is stupendous and constant. Since currency is a commodity, albeit one with unique features, its ultimate value as a means of exchange is set by supply and demand. In other words, scarcity is not the only source of value: demand is the key driver of value of any commodity, good or service.

Let's say that Country B's economy is about 25% of global GDP. (In other words, like the U.S.) Let's further assume that Country B prints/creates about 10% of its GDP every year in paper doru.

Now if Country C printed 10% of its GDP every year in newly issued quatloos, the supply of quatloos would quickly overwhelm demand for quatloos, and the value of quatloos globally would crash.

Country B doesn't have that problem, because printing 10% of its GDP is a mere 2.5% of global GDP. Globally, the value of currencies exchanged daily exceeds 10% of Country B's GDP and more or less matches the total value of doru in global trade.

In other words, the demand for exchangable, tradable currency--"the world's reserve currency"-- far exceeds the supply of doru. Printing doru, even in quantity, is like adding a glass of water to a bathtub: the supply increase is not even close to the daily demand.

How did Country B get the "the world's reserve currency" instead of Country C? Most importantly, there has to be enough of the currency to grease the tremendous flows of goods, services, loans and hedges globally: the tiny quantity of quatloos is completely inadequate to the task.

Second, the "the world's reserve currency" must be relatively immune to increases in supply, i.e. money printing. For example, if global GDP is $60 trillion, and daily foreign-exchange trading is $2 trillion, then exactly how much impact can printing $1 trillion of "the world's reserve currency" generate? The answer globally is very little.

The third factor is one which few commentators recognize, sometimes called"the hidden export:" global security. All financial transactions involve trust, some more than others. In terms of currency, the primary trust being offered and accepted is that the mechanics of the currency are transparent and thus so are the risks.

The secondary trust is that the value of the currency will remain stable over the short term, which is long enough for the vast majority of trading.

A third trust is in the stability of the issuing nation. Once again, transparency is key: if that nation's problems are well-known and transparent, then the risks of that currency can be easily and accurately assessed. If its institutions are robust and its trade flows gigantic, then people recognize it's a safer bet to hold dorus than quatloos.

The key mechanism for creating surplus value in advanced Capitalism is trade, and the key mechanism for enabling that trade is a "reserve currency" of sufficient quantity and stability. The Chinese renminbi is a proxy for the U.S. dollar, the euro is unraveling, and the yen is not expansive enough to fund global trade and currency flows.

Envy is a key human trait, and the envy of all those who don't hold/print "the world's reserve currency" is understandable. But you can't create "the world's reserve currency" like some other paper money, as paper money only has two sources of value: demand and trust.

As Jesse of the always-valuable Jesse's Cafe Americain recently wrote (and I paraphrase), people often offer reasons why certain things that have happened could not happen. Conversely, they also often offer reasons why things that can't happen should happen.

At some point the trade imbalance of $600 billion a year between the mercantilist nations and the U.S. will go away, as will the notion that printing paper money is creating wealth, and debts that are unpayable will magically be paid instead of being liquidated or repudiated. The point here is that the Status Quo of all the major trading nations is committed to conserving the present system of fraying imbalances, as their own wealth and power flow from this shaky, unsustainable structure.

http://krugman.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/09/11/the-years-of-shame/?smid=tw-NytimesKrugman&seid=auto

 

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September 11, 2011, 8:41 am

The Years of Shame
Is it just me, or are the 9/11 commemorations oddly subdued?

Actually, I don’t think it’s me, and it’s not really that odd.

What happened after 9/11 — and I think even people on the right know this, whether they admit it or not — was deeply shameful. Te atrocity should have been a unifying event, but instead it became a wedge issue. Fake heroes like Bernie Kerik, Rudy Giuliani, and, yes, George W. Bush raced to cash in on the horror. And then the attack was used to justify an unrelated war the neocons wanted to fight, for all the wrong reasons.

A lot of other people behaved badly. How many of our professional pundits — people who should have understood very well what was happening — took the easy way out, turning a blind eye to the corruption and lending their support to the hijacking of the atrocity?

The memory of 9/11 has been irrevocably poisoned; it has become an occasion for shame. And in its heart, the nation knows it.

I’m not going to allow comments on this post, for obvious reasons.
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In a similar vein, a friend relates:

I drove down to Clemson University  for a soccer match today. I had about 8 hours in the car and a lot of time for listening to the fare on satellite radio.


Astoundingly, on this of all days, the focus of the left on Serius Left, was the Truther movement. Not the victims, not the heroes- but the friggin conspiracy that we brought the attack on ourselves on purpose to benefit the war machine.


The horrible little people are abundant.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aUYGb2JtQYA

'Let's Roll' Nation Mired In 'Let's Roll Over' Mush


By MARK STEYN
Posted 09/09/2011 05:46 PM ET


Though 343 of these firefighters' comrades died when the Twin Towers fell on 9/11, there won't be any firefighters at the official Ground Zero...

Waiting to be interviewed on the radio the other day, I found myself on hold listening to a public service message exhorting listeners to go to 911day.org and tell their fellow citizens how they would be observing the 10th anniversary of the, ah, "tragic events."

There followed a soundbite of a lady explaining that she would be paying tribute by going and cleaning up an area of the beach. Great! Who could object to that? Anything else?

Well, another lady pledged that she "will continue to discuss anti-bullying tactics with my grandson." Marvelous. Because studies show that many middle-school bullies graduate to hijacking passenger jets and flying them into tall buildings?

Whoa, ease up on the old judgmentalism there, pal. In New Jersey, many of whose residents were among the dead, middle-schoolers will mark the anniversary with a special 9/11 curriculum that will "analyze diversity and prejudice in U.S. history."

And, if the "9/11 Peace Story Quilt" at the Metropolitan Museum of Art teaches us anything, it's that the "tragic events" only underline the "importance of respect." And "understanding." As one of the quilt panels puts it:

"You should never feel left out

You are a piece of a puzzle

And without you

The whole picture can't be seen."

And if that message of "healing and unity" doesn't sum up what happened on Sept. 11, 2001, what does? A painting of a plane flying into a building? A sculpture of bodies falling from a skyscraper? Oh, don't be so drearily literal.

"It is still too soon," says Midori Yoshimoto, director of the New Jersey City University Visual Arts Gallery, whose exhibition "Afterward and Forward" is intended to "promote dialogue, deeper reflection, meditation and contextualization."

So, instead of planes and skyscrapers, it has Yoko Ono's "Wish Tree," on which you can hang little tags with your ideas for world peace.

What's missing from these commemorations? Firemen? Oh, please. There are some pieces of the puzzle we have to leave out.

As Mayor Bloomberg's office has patiently explained, there's "not enough room" at the official Ground Zero commemoration to accommodate any firemen. "Which is kind of weird," wrote the Canadian blogger Kathy Shaidle, "since 343 of them managed to fit into the exact same space 10 years ago."

On a day when all the fancypants money-no-object federal acronyms comprehensively failed — CIA, FBI, FAA, INS — the only bit of government that worked was the low-level unglamorous municipal government represented by the Fire Department of New York.

When they arrived at the World Trade Center the air was thick with falling bodies — ordinary men and women trapped on high floors above where the planes had hit who chose to spend their last seconds in one last gulp of open air rather than die in an inferno of jet fuel.

Far "too soon" for any of that at the New Jersey City University, but perhaps you could re-enact the moment by filling a peace tag for Yoko Ono's "Wish Tree" and then letting it flutter to the ground.

Upon arrival at the foot of the towers two firemen were hit by falling bodies. "There is no other way to put it," one of their colleagues explained. "They exploded." Any room for that on the Metropolitan Museum "Peace Quilt"? Sadly not. We're all out of squares.

What else is missing from these commemorations? "Let's Roll"? What's that — a quilting technique?

No, what's missing from these commemorations is more Muslims. I bumped into an old BBC pal the other day who's flying in for the anniversary to file a dispatch on why you see fewer women on the streets of New York wearing niqabs and burqas than you do on the streets of London. She thought this was a telling indictment of the post-9/11 climate of "Islamophobia."

I pointed out that, due to basic differences in immigration sources, there are far fewer Muslims in New York than in London. It would be like me flying into Stratford-on-Avon and reporting on the lack of Hispanics. But the suits had already approved the trip, so she was in no mood to call it off.

How are America's allies remembering the real victims of 9/11? "Muslim Canucks Deal With Stereotypes Ten Years After 9/11," reports CTV in Canada. And it's a short step from stereotyping to criminalizing. "How the Fear of Being Criminalized Has Forced Muslims Into Silence," reports The Guardian in Britain.

In Australia, a Muslim terrorism suspect was so fearful of being criminalized and stereotyped in the post-9/11 epidemic of paranoia that he pulled a Browning pistol out of his pants and hit Sgt. Adam Wolsey of the Sydney constabulary. Fortunately, Judge Leonie Flannery acquitted him of shooting with intent to harm on the grounds that "'anti-Muslim sentiment' made him fear for his safety," as Sydney's Daily Telegraph reported.

That's such a heartwarming story for this 9/11 anniversary they should add an extra panel to the peace quilt, perhaps showing a terror suspect opening fire on a judge as she's pronouncing him not guilty and then shrugging off the light shoulder wound as a useful exercise in healing and unity.

What of the 23rd Psalm? It was recited by Flight 93 passenger Todd Beamer and the telephone operator Lisa Jefferson in the final moments of his life before he cried "Let's roll!" and rushed the hijackers.

No, sorry. Aside from firemen, Mayor Bloomberg's official commemoration hasn't got any room for clergy, either, what with all Executive Deputy Assistant Directors of Healing and Outreach who'll be there.

One reason why there's so little room at Ground Zero is because it's still a building site. As I write in my new book, 9/11 was something America's enemies did to us; the 10-year hole is something we did to ourselves — and in its way the interminable bureaucratic sloth is surely as eloquent as anything Nanny Bloomberg will say in his remarks.

In Shanksville, Pa., the zoning and permitting processes are presumably less arthritic than in Lower Manhattan, but the Flight 93 memorial has still not been completed. There were objections to the proposed "Crescent of Embrace" on the grounds that it looked like an Islamic crescent pointing towards Mecca.

