Funny

The Kennedy Double Standard

2009-01-21T11:01:00.001-08:00

It seems that everyone has a bone to pick with the possibility of Caroline Kennedy replacing Hillary Clinton as the junior senator in New York. Oddly enough many of the criticisms being leveled against Kennedy could have been used against Clinton when she moved to the state, but weren’t.

Much of the criticism of Kennedy has revolved around her being a carpet bagger with no elected political experience. The same could have been said of Hillary Clinton when she located to the state after the end of her husband’s presidency. Clinton was certainly a carpet bagger with even less knowledge and experience in the state than Kennedy has, yet Mrs. Clinton was embraced while Kennedy has been criticized.

Part of the problem, as Susan Dominus pointed out in yesterday’s New York Times, involves personality. In public, Kennedy has seemed similar to her mother. She looked uncomfortable in the beginning of her appearances for Obama. She lacks the charm and charisma of her late father and brother. She has lived a private life out of the spotlight which is why her interest in the Senate seat was a surprise.

Hillary Clinton ended up fitting into New York City very quickly. She demonstrated herself to be a blue collar hard worker for her constituents all over the state. Mrs. Clinton’s experience as First Lady negated much of the criticism about her lack of experience. Caroline Kennedy does not have Clinton’s resume.

After George W. Bush, I think that many people are tired of political dynasties like the Bushes, the Clintons, and the Kennedys. Much of the criticism of Kennedy is centered on the idea of entitlement. Caroline Kennedy has never stated or acted like she feels entitled to the seat, but the very fact that a Kennedy could be appointed to a Senate seat rubs some people the wrong way.

Even though Kennedy has the intelligence to be a good senator, and she may very well get the appointment, she might have been better served by a special election process instead of a gubernatorial selection. If she is appointed, people will wonder if she got the seat because of her last name.

Maybe Kennedy really has been motivated by Obama to get into public service, but I personally don’t like celebrity candidacies whether they are Republican or Democratic. Kennedy needs to explain her policy positions to the people of her state. Otherwise, it will appear that her main qualification is her last name.

Obama's story, written by Obama

2009-01-21T10:56:00.000-08:00

Barack Obama was a first-time author and rookie politician embarking upon his first run for public office. Hermene Hartman was the publisher of N'Digo, a magazine in Chicago aimed at upscale black readers. As Hartman tells it, she got a call from Obama in the fall of 1995 saying he wanted to come and talk. He wanted her to read his newly published memoir.

Hartman read the book, "Dreams From My Father," but chose not to review it. Obama's life story struck her as too exotic for her readers — the Kenyan father, the white mother, the childhood in Honolulu and Jakarta, Indonesia. But she felt she had gotten to know him from his writing; when he ran for the United States Senate eight years later, N'Digo became the first magazine to put Obama on its cover.

"Barack is a very focused, determined person," said Hartman, who now considers Obama a friend. "Barack would go to people one by one and say, 'Here's my book, I want you to read it, give me feedback.' For me, as a publisher, he wanted me to write about it. He would call me every week and say, 'Did you read my book?' "

Senator Obama understands as well as any politician the power of a well-told story. He has risen in politics less on his track record than on his telling of his life story — a tale he has packaged into two hugely successful books that have helped make him a mega-best-selling, two-time Grammy-winning millionaire front-runner for the Democratic presidential nomination at age 46. According to his publisher, there are more than three million copies of his books in print — and two more books on the way.

The story of Obama's life as an author tells as much about him as some of the stories he has recounted in his books. It possesses at times the same charmed quality sometimes ascribed to his political ascent — an impression of ease, if not exactly effortlessness, that obscures a more complex amalgam of drive, ambition, timing and the ability to recognize an opportunity and to do what it takes to seize it.

Just as he was eager to promote his first book to Hartman, he has made the most of his second. When his keynote address at the 2004 Democratic National Convention sent his memoir soaring out of obscurity and straight onto the best-seller list, he untethered himself from his longtime literary agent in favor of Robert Barnett, the Washington lawyer who had gotten Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton an $8 million book advance and then landed Obama a $1.9 million, three-book deal.

He finished his second book, "The Audacity of Hope," 18 months into his first term in the Senate, edited the proofs late at night on a congressional fact-finding trip to Africa, plunged into campaigning for colleagues in the midterm elections, took time out for a 12-city book tour, appeared on programs like "The Oprah Winfrey Show" and "Charlie Rose," then announced four months later that he was running for president.

The books have defined Obama's public image in a way that few books by politicians have done. Reporters paw through them for insights into Obama the candidate, supplied by Obama the author. Out of his story, he has also drawn the central promise of his campaign: if a biracial son of a Kenyan and a Kansan could reconcile the seemingly irreconcilable in himself, a divided country could do the same.