The defense of its designers was that, au contraire, it's just the usual touchy-feely huggy-weepy pansy-wimpy multiculti effete healing diversity mush.

It doesn't really matter which of these interpretations is correct, since neither of them has anything to do with what the passengers of Flight 93 actually did a decade ago. 9/11 was both Pearl Harbor and the Doolittle Raid rolled into one, and the fourth flight was the only good news of the day, when citizen volunteers formed themselves into an ad hoc militia and denied Osama bin Laden what might have been his most spectacular victory.

A few brave individuals figured out what was going on and pushed back within half-an-hour. But we can't memorialize their sacrifice within a decade. And when the architect gets the memorial brief, he naturally assumes there's been a typing error and that "Let's roll!" should really be "Let's roll over!"

And so we commemorate an act of war as a "tragic event," and we retreat to equivocation, cultural self-loathing and utterly fraudulent misrepresentation about the events of the day.

In the weeks after 9/11, Americans were enjoined to ask "Why do they hate us?" A better question is: "Why do they despise us?" And the quickest way to figure out the answer is to visit the Peace Quilt and the Wish Tree, the Crescent of Embrace and the Hole of Bureaucratic Inertia.

© Mark Steyn, 2011

Partially true.

a) "After a deep and stubborn recession early on, the economy thrived for much of Reagan's two terms and, though partisans may debate the causes and the ultimate costs of that boomlet, those frothy times compare quite favorably with today's anxiety-ridden environment."

Snarky and inaccurate.  Volcker, listening to Dem foolishness that tax rate cuts would be inflationary, slammed on the monetary brakes and politically Reagan had to phase in the tax rate cuts over three years, thus prolonging the recession as many business decisions were postponed in order to take advantage of impending tax rate decreases.  The acid test came the January when the final cut became effective.  Milton Friedman predicted a contraction, Jude Wanniski and the other supply siders predicted a big surge.  Working from memory, the surge was something like 10% growth!  Supply side was vindicated and monetarism had to get back to the lane where it has relevance.

b) Worth noting that Reagan's compromise on illegal aliens included Dem promises to control the border.  I suspect at this point he would say "Fool me once, shame on you.  Fool me twice, shame on me."


c) Reagan's mental acuity was beginning to decline at the time of the 1986 compromises on the tax code and illegal aliens.

=================
If nominated, this business about Perry not believing in evolution is going to hurt him in the general election I think, especially when coupled with the turbulent state of public thinking about global warming.

Cheap shot by Romney on Perry's "Ponzi scheme" comment on SS.  It IS a Ponzi scheme-- but if Perry is not careful this will get painted as meaning PERRY wants to welch on SS.
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An internet friend keeps sending me material on this:  www.americanthinker.com/printpage/?url=http://www.americanthinker.com/articles/../2011/09/the_real_perryaga_khan_curriculum_is_bad_for_children.html

Any thoughts?

In the last few days I have made some snarky comments about Baraq's policies concerning BMD in Central Europe and Turkey.  Some informatin new to me is contained in the following.
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Ballistic Missile Defense and Security Guarantees in Central Europe

Romanian President Traian Basescu announced Thursday that he plans to sign an agreement with the United States committing Washington to deploy ballistic missile defense (BMD) interceptors and American troops on Romanian soil. Basescu laid out both the number of U.S troops who would be deployed – 200 – and the specific interceptor — the RIM-161 Standard Missile 3 (SM3). A land-based launcher for this successful sea-based interceptor is still in development, and while the newest version of the SM3 failed in its first test Thursday, the sea-based Aegis SM3 system has proven the most capable of U.S. BMD systems.

“For Warsaw and Prague, the BMD installations have nothing at all to do with ballistic missiles and everything to do with the American security guarantee.”
The Romanian president’s announcement cements Romania’s segment of the U.S. “European phased adaptive approach” — Washington’s replacement for the previous BMD scheme pursued under the administration of former U.S. President George W. Bush. The previous plan envisioned a version of the interceptors already operational in Alaska and California (though with a questionable track record) and their concrete silos in Poland, while an X-band radar installation would have been placed in the Czech Republic. Warsaw and especially Prague had high hopes for the Bush-era plan and still remain frustrated with its 2009 cancellation.

Their hopes had little to do with the threat of ballistic missiles — and certainly nothing to do with the threat of Iranian ballistic missiles that Washington used to justify the system in the first place. Tehran and its crude stockpile of missiles could not be farther from Central European minds. What countries like Poland and the Czech Republic seek is a long-term U.S. military personnel presence, and Washington’s consequent imperative to defend them. For Warsaw and Prague, in other words, the BMD installations have nothing at all to do with ballistic missiles and everything to do with the American security guarantee.

The withdrawal of the previous scheme, under pressure from a resurgent Russia, was precisely what the Central Europeans feared and why they desired fixed American military installations. Washington’s broken commitment has already cost it a measure of credibility, in terms of its allies’ perceptions, in the durability of the American security guarantee. This U.S. credibility question has played no small part in the emergence of the proposal for a Visegrad battlegroup independent of NATO and the United States.

The perception of the U.S. security guarantee is precisely what remains at stake with this new phased adaptive approach. However, it is not clear that all parties view the approach in the same way. If the credibility of the American security guarantee is in question, it is partly because of the lessons Washington took from the failure to place fixed installations in Poland and the Czech Republic. The United States learned that flexibility and redundancy are desirable in any deal. With the immense political pressure from the Kremlin on potential host countries and populations, as well as on more pressing American interests elsewhere in the world, expanding the range of options is certainly preferable. Consequently, while the United States has laid out a coherent scheme for the phased adaptive approach, improvements in weapons technology have allowed the inclusion of more mobile and dispersed components. Washington has also created a degree of ambiguity by waiting to formally sign specific deals.

This equivocation strengthens the plans to deploy a viable BMD system in Europe to defend the continental United States against an Iranian intercontinental ballistic missile (a weapon that does not yet exist). However, the consequence is a dimmed perception of American reliability among allies from Estonia to Romania, who are desperately seeking a firm, unambiguous demonstration of America’s commitment. To these allies, a U.S. demonstration of support is most important not when it is politically convenient, but when it is politically difficult.

This predicament is not lost on Russia. Both Moscow and Beijing have been refining their positions in order to make firm, unambiguous demonstrations of American commitment as politically inconvenient and difficult as possible. The issue was discussed Wednesday between Russian Defense Minister Anatoly Serdyukov and the U.S. Defense attache in Moscow.

For Moscow, the problem of BMD is twofold. Details aside, Washington is flirting with the Central Europeans who, unlike their Western brethren, are highly concerned about Russia’s military capabilities. A significantly more aggressive U.S. BMD stance would greatly challenge Moscow. Longer-term, as Russia’s population declines, it will come to rely increasingly on its nuclear arsenal to guarantee its sovereignty, security and territorial integrity. Therefore, no matter what assurances Moscow gleans from Washington concerning the current European scheme, the inexorable improvement in American BMD technology will increasingly challenge those promises.

Editor's Note: We asked a group of leading national security thinkers to respond to the question: Did the United States overreact to the 9/11 attacks? Here are their answers:

We Had to Address State Sponsors of Terror
We Can't Reform the Arab World
Afghanistan Should Have Been the Focus
Resilience vs. Revenge
Right Cause, Wrong Response
Even Obama Embraces Drones
Islamist Extremists Are Losing
..We Had to Address State Sponsors of Terror
By Paul Wolfowitz

After the attack on Pearl Harbor, Japanese-Americans were put in concentration camps. That there was no comparable overreaction after 9/11, and that we have been able to preserve a free and open society, owes much to the fact that for 10 years there has been no repetition of those terrible attacks.

Preventing further attacks required the U.S. to drop its law-enforcement approach to terrorism and recognize that we were at war. Consider the difference between Khalid Sheikh Mohammed—the mastermind of 9/11 who told us much of what we now know about al Qaeda—and his nephew Ramzi Yousef, the mastermind of the 1993 attack on the World Trade Center who can't be questioned (even most courteously) without his lawyer present and has told us nothing of significance. Or consider the difference between the ineffective retaliatory bombing of Afghanistan in 1998 and the 2001 response that brought down the Taliban regime.

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The Pentagon on Sept. 11, 2001
.We went to war with Germany in 1941 not because it had attacked Pearl Harbor but because it was dangerous. After 9/11, we had to do more to deal with state sponsors of terrorism than simply place them on a prohibited list, especially if they had connections to biological, chemical or nuclear weapons. Saddam Hussein—who was defying numerous United Nations resolutions and was the only head of a government to praise 9/11, warning that Americans should "suffer" so they will "find the right path"—presented such a danger.

That we made mistakes in Afghanistan and Iraq does not prove that we overreacted. (Costly mistakes were also made in World War II: sending poorly prepared troops to North Africa, failing to plan for the hedgerows beyond the beaches at Normandy, failing to anticipate the German counterattack in Belgium.) The real question is whether a significantly different response would have produced a better result.

Would massive strategic bombing of Afghanistan—the 1998 response on a larger scale—been enough to defeat al Qaeda? Would the failing sanctions against Iraq not have collapsed and left us today with a Saddam Hussein committed, as he told his FBI interrogator, "to reconstitute his entire WMD program"—chemical, biological and even nuclear? What about the Libyan WMDs that Moammar Gadhafi gave up after he saw Saddam's fate?

Unfortunately, after it turned out we had been wrong about the existence of WMD stockpiles in Iraq, some accused President Bush of having overreacted or, even worse, of having lied. Others charged that our overreaction "gave democracy a bad name." Nonsense. Tens of thousands of Arabs today are risking their lives in Syria and elsewhere, not for bin Laden's dream of a heavenly paradise but for freedom and democracy.

Mr. Wolfowitz, a visiting scholar at the American Enterprise Institute, served as deputy U.S. secretary of defense from 2001-05.


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.We Can't Reform the Arab World
By Mark Helprin

When this war was brought to us, deliberations should have centered upon the aims and execution of our response. Instead, we debated its justice, and thus "whether or not" rather than "how best." The question here at issue echoes this, as if to inquire about the power of a shot rather than if it has hit its target. The answer is that in the absence of strategic clarity we have lurched from one extreme to another.

We underreacted in failing to declare war and put the nation on a war footing, and thus overreacted in trumpeting hollow resolution. We underreacted in attempting quickly to subdue and pacify, with fewer than 200,000 soldiers, 50 million famously recalcitrant people in notoriously difficult terrain halfway around the world. We are left with 10,000 American dead here and abroad, a bitterly divided polity, a broken alliance structure, emboldened rivals abroad, and two fractious nations hostile to American interests with little changed from what they were before.

We overreacted by attempting to revolutionize the political culture—and therefore the religious laws with which it is inextricably bound—of a billion people who exist as if in another age. The "Arab Spring" is less a confirmation of this illusion than its continuance. If you think not, just wait.

We underreacted when we allowed our military capacities other than counterinsurgency to atrophy while China strains for military parity—something that the architects of our national security a decade ago thought laughable, now deny, and soon will hopelessly admit.

Rather than embarking upon the reformation of the Arab world, we should have fully geared up, sacrificed for, and resolved upon war. Then struck hard and brought down the regimes sheltering our enemies, set up strongmen, charged them with extirpating terrorists, and withdrawn from their midst to hover north of Riyadh in the network of bases the Saudis have built within striking distance of Baghdad and Damascus. There we might have watched our new clients do the work that since 9/11 we have only partially accomplished, and at a cost in lives, treasure, and heartbreak far greater than necessary.

Mr. Helprin, a senior fellow at the Claremont Institute, is the author of, among other works, "Winter's Tale" (Harcourt, 1983) and "A Soldier of the Great War" (Harcourt, 1992).


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.Afghanistan Should Have Been the Focus
By Robert C. McFarlane

The 9/11 attacks gave evidence of a well-financed, operationally capable organization committed to waging unrestricted war on Americans. It was imperative that our response eliminate those who planned the attack and destroy their capability to carry on. Yet our understandable haste in launching that counterattack on al Qaeda and its Taliban hosts foreclosed thorough analysis of at least two fundamental matters:

First, the enormous complexity, time and resources involved in forging a functional government, let alone an effective security system, in a diverse alien culture. And second, the latent tensions and instability that had been brewing for over a decade in Pakistan, the key ally on whom we would have to rely for logistic and intelligence support.

Related Video
 Editorial page editor Paul Gigot and deputy editorial page editor Dan Henninger reflect on 9/11.
..More deliberate consideration of such factors could have limited our mission to the destruction of al Qaeda and the formation of a coalition government in Afghanistan (that alone a daunting challenge). It also could have foreclosed consideration of launching a second concurrent war in Iraq, where similar challenges were bound to emerge. Iraq posed no threat to us: The decision to invade it was inspired by quixotic zeal and towering hubris—the belief that we could easily establish there a functioning and prosperous democracy as a model to be adopted throughout the Muslim world.

However ill-conceived politically, the war in Iraq has been executed extremely well militarily. After eight and a half years, we have helped the Iraqis dislodge a tyrant and take the first steps toward a pluralistic, accountable future. In short, much of that original purpose could well be achieved in the years ahead—if we don't forfeit the potential gains out of fatigue and overreach.

The U.S. has also made gains in its national security institutions, notably in special operations and intelligence. Given the relationship of these capabilities to the threats we will continue to face—plus our nation's fiscal realities—the impending restructuring of our military is beginning to take shape.

Mr. McFarlane, who served as President Reagan's national security adviser, is a senior adviser to the Foundation for Defense of Democracies.


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.Resilience vs. Revenge
By Anne-Marie Slaughter

It is possible to ask whether we overreacted to 9/11 only because of the hard and steady work of countless state, municipal and federal counterterrorism officials who have succeeded in preventing its repeat, or something even worse. After a decade without any such attacks (albeit with some near misses), and increasingly frequent and invasive security procedures permeating our daily lives, the costs of our reaction may be more immediately evident than the benefits. But another attack would change that calculus overnight.

One way in which Americans have overreacted, however, is emotionally—by assuming, as we so often do, that our experience of terrorism was qualitatively different from the experience of Europeans, Indonesians, Indians, Africans and others. We have since watched and admired the courage and determination of the British after coordinated attacks on subways and buses in July 2005, and of the Indians after the 10 coordinated shooting and bombing attacks in Mumbai in November 2008.

The world likewise watched the many acts of bravery and heroism on 9/11, from firefighters and police to the group of passengers who rushed the cockpit on United Flight 93. But as a society we were unable to resume business as usual in the way that the British and Indians and many others have done. Because the sensation of vulnerability to violent attack on American soil was so new to us, we gave the terrorists the satisfaction of knowing that they had changed our lives dramatically.

The lesson here is the power of resilience over revenge. As emotionally satisfying as the killing of Osama bin Laden and the attacks on other al Qaeda leaders are, in the long run they are a less effective response to terrorism than enhancing the resilience of our infrastructure, our economy and our people. If we are prepared for an attack and can return to normal as quickly as possible. even while grieving—with our planes flying, our markets open, and our heads high—we can diminish the impact and hence the value of that attack in the first place.

Ms. Slaughter, a professor of politics and international affairs at Princeton University, served as the director of Policy Planning at the State Department from 2009-11.

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.Right Cause, Wrong Response
By Zbigniew Brzezinski

It was natural that the brutal murder of 2,700 Americans would provoke not only public outrage but precipitate a very strong national response. Unfortunately, that response lacked strategic coherence and political wisdom. A vaguely generalized global war on jihadist terror made it easier for the terrorists to portray America as hostile to all of Islam, while the U.S. military response eventually devolved into two separate campaigns.

At the time, I strongly supported the decision to go into Afghanistan in order to wipe out the culprits and to overthrow the regime that sheltered them. But I also urged, both in a high-level meeting and in a note to the secretary of defense, that we shouldn't repeat the mistake made by the Soviets, who became bogged down in an ideologically driven effort to remake Afghanistan by force of arms.

I also argued in this newspaper shortly after 9/11 that the U.S. should focus on the political dimension of the terrorist challenge, seeking to isolate the terrorists by gaining the support of Arab governments through broader regional cooperation.

The Bush administration didn't heed these warnings. Making matters worse, it then downgraded the military effort in Afghanistan with the largely solitary U.S. invasion of Iraq, which was undertaken without the political benefit of Arab allies that the U.S. enjoyed back in 1991. The U.S. government sought support for that additional war through top-level demagogy about the potential "mushroom cloud," and by claims of biological agents allegedly secreted in mobile trailers. Neither such nuclear nor biological weapons turned out to have existed. The resulting damage to U.S. credibility handicaps American diplomacy to this day, especially in regard to Iran.

At home, meanwhile, acts of prejudice against American Muslims became more frequent, while abroad anti-American sentiments in Muslim countries became more widespread. Ten years after 9/11, the future of Afghanistan is still in doubt, Iran is increasingly influential in Iraq, and U.S. influence in the Middle East is at its lowest point since America's major entry into the region after World War II.

The cause was right; the response was inept.

Mr. Brzezinski was national security adviser in the Carter administration.

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.Even Obama Embraces Drones
By Leon Wieseltier

We responded to the atrocities of September 11 with a mess of reactions. Some of them were excessive, some of them were not.

The excess was Iraq. If our leaders launched that war because they were certain that Saddam Hussein possessed weapons of mass destruction, then their incompetence was historically scandalous. If they launched it as a "demonstration war," to frighten enemies who might be emboldened by the terrorist triumph on September 11 to attack us again, then they failed: The war opened a new anti-American front for al Qaeda in the Middle East.

I was deceived in my support of the Iraq war, but I rejoice in the dictator's destruction, and in the stirrings of Iraqi democracy despite the best efforts of Islamists and Iranians to thwart it. Good outcomes may come of bad origins.

Yet our other military responses to September 11 seem to me justified. I have no difficulty with the "war on terrorism," as a concept or a policy. We appear to have almost completely decimated al Qaeda, or at least Osama bin Laden's main branch of it. President Obama's relentless drone campaign against terrorist havens in Pakistan, and his somewhat surprising willingness to use covert operations as an instrument in that struggle, stands as one of his few accomplishments in foreign policy.

I believe in ferocity in self-defense; in intelligent ferocity. Now new formations of al Qaeda have been established in southern Arabia and eastern Africa—this is not surprising: jihadist culture is not primarily a response to our responses—and we must confront them, too.

As a corollary of our proper retaliation against al Qaeda, moreover, we emancipated Afghanistan from a primitive theocratic tyranny. But the president's current plan in Afghanistan seems incoherent to me, and I have given up on Afghanistan's willingness to fight for itself. We have worked at it for 10 years, but there is no Afghan Spring. From the standpoint of counterterrorism, the Af-Pak problem is more Pak than Af.

And I have one other anxiety: that we will overreact to our "overreaction." If we conclude, as we are everywhere counseled to do, that the time has come for the United States to recede from the forefront of history, we will compromise and injure ourselves, and our allies, and all freedom-seeking people around the world.

Mr. Wieseltier is literary editor of the New Republic.


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.Islamist Extremists Are Losing
By Joe Lieberman

It has become fashionable to characterize the American response to the attacks of 9/11 as an overreaction, but this view is profoundly mistaken. The U.S. response to the attacks, and to the broader challenge of Islamist extremism, has been necessary and justified. We were right to recognize that 9/11, made us a "nation at war" with an enemy that is real, evil and violent, and we were right to put this conflict at the top of our national security agenda. Had we not done so, it is likely we would not have the luxury today of debating whether we overreacted.

That we have gone a decade without another major terrorist strike on American soil hasn't been for lack of trying by our enemies. Our increased security has required bipartisan determination across two presidencies, far-reaching reforms to our homeland security institutions, and difficult, dangerous work by countless heroic individuals around the world. We have taken the offensive overseas with focus and ferocity our enemies did not expect, building the most capable and lethal counterterrorism forces in human history. The result is that violent Islamist extremists have achieved no significant victories in the last decade.

Have we made mistakes since 9/11? Of course—just as every nation always has in war. But as we look back over the past 10 years, a lot more went right than wrong.