His memoir is, as one publisher put it, "the single most vetted book in American politics right now." Written at a time when Obama says he was thinking less about a career in politics than about simply writing a good book, it leaves an impression of candidness and authenticity that gives it much of its power. Reporters have questioned Obama's use of fictional techniques like composite characters, but some editors and critics say that is common in memoirs.

"The book is so literary," said Arnold Rampersad, a professor of English at Stanford University who teaches autobiography and is the author of a recent biography of Ralph Ellison. "It is so full of clever tricks — inventions for literary effect — that I was taken aback, even astonished. But make no mistake, these are simply the tricks that art trades in, and out of these tricks is supposed to come our realization of truth."

In a telephone interview on Friday, Obama said he would not be surprised if some people had gotten involved in his campaign "because they feel they know me through my books." But he said he was not even thinking about political consequences when he wrote the memoir. In fact, he said, one editor warned him back then that his references to drug use could come back to haunt him — if he were ever nominated for the Supreme Court.

"This is an example of what happens when you look at things backwards," Obama said when asked whether he had his political future in mind when he first began to write. "Then everything looks like, 'Ah! Of course this was part of some well-calibrated consideration.' But frankly, no. It would have been very hard for me to anticipate that I'd be where I am today, where a book that I wrote almost 20 years ago now would even be read."

Early Exposure

Obama's story first surfaced publicly in February 1990, when he was elected as the first black president of The Harvard Law Review. An initial wire service report described him simply as a 28-year-old, second-year student from Hawaii who had "not ruled out a future in politics"; but in the days that followed, newspaper reporters grew interested and produced long, detailed profiles of Obama.

The coverage prompted a call to him from Jane Dystel, a gravelly-voiced literary agent described by Peter Osnos, then the publisher of Times Books, as "a good journeyman with a hard edge." The home page of her firm's Web site currently features clients' best sellers including "Lies at the Altar: The Truth About Great Marriages." Dystel suggested Obama write a book proposal. Then she got him a contract with Poseidon Press, a now-defunct imprint of Simon & Schuster. When he missed his deadline, she got him another contract and a $40,000 advance from Times Books.

Obama's original plan was to write a book about race relations. But, sitting down to write, he found his mind "pulled toward rockier shores." So the book became more personal — the record of an interior journey, as he put it in the introduction, "a boy's search for his father, and through that a search for a workable meaning for his life as a black American."

Obama was given an office to write in at the University of Chicago through a surprising connection. Douglas Baird, a professor who was head of the law school's appointments committee, had learned of Obama from Michael McConnell, a conservative constitutional scholar then at Chicago whom President George W. Bush would later make a U.S. judge.

Professor McConnell encountered Obama during the editing of an article he wrote for The Harvard Law Review, Professor Baird said recently. "He sent a note saying this person is really brilliant, we should have him on our radar screen," Professor Baird said. Professor Baird called Obama at Harvard and asked if he was interested in teaching.

"I don't remember his exact words, but it was something to the effect that, 'Well, in fact, I want to write this book.' What he really wanted was the Virginia Woolf equivalent of a clean, well lighted room." So Professor Baird got him one, a small office near the law library, along with a law school fellowship that Professor Baird hoped might later lead to his full-time teaching.

By the time Obama landed at Times Books, he had a partial manuscript. He required minimal editing, said Henry Ferris, his editor, who is now a vice president and executive editor at William Morrow. He simply needed guidance in paring and shaping the sections already written and keeping the rest from becoming too long. The writing, Ferris said, "is very much his own."

The two worked mostly by telephone and by manuscripts sent by Federal Express between New York and Chicago. Obama, an inveterate journal writer who had published poems in a college literary magazine but had never attempted a book, struggled to finish. His half-sister, Maya Soetoro-Ng, said he eventually retreated to Bali for several months with his wife, Michelle, "to find a peaceful sanctuary where there were no phones." He showed drafts to a few close relatives including his grandmother, of whom Soetoro-Ng said, "It probably made her a little nervous, having the family written about, just because you don't do that in Kansas."

In the introduction, Obama acknowledged his use of pseudonyms, composite characters, approximated dialogue and events out of chronological order. He was writing at a time well before a recent series of publishing scandals involving fabrication in memoirs. "He was trying to be careful of people's feelings," said Deborah Baker, the editor on the first paperback edition of the book. "The fact is, it all had a sort of larger truth going on that you couldn't make up."

A Memoir Revived

The book came out in the summer of 1995, shortly before Obama announced that he was running for the Illinois State Senate. At 57th Street Books, in Obama's neighborhood in Chicago, a few dozen people turned out for a reading. There were respectful reviews in newspapers including The New York Times and The Boston Globe. Times Books sold 8,000 to 9,000 copies.