Among the lessons of the past decade is that we still live in a dangerous and unpredictable world. Despite the gains we have made, current geopolitical realities do not justify either a sense of complacency or closure about the world-wide war we are in. Our nation will face surprises again. In order to stay safe at home, the U.S. must remain engaged abroad, and—despite budgetary pressures—make the necessary investments to keep our military and other instruments of national power strong.

In addition, contrary to the current national pessimism, America has demonstrated since 9/11 that we remain a remarkably strong and resilient country, with people who are capable of bravery, ingenuity and resolve. When we pull together, we are able to achieve things no other country in the world can—and the best example of this is the new "greatest generation" who have chosen to serve our country in uniform during this past decade.

We do not know how long this conflict will last, but we can be certain of how it will end—in the triumph of our values, with the ideology of Islamist extremism joining fascism and communism on the ash heap of history.

Mr. Lieberman is an Independent Democratic senator from Connecticut.

With the moves in the UN that will give observer status to Gaza-West Bank (and the right to sit on various bodies such as the Human Rights Council if I am not mistaken), the Turks apparently planning to challenge the blockade of Gaza and the Israeli development of natural gas off its coastline, the apparent trajectory in Egypt towards ending the peace treaty, and Baraq Hussein Obowma in the White House, the prognosis is grim indeed.

Like that animal in Dr. Doolittle that had a head at each end (Pushme-pullyou?) both of these guys are mouth.  Lacking an anus explains why they are full of excrement.

Summary
Militants detonated an improvised explosive device outside the Delhi High Court on Sept. 7. Though Harkat-ul-Jihad e-Islami (HUJI) claimed responsibility, the attack was more likely carried out by an undefined network composed of the remnants of regional transnational militant groups that oppose the Indian government. Someone claiming to represent HUJI said the attack was staged to demand the death sentence of a Kashmiri militant involved in the 2001 attack on the Indian parliament be revoked, and this incident may complicate plans for the Indian government, which has been reluctant to carry out the execution for fear of a militant backlash.

Analysis
An improvised explosive device (IED) went off Sept. 7 near the reception line at the High Court in New Delhi, India. More than 100 people were waiting in line between Gate 4 and Gate 5 to obtain entry passes to the court to have their cases heard. According to officials, the blast killed 11 people and wounded 76 others. No judges were among the victims. Witnesses claim a man carrying a briefcase jumped to the front of the line before the device detonated. The investigation was quickly turned over to the National Investigation Agency, established after the 2008 Mumbai attacks. A top security official said a search for the culprit is under way, and security forces are surveilling all roads out of the city.

The attack is similar to other attacks recently witnessed in India; it was not an armed assault, and it was not a suicide bombing. Rather, it was a simple attack on a soft target, more akin to groups with indigenous capabilities such as the Indian Mujahideen, which is known to have connections with other militants that are or once were part of LeT. According to an email from a purported representative of Islamist militant group Harkat-ul-Jihad e-Islami (HUJI), the attack was staged to demand the death sentence of a Kashmiri militant involved in the 2001 attack on the Indian parliament be revoked. Regardless of the veracity of that email, the claim could complicate the handling of the case by the Indian government, which has been reluctant to carry out the execution due to concerns of a possible militant backlash. Additionally, the Sept. 7 attack demonstrates a sustained level of indigenous militant capabilities, itself a worrying sign for New Delhi.

According to a police official, the blast took place outside the “controlled area” of the building at around 10:15 a.m., leaving a crater three to four meters (nine to 13 feet) deep. NDTV reported there were traces of ammonium nitrate. It is unclear whether there was a security cordon in front of the reception area or if the reception area was the first security checkpoint. What is clear is that the reception area was a softer target and thus more vulnerable to attack. (Two lawyers at the court said the scanner and the metal detector at Gate 5 had been inoperable since Sept. 6.)

Like past Indian Mujahideen attacks, the device utilized ammonium nitrate-based improvised explosives, was directed against a soft target, was concealed in a small container and left in a crowded area. It also was detonated via a timer rather than being a command-detonated suicide device. A similar attack was attempted on the same court May 25, with Indian officials later reporting the IED was a bag that contained 1.5 to 2 kilograms (3.3 to 4.4 pounds), had ammonium nitrate, a detonator attached to a timer and about 50 nails. It caused no casualties and damaged a car. In the wake of the attack, Indian media have speculated the earlier attack may have been a test case for the Sept. 7 attack, which is certainly possible, but it was more likely a failed attack.

Someone claiming to be a representative of HUJI allegedly wrote an email to the National Investigation Agency taking responsibility for the bombing, though this claim has yet to be verified. In the email, HUJI threatened to continue attacks against Indian courts if they did not revoke the death sentence of Kashmiri militant Afzal Guru, also known as Mohammad Afzal, who was convicted for his role in the attack on the Indian parliament in 2001.

It is possible that HUJI carried out the Sept. 7 attack on its own, but a more likely explanation is that local militants conducted the attack at the behest of transnational anti-Indian militants who lack the ability to conduct attacks against the India government on their own. This network is not clearly defined, but it includes HUJI, or former members of the organization, Lashkar-e-Taiba, Jaish-e-Mohammed and al Qaeda. The same network was responsible for the  2011 Mumbai attacks, and it is not a centralized group or command structure; rather, it is a new coordination of groups that formally existed prior to 2001. Due to crackdowns in Pakistan, militant group dynamics in the region and disagreements over targets, it has collaborated in different ways. It appears that this network has successfully created an indigenous capability inside India.

The Afzal issue has been a contentious one in India since the Supreme Court sentenced him to death in 2004. The Indian government has been reluctant to follow through on the sentence for fear of a militant backlash. It is not yet clear if the Sept. 7 attack will cause the government to further balk at executing Afzal, given that the alleged perpetrators threatened to attack courts in the future unless it revoked the sentence. That little is known about the network that conducted the attack may add to the government’s reluctance to see the Afzal execution through.



Read more: India: Militants Attack Delhi High Court | STRATFOR

 

TOKYO—The Japanese government initially underestimated radiation releases from the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant, in part because of untimely rain, and so exposed people unnecessarily, a report released this week by a government research institute says.

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An aerial view of the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Station as seen on March 24, 2011.
.Adding to earlier evidence of initial government missteps, the report by the Japan Atomic Energy Agency says an unlucky combination of heavy rains and shifting winds meant that much of the airborne radioactive debris washed down over a broad area around the crippled plant. Before the changing weather, the radiation had been expected to drift over the Pacific Ocean, which would have posed less of a risk to public health, at least in the short term.

"Local residents would have stayed indoors and avoided radiation if they had been told about the dangers of the rainfall," said Tetsuo Sawada, assistant professor of reactor engineering at the Tokyo Institute of Technology.

The Japanese government's initial evacuation zone—after the March 11 earthquake and tsunami knocked out the plant's cooling systems and caused core meltdowns—was within 20 kilometers (about 12 miles) of the stricken plant. But as the study highlights, radiation spread far beyond the 20-kilometer radius, with rainstorms contributing to the ground contamination.

According to the agency, the rain came on the worst possible day for plant operators—March 15, the day an explosion struck the plant's No. 2 reactor, punching a large hole in the suppression chamber that is part of the primary containment vessel, the main shield for radiation releases. The gash allowed toxic air to leak into the atmosphere without check.

According to the government's Nuclear and Industrial Safety Agency, radiation releases peaked around that day, dropping as workers managed to cool down the badly damaged No. 2 unit, as well as the other three seriously damaged reactors.

"If there was no rain on March 15, the ground contamination would have been far less severe than it is," said Haruyasu Nagai, an author of the report.

Two earlier explosions, just after the disaster, at reactors Nos. 1 and 3, didn't release nearly as much radiation because they occurred outside the primary containment vessels. The explosion at No. 2, by contrast, was caused by a buildup of pressure inside the containment vessel, as the overheating reactor kept producing steam.

The rain started falling in areas around the plant in the afternoon of March 15. At the same time, the wind, which had been heading east—as is normal for the season—shifted and started heading northwest, carrying the toxic air deep into the country.

By the time the rain stopped, a large swath of land to the northwest of the plant, well beyond the 20-kilometer radius, was contaminated far more than allowed for human habitation. In late April, the government belatedly decided to evacuate residents in these areas.

"Much of the radioactive substance would have been carried into the ocean on an easterly wind eventually," says the report's author, who estimates about half of the radiation released in March ended up falling into the ocean.

Asked about the latest report, a spokesman for the nuclear-safety agency said the results appeared to be valid. "The radiation is likely to have spread as the JAEA analysis suggests," Yoshinori Moriyama said.

For the record I live some 15-20 miles from Santa Monica.  I drive a 21 year old truck and make my living teaching martial arts.   

http://www.theblaze.com/stories/ap-fact-check-obamas-jobs-plan-paid-for-seems-not/

   

The Foundation
"The natural progress of things is for liberty to yield and government to gain ground." --Thomas Jefferson


Government & Politics
Obama's Speech Job

In case you were busy washing your hair, rewinding your CDs or getting a root canal last night, Barack Obama gave a speech. Yes, another one, and with warmed-over recycled ideas, to boot. He made sure we all knew his speech was about jobs because he used the word "jobs" 44 times. (Given his narcissism, we wonder if that number was intentional.) Indeed, he centered the speech on his "American Jobs Act," which, by the way, aims to create jobs. He hasn't yet sent an actual bill to Congress, though he called for Congress to "pass this bill right away" (or some variant) 17 times, but ... jobs.

In the spirit of bipartisan comity, we'll start by lauding something with which we agreed: "Those of us here tonight can't solve all of our nation's woes," the president said. "Ultimately, our recovery will be driven not by Washington, but by our businesses and our workers." We couldn't have said it better. Government doesn't create jobs; it can only create conditions under which the economy can flourish. Unfortunately, it was downhill from there, because Obama's very next sentence began, "But..."

Obama repeatedly framed his proposals as "nothing controversial" because "everything in here" has already been proposed by "both Democrats and Republicans." We hate to disagree, but nearly everything in the speech was controversial. From tax hikes on job creators in exchange for gimmicky tax credits, to more money dumped into the bottomless pit of education and infrastructure, to the very premise that government must grow in order for the economy to grow -- the ideas presented last night were the wrong ones.

Taxes were a major theme, but instead of proposing permanently lower rates and a broader base -- something that would actually work -- the president called for more temporary complications and supposed sweeteners. Obama said that Congress must extend the temporary payroll tax cut they passed last year, because, he warned, "If we allow that tax cut to expire -- if we refuse to act -- middle-class families will get hit with a tax increase at the worst possible time." That's interesting: A tax cut expiration is a tax increase. Funny how that didn't apply to the Bush tax cuts, which were good for 10 years, not just one. And funny how it doesn't apply to increasing the taxes of job creators "at the worst possible time." Indeed, that was his next proposal.

"[T]here are many Republicans who don't believe we should raise taxes on those who are most fortunate and can best afford it," he said, but, "We need a tax code where everyone gets a fair shake, and everybody pays their fair share. And I believe the vast majority of wealthy Americans and CEOs are willing to do just that, if it helps the economy grow and gets our fiscal house in order." Of course, "everybody" means the top 2 percent. He then declared with a straight face, "This isn't class warfare." Republicans in the chamber gave him the only appropriate response: laughter.

Estimates are that this stimulus package as proposed would cost about $447 billion. That's about half of the first stimulus, and we saw how well that worked. (Little wonder that Democrats have stricken the word "stimulus" from the lexicon.) How on earth will another few hundred billion dollars suddenly fix anything? "Everything in this bill will be paid for. Everything," Obama insisted, but how?

First of all, through the aforementioned tax increases on a select and punishable few. Primarily, however, Obama wants the debt reduction committee, created in the debt ceiling deal to find $1.5 trillion in savings over 10 years, to come up with even more savings, again over 10 years. In other words, let's spend another $450 billion now and have future presidents and Congresses pay for it later. Also, "a week from Monday," Obama will release "a more ambitious deficit plan." If this all wasn't so preposterous, it would've been another laugh line.

Obama also mocked those who think that government is too big. He trotted out his predictable straw-man arguments about Republicans wanting to cut "most government spending" or eliminating "most government regulations." He certainly intends to fight hard for the new floor of government spending and regulation he has established. He may offer a concession here or there, but by and large the damage has already been done. Even rolling back to the bloated and costly -- but still far smaller and cheaper -- government of 2008 will be impossible while he occupies the White House. Finally, there's a big difference between limited government and no government. It is the former that we must seek.

Just how half-baked was this speech?
On Cross-Examination
The Heritage Foundation's policy experts offered their responses to Obama's proposals, from refinancing mortgages to infrastructure spending and tax gimmicks.

The Cato Institute explains in an outstanding video why Keynesian government spending won't actually help.

Open Query
"What here hasn't already been tried and failed before?" --GOP presidential candidate Michele Bachmann


On the Campaign Trail: The GOP Debate
Eight of the Republican presidential candidates gathered at the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library Wednesday night for the first of five fall debates. All eyes were on newly entered candidate Rick Perry. The Texas governor, who spent the week in his state managing wildfire response, is not the slickest debater in the field. That honor would likely go to Mitt Romney or Newt Gingrich. Yet Perry did well enough to solidify his status as the new frontrunner. Michele Bachmann, on the other hand, performed well but continued to fade after Perry's entrance took a huge bite out of her support. Of course, with the media placing Perry and Romney front and center and focusing most of their attention on the two pack-leaders, everyone else on the stage took a backseat. That's what they get for allowing MSNBC to carry the debate.

Some observations about the other candidates: Jon Huntsman continued his disappointing run to the left, apparently under the mistaken impression that independents and Democrats will decide the Republican primary. He will not win the nomination on this course.

Newt Gingrich won't win the nomination, but he won some points in the debate by attacking the moderators for their inane questions. He correctly pointed out that any candidate on the stage would be better than Barack Obama, and that they are in a sense a team working toward winning the White House.

Herman Cain is still struggling to get noticed, and he missed a golden opportunity immediately after Gingrich's answer to attack Obama, instead choosing to attack Romney. He wasn't wrong, but he seemed to have completely missed what Gingrich said and failed to play off of it.

Rick Santorum also won't win the nomination, but wins the award for stupidest question asked of him by the moderators: Where do the poor fit among Republicans? The implication is that Republicans don't care about the poor. Unfortunately, Santorum's answer -- talking in the third person about how much he has done for the poor -- wasn't the best answer.

Ron Paul's contribution is that he leaves no stone unturned, no orthodoxy unchallenged and no candidate unassailed. His questions and points are important for conservatives to consider in fine-tuning positions and policies. All the same, he won't be the nominee. (Yeah, we know -- we might as well be Soviets for saying so.)

In fact, unless something changes drastically, this race is between Rick Perry and Mitt Romney.

Quote of the Week
"If 10 percent is good enough for God, 9 percent should be good enough for government." --Herman Cain at the GOP presidential debate Wednesday night

What did you think of the debate?
This Week's 'Alpha Jackass' Award
Whatever happened to civility? Democrats were certainly quick to call for it when Rep. Gabrielle Giffords (D-AZ) was shot, along with several others, in Tucson in January. In spite of the facts, the Left blamed the Right for heated political rhetoric. Yet when a union leader spews hatred and calls for "war," Democrats suddenly don't mind so much.

"We gotta keep an eye on the battle that we face: A war on workers. And you see it everywhere, it is the Tea Party," thundered Teamster president Jimmy Hoffa Jr. at a Labor Day rally. "They got a war, they got a war with us and there's only going to be one winner. It's going to be the workers of Michigan, and America. We're gonna win that war." Then he promised, "President Obama, this is your army. We are ready to march. Let's take these son of a b-----s [sic] out and give America back to an America where we belong."

Not only was he vulgar, but he also botched the grammar.

Barack Obama took the stage later, saying he was "proud" of Hoffa and other labor leaders. The White House and other Democrat leaders have pointedly refused on multiple occasions to repudiate or even question Hoffa's words. Hoffa himself doubled down, later insisting that he would say it again "because I believe it. They've declared war on us. We didn't declare war on them, they declared war on us. We're fighting back. The question is, who started the war?" Maybe that's why 500 union members in Seattle stormed the Port of Longview with baseball bats and crowbars taking six security guards hostage over hiring objections.

Speaking of a war on "them," the newest rage on Internet is a video game called "Tea Party Zombies Must Die," in which the player kills zombie versions of the Left's favorite conservative bogeymen. "DON'T GET TEA-BAGGED!" reads the description. "The Tea Party zombies are walking the streets of America. Grab your weapons and bash their rotten brains to bits! Destroy zombie Sarah Palin, Michele Bachmann, Glenn Beck, the Koch Brothers, and many more!" (National Review's Daniel Foster has screenshots.) We're just glad to see the juveniles on the Left channeling their angst in such productive ways.

Hope 'n' Change: ObamaCare Wins With Stacked Deck
The Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals upheld ObamaCare Thursday, overturning a lower court's decision in favor of the state of Virginia. The Fourth Circuit ruled that Virginia lacked standing in the case, though at least two judges would have upheld it on the "merits." The Sixth Circuit Court likewise upheld the law earlier this year, though the 11th Circuit Court struck down the individual mandate last month as unconstitutional. Although the Fourth Circuit is roughly evenly divided between Republican and Democrat appointees, this particular three-judge panel consisted of one Clinton appointee and two appointed by Obama. Certainly not a fair hearing. Again, the bottom line is that ObamaCare is headed to the Supreme Court.

New & Notable Legislation
House Republicans are working on legislation that will block a recent proposed ruling by the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) regarding unionization. The ruling speeds up the process of union elections, offering little time for employers and workers to debate union organization. The U.S. Chamber of Commerce and other business groups have blasted the ruling as an infringement on workers' rights. Another bill has been drafted to keep the NLRB in check by preventing the board from ordering a company to relocate its employees. Senate Republicans have vowed to block any nominations to the NLRB until these issues are resolved.

From the Left: Politicizing Hurricanes
Congressional Democrats manufactured a scandal out of thin air this week, blaming House Majority Leader Eric Cantor for blocking disaster funding in the wake of Hurricane Irene. There haven't been many stories about people being denied aid, however, because it's simply not the case. Yet Democrats are charging that Cantor is doing exactly that. On the contrary, the GOP added $1 billion to FEMA's Disaster Relief Fund in June, and offset the increase by cutting spending on the Advanced Technology Vehicles Manufacturing Program, a liberal pet project to create luxury electric cars. Cantor has noted on separate occasions that the federal government plays too large a role in disaster relief, but, despite Democrats' claims, his efforts to fund FEMA have been more generous than even the White House proposed. The only thing he's guilty of is hobbling Joe Biden's dream project to create electric cars that nobody will buy anyway.

 
Click Here 

 So Help Me God
Shop our wide selection of military field Bibles, granite Decalogue tablets, devotional reading, inspirational coins and much more! Don't miss great savings on select items on sale now! Support our forces with an uplifting gift that will strengthen their hearts and souls for the fight!
 


National Security
Warfront With Jihadistan: Iraq Withdrawal on Steroids
Seeking to shore up plummeting poll numbers and pander to its anti-military base, the Obama regime is reportedly set to drastically reduce U.S. troop strength in Iraq to just 3,000 by year's end, a major reduction in strength in the still highly volatile country. When asked about this report, Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta tried to sidestep, saying "no decision has been made" on the number of troops to stay in Iraq, but multiple sources confirm that Obama has already made the decision.

There are currently about 45,000 U.S. troops in Iraq. American commanders recommended a somewhat lower number to remain there by year's end, but the Obama regime, ever thinking of 2012, whined about "the cost and the political optics" of that many troops remaining in Iraq. U.S. commanders then further reduced their recommendation to 10,000, saying that number could work "in extremis," meaning in reality our troops would be hard pressed to continue training Iraqi forces while also maintaining security in large sections of Iraq. Still, even that low troop level was too much for Obama.

U.S. commanders are rightly angry. "We can't secure everybody with only 3,000 on the ground, nor can we do what we need to with the Iraqis," argued one. Another senior military official said that by reducing the number of troops to 3,000, the Obama regime has effectively reduced the U.S. mission in Iraq to training only, at best, while leaving a still-insufficient Iraqi security force to fend for themselves, all of which will endanger the remaining 3,000 U.S. troops -- for nothing more than supposed political gain.

Thankfully, there was some good news for our troops, as August marked the first month since March 2003 that not one U.S. military member died in either combat or non-hostile circumstances while supporting Iraqi operations. Sadly, Obama's latest move seems destined to ensure that August will be the last month we lose no troops in Iraq, at least until he completely surrenders Iraq and brings the handful of remaining troops home.

What will withdrawal from Iraq mean?

Second post

Agenda: With George Friedman on Turkish-Israeli Relations
September 9, 2011 | 1359 GMT
Click on image below to watch video:



STRATFOR CEO Dr. George Friedman explains the deterioration of the long-standing relationship between Israel and Turkey and how both sides’ geopolitical interests will affect whether that relationship can be re-established.


Editor’s Note: Transcripts are generated using speech-recognition technology. Therefore, STRATFOR cannot guarantee their complete accuracy.

Related Links
Ankara’s Tougher Regional Stance
Colin: The once close relationship between Turkey and Israel has deteriorated further after a United Nations legal panel report on an incident in May last year, when a Turkish aid convoy to Gaza was attacked by Israeli forces, resulting in the death of nine Turkish activists. The report upheld the Israeli government’s right to impose the blockade, but criticized the troops for excessive force. Turkey has now cut all military ties to Israel, and the relationship seems to be in tatters.

Welcome to Agenda with George Friedman. Two questions: to what extent does the U.N. report really escalate the problems between Israel and Turkey; and to what extent does that matter?

George: I don’t think the report itself escalates the situation in any direction. It simply creates a moment in which the crisis that occurred a year ago during a flotilla incident resumes. I think that really the problem between Israel and Turkey hasn’t been resolved — it’s been put on hold — and it really doesn’t revolve around either the flotilla or apologies. It really revolves around the question of whether Turkey and Israel can maintain their relationship they maintained during the Cold War and the years immediately after it. The world has changed fairly dramatically since the Cold War. The region in which Turkey operates is no longer threatened by the Soviet Union. It doesn’t have a common interest with Israel in fighting the Soviets. Turkey is living in a world that is increasingly Islamist as opposed to secular. It’s accommodating itself to it. Israel, in the meantime, has its own interests in trying to preserve what it thinks are its territorial interests, and they simply don’t coincide with what Turkey is saying. Therefore, these are two countries that were once linked with common interests. Those interests have withered, and the relationship is seriously in trouble.

Colin: In this context, do you think Israel and Turkey can repair their relationship and, if they can, what will that new relationship be?

George: Well this is not like a marriage that gets repaired or unrepaired. These are more like businesses who have interests and the question is: will those interest realign? And there are certainly some common interests, though they’re not as deep as they were 20 or 30 years ago. Because the foundation of the relationship has changed, the nature of the relationship is going to change. Also, the tolerance on the part of each side is going to change. From the Israeli point of view, the Turks have changed to becoming unrecognizable, they say. It used to be a secular republic, and they fear that it has become a religious one. From the Turkish point of view, the Israelis have become inflexible and unrealistic in their policies inside the Palestinian Territories 3.18, and the Israelis have simply not been willing to change their visions. So you have two countries — the basis of the relationship having very much dissolved in the past years — each having a view of the other as having changed irrevocably and neither really desperately needing the other. If you look at it on balance, Israel probably needs Turkey more than Turkey needs Israel simply because if Turkey were to throw its weight behind anti-Israeli forces in the region, which it has not done to this point, that would represent a serious challenge to Israel. On the other hand, there is relatively little that Israel can do to Turkey, certainly not in order to change its foreign policy. So you have had deterioration in the relationship. It is hard to imagine it being repaired, certainly not on the basis of which it was before and certainly not to the depth at which it operated before. And also there is a suspicion on both sides that the other has drifted in directions that are not acceptable.

Colin: The relationship degrades. To what extent will this affect Turkey’s relationship with the United States?

George: Well, Turkey is trying very hard not to allow its relationship with the United States to be affected by its problems with Israel. It has gone out of its way to try to draw a distinction between the two. The United States frankly needs Turkey a great deal, particularly as it withdrawals from Iraq, as Iran becomes more assertive in the region. It needs a Turkey that is prepared to align with the United States. Turkey, on the other hand, is not prepared to go it alone yet. It is not in a position to police the region, if you will, simply without U.S. support. So the Turks are trying to be very careful with the Americans to make it very clear that the cause of this rift comes from Israel and Israel’s unwillingness to apologize; Israel’s unwillingness to accept Turkey as it is today; Israel’s intransigence. The Israelis, at the same time, are very aggressive in trying to make it clear that Turkey has moved into the camp of the enemy of the United States by joining with the Islamists and trying to make the case that it alone is the only secure ally the United States has in the region. Those are public relations campaigns. The fact of the matter is that United States has uses for both countries. The use of Israel is certainly declined over the years since the end of the Cold War, but it still has uses in intelligence sharing and other matters, whereas Turkey is an ascendant power and, as an ascendant power, the United States is going to want to have a close relationship with it. The United States is not going to choose between Turkey and Israel and it won’t allow itself to be maneuvered in that direction. But, on the other hand, it is also not going to allow itself to be split off from either country by the other.

Colin: And this begs another question. With much of the Middle East in turmoil, especially its other neighbor, Syria, isn’t there an opportunity for Turkey to assert itself — to take some kind of leadership role?

George: Well, a leadership role is one of those things that people love to use. With leadership comes responsibility; with responsibility comes decisions; and with decisions comes possibility of error and bogging down. So, everybody likes the idea of leadership. The question is: what’s the price for it? Now I think the Turks, very reasonably, are looking around at a region that the United States wasn’t able to pacify, and it doesn’t have the appetite to get engaged in that. For example, it doesn’t know what the price of pacifying Syria would be; it doesn’t know what the future would hold, and, therefore, it evades it. Leadership is a very heavy burden, and the Turks are not going to adopt that before they’re ready.

Colin: George, we’ll leave it there. Thank you. George Friedman, ending this week’s Agenda. Back again next week and, until then, bye for now.

The natural results of the Dems continuous war against US success in Iraq come to their natural conclusion.
============

U.S. Military Presence in Iraq Will Struggle to Counter Iran

Most U.S. officials Tuesday and Wednesday denied that any decision had been made regarding the number of American troops that might remain in Iraq beyond the end-of-year deadline for complete withdrawal stipulated under the current Status of Forces Agreement (SOFA). However, The New York Times reported Tuesday that newly appointed U.S. Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta supported a plan keeping 3,000-4,000 troops as the continued U.S. military presence in Iraq— a number far less than previously discussed. Only a day after the Times report which cited an unnamed senior military official, U.S. Ambassador to Iraq James Jeffery went a step further than most in responding to the leak. The ambassador rejected the given figure as having ‘no official status or credibility.’

“The continued maintenance of U.S. forces in Iraq is ultimately merely a symptom of the larger, unresolved issue of Tehran’s increasing regional influence.”
Washington is less concerned with Iraq itself, and more with how the changes in Iraq following the U.S. invasion have affected Iran. Despite the accommodation reached with the Sunnis in 2006 and the successes of the surge of 2007, no extension of U.S. troop presence in Iraq is going to change the fact that Iran has been the single biggest beneficiary of the 2003 U.S. invasion of Iraq. Iran has seen a rapid rise in the magnitude of its regional influence — and has every intention of keeping it.

Despite domestic politics at home, the U.S. desire to maintain some military presence in Iraq beyond the end of the year is motivated by Iran’s increased influence. Tehran’s regional rise is a problem to which Washington has no ready solution — unless, of course, Washington wants to engage in a politically unpalatable rapprochement with the Persians from a disadvantageous negotiating position.

Thus, Washington is left with an unresolved and, at least in the near term, unsolvable problem — an increase in Iranian power, not just in Iraq, but  across the Persian Gulf and the wider region. Iraq benefits from direct military-to-military relations with the United States through training, advising and assistance (particularly with things like planning, logistics and maintenance) and modern arms. These ties provide Iraq and its security forces with capabilities they would otherwise lack. For Washington, a residual military force in Iraq helps maintain the influence, leverage and situational awareness that having its personnel in these positions provides. This capability is not something Washington wants to lose, particularly after longstanding American-Egyptian military-to-military relations proved so crucial in communicating with Cairo in February.

While the benefits to Washington of a continued military presence in Iraq are real — starting with its impact on Washington’s influence in Baghdad — they do little to address the larger problem of Iranian power in the region. Even if tens of thousands of troops remained in Iraq beyond 2011, they could not halt the decline of American influence and power in Iraq vis-a-vis Iran.

While the question of the size, role and disposition of any U.S. military contingent in Iraq beyond 2011 is an important one, the continued maintenance of forces in Iraq is ultimately merely a symptom of the larger, unresolved issue of Tehran’s increasing regional influence. Even if no American uniformed forces remain save a Marine Security Guard detachment and attache personnel at the embassy, the United States will still be maintaining the largest diplomatic presence in the world in Iraq. Nevertheless, no quantity of U.S. forces currently under discussion — not 3,000 and not even 30,000 — will change the fact that this American presence, while attempting to hold the line against Persian influence, leaves personnel and troops vulnerable to Iranian proxies and covert Iranian forces in the country.

By JAY SOLOMON in Washington and JOSHUA MITNICK in Ramallah

Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas rebuffed a last-ditch U.S. push aimed at getting him to back away from his campaign to win Palestinian statehood through a United Nations vote, placing Washington and Ramallah on a potential collision course in the months ahead.

On Thursday, Mr. Abbas recommitted to his plan to pursue the U.N. vote this month, following a meeting in the West Bank the previous day with two senior Obama administration officials. These officials explicitly warned the Palestinian leader that his relations with the U.S. could sour if he followed through on his initiative, according to diplomats briefed on the meeting.

The two American diplomats, the White House's Dennis Ross and special Middle East peace envoy David Hale, specifically pointed Mr. Abbas to threats made by the U.S. Congress to cut American financial assistance to the Palestinian Authority as a result of the U.N. initiative, according to these diplomats.

Messrs. Ross and Hale also told the Palestinian leader that the U.N. vote could undermine security in the Palestinian territories and potentially derail longer-term hopes for Mideast peace, as Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu will likely disengage and harden his government's position toward the Palestinian Authority, according to these diplomats.

"The U.N. route is not an option," the American diplomats said, according to an official briefed on the exchange.

Mr. Abbas confirmed during a news briefing in Ramallah on Thursday that the U.S. has been exerting growing pressure on him to back away from his U.N. strategy. But he said he still planned to introduce a resolution to the Security Council this month asking that the 15-nation body recognize Palestine as a sovereign state, despite repeated U.S. statements that it will veto the measure.
"They talked about some sort of confrontation, which means there will be a big difference between'' the Palestinians and the U.S., Mr. Abbas said. "I am in need of their help. I will keep my relations normal-style with them. But if they don't want that, of course, it's up to America."

U.S. officials acknowledged Thursday they have been increasing pressure on Mr. Abbas. The State Department said U.S. diplomats would veto any resolution on Palestinian statehood placed before the Security Council. The State Department has also launched a global campaign in recent weeks to lobby governments to vote against any Palestinian initiative at the U.N. General Assembly. "If something comes to a vote in the U.N. Security Council, the U.S. will veto," State Department spokesman Victoria Nuland said Thursday.

The U.S. envoys offered sweeteners to Mr. Abbas on Wednesday, according to the diplomats briefed on the meeting. But Palestinian officials said these were too little, too late.

Among the incentives: The U.S. had suggested the so-called quartet of powers working to broker a Mideast peace—composed of the U.N., European Union, U.S. and Russia—would put out a new statement in the coming days that seeks to more formally define the terms of a new round of talks between Israel and the Palestinians.  (What a , , , remarkablestrategy this is!)

The statement is specifically seeking to weave in President Barack Obama's stated position that new talks use Israel's borders prior to the 1967 Six Day War as the baseline for creating a new Palestinian state, while acknowledging the need for some territorial exchanges. Mr. Netanyahu has so far rejected such parameters for the talks, arguing that Israel's 1967 borders are now "indefensible."

The Palestinians have been asking the quartet to demand a complete freeze on Jewish construction in the disputed West Bank and East Jerusalem, a timeline for new talks and guarantees that East Jerusalem and the future status of Palestinians refugees will be on the agenda.

None of these issues are expected in the new statement, U.S. and European officials say.

Mr. Abbas said Thursday that he would look at the text of any new quartet statement. But he strongly suggested that his decision had been made to go to the U.N. "If if they come now in this short time and say: 'Okay, we have a package, and don't go to the United Nations,' I think this amounts to a game,"' Mr. Abbas said.

The U.S. officials also told Mr. Abbas that U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton would play a more central and "personal" role in the peace process if the Palestinians agreed to enter into another round of direct talks with Israel's government.

U.S. officials privately worry that a decision by the Obama administration to veto the Palestinian initiative could end up dominating the debate at the U.N. General Assembly during the last two weeks of September.

The White House had been hoping to utilize the annual event to showcase the spread of democratic movements across the Middle East and North Africa. Mr. Obama is planning to participate in an event showcasing the new leadership in Libya that recently overthrew longstanding strongman Moammar Gadhafi, with the help of U.S. and North Atlantic Treaty Organization military strikes.

The Palestinians' push at the U.N. is in many ways ceremonial. Only the Security Council has the power to formally authorize the creation of a new state, which Washington has made clear won't happen.

But Palestinian officials said they were likely to work around the Security Council and seek a vote among the 192-nation General Assembly aimed at giving Palestine the status of a nonmember observer state. Only the Vatican now has that status.

A widely expected vote in favor could give the Palestinians far more rights at the U.N. and membership at key U.N. and global bodies, such as the U.N. Human Rights Council and the International Criminal Court at the Hague.

Israeli officials are already expressing concerns that their government could face growing legal challenges at both the Human Rights Council and the ICC if the General Assembly votes in favor of the Palestinian initiative. Indeed, Messrs. Ross and Hale told Mr. Abbas that actions by the Palestinians at the ICC was a "red line" that the U.S. believed couldn't be crossed.

Mr. Abbas said Thursday that the Palestinians aren't looking to go to the ICC, but suggested they might pursue claims there in the future in response to Israeli actions.

Leading Democratic and Republican lawmakers have publicly warned Mr. Abbas in recent months that he risks future U.S. financial assistance if he goes forward with the U.N. vote. The U.S. has been providing the Palestinian Authority with $500 million to $900 million in annual aid. It has come in the form of military assistance, direct budgetary support and funds for international organizations like the World Bank and International Monetary Fund.

The chairwoman of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, Ileana Ros-Lehtinen (R., Fla.), announced last month that she would also seek to cut off funding for any U.N. agency that accepts an upgrade in the Palestinians' diplomatic status.

In 2006, Congress briefly cut off most funding for the Palestinian Authority after the militant group Hamas, which the U.S. designates as a terrorist organization, won local elections. The U.S. actions greatly undercut the Palestinian Authority's ability to pay its staffers and meet its financial obligations. Much U.S. legislation toward the Palestinians has rigid requirements that limit the White House's ability to seek waivers.

Still, a number of U.S. officials have privately said that the cessation of aid to the Palestinian Authority could end up undermining Washington and Israel's interests. The Palestinian Authority has been commended for improving the performance of its security forces in the West Bank. An end of military assistance could ultimately hurt Israel's security situation, said these U.S. officials.

"If they cut their aid to us, it will be a different situation,'' Mr. Abbas said Thursday. "Of course it's a problem."

Second post of the morning:  Another thoughtful piece from internet friend Ed Rothstein:
================================

This review of a 9/11 exhibition in NY expands on one of the themes I touched on last week.

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/09/08/arts/design/911-exhibition-at-new-york-historical-society-review.html?ref=edwardrothstein&pagewanted=all

 

Ed

 

Exhibition Review
Recapturing the Spirit of a City as It Reeled From Its Wounds


Fred R.Conrad/The New York Times

An exhibition at the New-York Historical Society displays photos and relics from the terrorist attacks.

By EDWARD ROTHSTEIN
Published: September 7, 2011
Related
·         Outdone by Reality(September 1, 2011)
·         9/11 Books Released Into a Sea of Others(September 6, 2011)
·         Critic’s Notebook: Amid the Memorials, Ambiguity and Ambivalence(September 3, 2011)
Enlarge This Image



Fred R.Conrad/The New York Times
The exhibition includes children's letters and tributes.

 

After 10 years the devil is still in the details. And we see them, again and again, in the modest exhibition opening at the New-York Historical Society on Thursday, “Remembering 9/11.”

The images still have the feel of raw scars: the gashed towers spewing smoke; the layers of pale, powdery dust from metal, paper and flesh covering a rack of abandoned bicycles; exhausted firefighters and police officers tempering their own terror to rescue others; eyes of onlookers peering up, hands over mouths, shocked at seeing things still thought too horrifying to show; the deserted Holland Tunnel; piles of ruined fire hydrants; a forensic specialist’s test tube showing a single tooth.

And we see images of the shrines that seemed to spring up in any public space of the city, with candles, poems, photographs, pleas: “Missing Person,” “Please Call,” “Have you seen my Daddy?”

“Missing,” one sign announces, “Two handsome twins”: the illustration shows a ghostly image of the two towers.

The exhibition’s curator, Marilyn Satin Kushner, explained in an interview that, apart from incorporating images from Washington and from Shanksville, Penn., these 135 photographs were randomly selected from the 6,500 that were gathered in the months after the attacks and displayed in two small SoHo storefronts in what was almost an impromptu commemoration called “Here Is New York: A Democracy of Photographs.” Solicited and unsolicited, unsigned, undated and unidentified, roughly rendered on inkjet printers, these accumulated images from the life of a city, which are now part of the society’s collection, still have a powerful effect. They seem to overlay one another in the mind, each one added to a ghostly memory of another, imprints of shocking and immediate experience. The original collection also included first-person video recollections, five of which are sampled here in audio form.

A wider selection of images will also be shown in a free exhibition in the lobby of 195 Broadway, at Fulton Street, near the ground zero site, from Saturday to 18. Some will be permanently mounted in a new gallery of the historical society when its building fully opens on Nov. 11, after its extensive renovation and redesign. For now this exhibition, free to the public, is in a small rotunda entry space and a long cramped hallway.

Four years ago, when the New-York Historical Society gave a more complete showing of these photographs, they seemed to suggest that Sept. 11 was still something to be remembered rather than interpreted, still an event that could only be invoked as a series of traumatic memories, not as a historical event to be understood and put into context.

Surprisingly, not much has changed for the 10th anniversary, either here or in many other planned events this week. The private details of grief still overwhelm any sense of public meaning, which is peculiar given the scale of the event and its consequences.

But those private details are still powerful in themselves. With great savvy, soon after the attacks, Kenneth T. Jackson, then president of the society, set a goal of collecting material associated with Sept. 11. So this exhibition supplements the photographs with objects saved from makeshift shrines, some of the poems and posters still covered with drops of wax from memorial candles. Also shown here are children’s letters and drawings donated by fire and police departments, expressions of touching directness and sincerity sent to New York from all over the country and from foreign lands as well.

The exhibition includes a selection of the “Portraits of Grief” pages published in The New York Times in the months after Sept. 11; every day the paper offered brief, pungent evocations of individual lives lost. Thirty four reproduced pages are mounted as two video screens slowly scroll through the complete collection of these portraits. Again details tell, sketching the fireman who loved to teach children about safety (Raymond R. York); the Indian software designer on a three-month project in New York (Shreyas Ranganath); the accounting manager who had a year earlier graduated from Queens College night school while working two jobs (Del-Rose Cheatham); the insurance broker who, from the time he was 13, had dreamed of moving to New York from Williamsburg, Va. (Rick Blood). We read of scheduled marriages and celebrations never to take place, of fervent passions cut off, of conversations unfinished. The deaths are seen as tears in the life fabric, all threads suddenly and brutally ripped apart.

The overall impact of all this material is powerful. But it is strange that even after a decade, the scope of remembrance does not extend to more extensive interpretation. This exhibition is not alone; this anniversary is widely marked by ambiguity, uncertainty and guilt.

What in this exhibition would be different if these thousands of dead had been wiped out in a tsunami like the one that hit Japan earlier this year? What, in these images, objects and stories would be any different if there had been an earthquake that had simply consumed the twin towers in its maw? Where is the sense that this was not an act of God but an act of man? And that it was an attack, not simply a calamity? Even the sketches for the National September 11 Memorial by its architect, Michael Arad, some of which are also shown here, are meditative, abstract, focusing on the gaps left by destruction.

We only see a few hints that it was anything other than an act of God: one photograph shows a banner warning about domestic brutality against American Muslims (which never took place beyond isolated and quickly condemned incidents); another shows a hasty protest against any possibility of a counterattack. “Our Grief Is Not a Cry for War” is the sign three protestors hold up, a reaction that would have been unimaginable as a response to attack in the parts of the world that cheered for the terrorists afterward.

From the very start, as such images suggest, there was a kind of anticipatory retreat from the implications of the attack, an impulse now amplified by judgments of missteps made over the past decade.

Is this vagueness something Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg is aiming at as well in his decision not to invite first responders and members of the clergy to join him at the Sept. 11 commemoration this Sunday while inviting victims’ family members? This eliminates two groups that clearly gave Sept. 11 a broader public meaning. Listen, in the exhibition, to the account of an encounter with a priest described by a survivor, Joanne Capestro, who tells of barely making it out of one of the towers. Emerging, she sees piles of bodies of those who jumped spread over the ground before her; as the tower collapses, she dives under a nearby car, where a priest comforts her.

But the ceremonial emphasis on family members is in keeping with the almost private sensations of this exhibition as well. We recollect Sept. 11, it seems, as an accumulation of personal griefs; nothing larger has been defined. There is almost a decision to avoid, to turn the head, to give just passing acknowledgment to religious sentiments offering compassion and comfort (look at all the wax drippings from votive candles) and to overlook completely the religious hatred that lay behind the attacks (which is invisible here, and which, one ventures to guess, will be largely absent on Sunday). Is there a fear of somehow seeming too crude by naming what should be named?

Just after Sept. 11, it seemed that the enormity of the experience was going to undermine the doctrines of postmodern relativism that typically affirmed that no particular judgment has any essential priority over any other, and bring to an end too the almost reflexive analyses that consistently cast the West as the world’s unambiguous villain. But is it possible that these impulses have just metastasized and that, given strength by events of the last decade, they prevent us from daring to commemorate and comprehend rather than simply remember?

“Remembering 9/11” runs through April 1 at the New-York Historical Society, 170 Central Park West, at 77th Street; (212) 873-3400 or nyhistory.org. “Here Is New York @ 195 Broadway” runs from Saturday through Sept. 18 at 195 Broadway, at Fulton Street, Lower Manhattan; downtownny.com.

D-F boggles even the mind of Pravda on the Hudson:
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The amount billed by Debevoise & Plimpton to write a 17-page letter on a new rule intended to rein in risky banking — around $100,000 — would make most authors jealous.


That’s the fee just for parsing the proper definition of a bank-owned hedge fund. Longer and more complex regulatory missives, weighing in on who should be deemed too big to fail or how derivatives are traded, can easily cost twice as much.
These comment letters could save Wall Street banks billions of dollars if they help persuade policy makers to adopt a more lenient interpretation of the coming rules. And white-shoe law firms like Debevoise & Plimpton are cranking them out by the dozen.

Call it Dodd-Frank Inc. A year after Congress passed the broadest financial overhaul since the Great Depression, the law has spawned a host of new businesses to help Wall Street comply — and capitalize — on the hundreds of new regulations.

Besides the lawyers, there are legions of corporate accountants, financial consultants, risk management advisers, turnaround artists and technology vendors all vying for their cut.

 “It is a full-employment act,” said Gregory J. Lyons, a partner at Debevoise, where a team of a half-dozen lawyers has drafted 30-plus comment letters in the last six months.

“The law is passed, but we are still reasonably early in the process,” Mr. Lyons said. “There is still a lot to be written.”

New regulation has long been one of Washington’s unofficial job creation tools. After the enactment of the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act in the late 1970s, hundreds of lawyers and accountants were hired by companies to strengthen their internal controls. The Sarbanes-Oxley Act of 2002 became a boon for the Big Four accounting firms as public corporations were forced to tighten compliance in the wake of the Enron and WorldCom scandals.

Now, the Dodd-Frank Act is quickly becoming such a gold mine that even Wall Street bankers, never ones to undercharge, are complaining that the costs are running amok.   

“It’s basically lawyers, hired guns and money,” said the chief financial officer of a major Wall Street firm, who was not authorized to speak publicly on the matter. “Everyone has an angle.”

No one yet is tracking all the money being spent to deal with Dodd-Frank (which in itself could be an entrepreneurial venture), but a back-of-the-envelope calculation puts it in the billions of dollars.

And that’s not even counting the roughly $1.9 billion spent by companies lobbying on financial issues since the regulatory overhaul was first proposed in early 2009, according to the Center for Responsive Politics.

The bulk of the lobbying tab was spent in the two years before Dodd-Frank took effect. Now firms are spending similarly eye-popping sums to comply with or battle against the rules emerging from the law. They are turning to existing companies that have started dedicated teams like the one at Debevoise & Plimpton, as well as start-ups like the Invictus Consulting Group.

When Kamal Mustafa founded Invictus in early 2008, few banks underwent routine stress tests to assess their financial health. Now, the new law requires the nation’s largest banks to conduct annual stress tests, while regulators are leaning hard on smaller lenders to take similar measures. As a result, Invictus’s business — dispensing advice on how to properly administer those exams — has taken off.

“You can stress-test all you want, but somebody has to validate the results,” Mr. Mustafa said. “That’s a massive opportunity.”

Regulators from seven states — including California, New Jersey and Pennsylvania — have hired his firm, Mr. Mustafa said, and he is selectively signing up two to four new bank clients a month. Annual advisory fees start at $20,000 and can reach $100,000 or more.

With business booming, Mr. Mustafa said he planned to hire 40 to 50 former bankers in the coming months, almost quadrupling his current staff. And in May, Invictus established its first European outpost: a London office focused on overseas banks and regulators.

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Technology vendors, including I.B.M. and SunGard Consulting Services, are expecting huge windfalls from the new systems that banks will need to churn out vast amounts of data for regulators, or to lower the cost of processing a derivatives trade. Wall Street banks and asset managers are expected to spend more than $3.8 billion from this year to 2013 on technology to cope with all the new financial rules, according to the TowerGroup, a technology research firm.

Retail banking consultants are racking up new assignments advising banks on how to make up missing revenue from lost debit card fees, while governance advisers are helping firms assess whether executive pay packages will pass muster with shareholders, who are now entitled to a nonbinding say-on-pay vote.
Some law firms have even become small-scale publishing houses. Davis Polk & Wardwell, for example, is offering a $7,500-a-month subscription to a Web site that tracks the progress of every Dodd-Frank requirement. So far, more than 30 large financial companies have signed up.

As Congress started drafting the legislation in the spring of 2010, Davis Polk & Wardwell began compiling a spreadsheet to keep its lawyers updated on hundreds of regulations. Then, Gabriel D. Rosenberg, a young associate, proposed turning the firm’s database of legal summaries and rule-making deadlines into an interactive site — and spent a weekend building a prototype. 

By late July, clients started logging on to the “regulatory tracker” — and have steered more business to the firm as a result, said Randall D. Guynn, the head of Davis Polk’s financial institutions group. “There were a lot of new relationships because people want this,” he said.

Perhaps the biggest new business established by Dodd-Frank stems from the requirement that large financial institutions establish living wills, or emergency plans to wind themselves down in the event of a collapse. Firms are hiring small armies of outside advisers to develop the plans and handle the mountains of paperwork, according to people involved in the process.

As a result, global law firms like Clifford Chance and Sullivan & Cromwell; accounting firms like Deloitte and PricewaterhouseCoopers; and financial consultancies like Oliver Wyman and the Promontory Financial Group, are all working overtime to land assignments. Even restructuring boutiques, like Alvarez & Marsal and Houlihan Lokey, are elbowing their way in.   

Armed with a 60-slide visual presentation, Houlihan Lokey executives approached about a dozen Wall Street firms this spring with an offer to help draft their living wills.

Their sales pitch: we mapped out funeral plans for Lehman Brothers and the CIT Group during the throes of the crisis; we can help with your final arrangements, too.

“When we do a restructuring, we advise our clients and then execute on it,” said Michael McMahon, the head of Houlihan’s financial institutions group. “We are doing the exact same thing here — but we just have to document it.”

It is lucrative work. Barclays said earlier this summer that it has spent more than £30 million, or $48 million, on outside advisers and in-house staff to draft its living will. Each of the five biggest Wall Street banks and several other large financial companies could easily spend just as much.

What is more, most global firms will need to have several versions of their living wills to satisfy the requirements of the different national regulators. That should keep the billable hours coming.

Lawyers and consultants are salivating at the prospect of even more business opportunities. Some envision that many of the banks’ largest creditors will hire them to figure out how they might fare if the living wills were actually to take effect.

“They are going to ask, ‘What is going to happen to me?’ ” said Chip MacDonald, a lawyer at Jones Day. “We are only getting started.”

The point about Bush being a political nullity from 2006 forward seems a fair one to me, thus muddying the meaning of the data from 2007-9 about the number of millionaires. 

What I notice in my life is that the low interest rate policies are in fact a war on savers.   Given the chaos in the markets I would dearly love to have a place of refuge for what I have left that did not automatically entail losses -- which is how I perceive the interface of current interest rates for savers and inflation plus taxes.  Even accepting the IMO dishonest official inflation rate taxes, interest rates for savers are now negative and we the taxpayers are subsidizing free money to the same bankers who gleefully exploited the Fannie Mae's and Freddie Mac's loan guarantees (loans at rates below t-bill rates). 

The class warfare of "tax the rich" is IMO both an absurdity (the top 3% already pay as much as everyone else so how can it be said that they are not paying their share?) and a deception (don't notice that we are bailing out the banks instead of allowing them to go bankrupt and be taken over by new owners).