"I joke that 290 million Americans did not buy the book," he said.

Kodansha Globe, a now-defunct branch of a Japanese company, bought the paperback rights for $5,000 to $7,500 and printed about 6,000 copies in 1996, said Philip Turner, Kondansha's editor in chief at the time. The cover carried a blurb from Marian Wright Edelman: "Perceptive and wise, this book will tell you something about yourself whether you are black or white."

"Even now, it's hard to get my mind around the idea that this person is in politics," said Baker, who described Obama as a born writer. "I actually think he could be a brilliant politician. He was ambitious as a writer in the same way — very cunning in the way he structured the book. I remember thinking, 'This guy really knows how to tell a story.' "

But within a few years, "Dreams From My Father" was out of print.

Then in March 2004, Obama's political and literary fortunes abruptly shifted. His victory in a tightly contested United States Senate primary in Illinois made him an overnight Democratic Party sensation. In New York City, Rachel Klayman, an editor at Crown Books, read a Salon.com article on Obama by the author Scott Turow, an Obama friend, titled "The New Face of the Democratic Party — and America."

Klayman looked up Obama's memoir on Amazon.com and found that the rights were controlled by Crown, which now had the Times Books list. She sent an e-mail message to her boss, suggesting that Crown reissue the book. She contacted Dystel and asked Obama to write a new preface, which came in nearly word perfect.

Then Obama was chosen to give the keynote speech at the Democratic convention.

Crown moved up the publication date, Barnes & Noble increased its order to 20,000 copies, and the book hit the top 50 on Amazon before it was even reissued. Bidding on eBay for a first edition copy hit $255. By December, Obama was the senator-elect and his book had been on the best-seller list for 14 weeks. And Dystel had initiated discussions with Crown about a new book contract for Obama.

Two weeks before Obama's swearing in, Crown announced that it had signed a contract with him for three more books. The first would offer "a window into the political and spiritual convictions that propelled Obama's recent U.S. Senate victory." The second will be a children's book about his life, and the third is yet to be defined. The deal had been initiated by Dystel, the announcement said, but "negotiated and concluded by Robert B. Barnett of Williams & Connolly LLP."

What happened between Obama and Dystel is not clear. Dystel declined to be interviewed for this article. Obama said, "It really had more to do with the fact that by the time 'The Audacity of Hope' was written, I was going to be in Washington and was obviously now very high profile." Osnos called Obama's decision to switch to Barnett, whose clients include former Prime Minister Tony Blair of Britain, "disloyal but not unusual."

Others said it was understandable. "You're nobody in Washington without Barnett working for you," said a rival publisher, who asked not to be named. "Bob knows how to deal with the politics of a book as well as the selling of the book, Senate ethics rules, the advance. Bob is a fixer." Unlike literary agents, who take a percentage of an author's earnings, Barnett bills by the hour.

Obama completed "The Audacity of Hope" in the summer of 2006. This time, he distributed drafts to several dozen friends and Senate staff members, many of whom now advise his campaign. They included David Axelrod, his chief political strategist; Anthony Lake, who was a national security adviser for President Bill Clinton; Gene Sperling, a former economic adviser to Clinton; and Samantha Power, who recently stepped down as a foreign policy adviser to Obama after calling his opponent, Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton, "a monster."

"He wrote very polished first drafts," said Cass Sunstein, a University of Chicago law professor who read drafts of chapters on the Constitution and economic policy. "He was very clear to me that these were drafts on which he hoped for comments. I wrote very detailed comments. And afterwards he accepted a small minority of my comments. I gave him some potential formulations for what he might write. He always put it in his own words. Not once did he use my words."

A Second Success

The book's release in October 2006 must have been the envy of anyone who ever published a book or contemplated higher office. In Chicago, people started lining up outside 57th Street Books at 4:15 on the morning of Obama's book signing. For his Seattle signing, the Elliott Bay Book Company rented the 2,500-seat hall where the symphony performs, sold out the tickets in 90 minutes and reported a level of turnout that topped all previous records at the store for any author, including President Clinton.

Time magazine published an excerpt of the book and put Obama on the cover, with a line that said "Why Barack Obama Could Be the Next President." An adoring photo essay inside shows him doing things like washing the breakfast dishes with his daughter.

"Barack is worth millions now," Osnos said. "It's almost all based on these two books, two books not based on a job of prodigious research or risking one's life as a reporter in Iraq. He has written about himself. Being able to take your own life story and turn it into this incredibly lucrative franchise, it's a stunning fact."

Last Israeli troops leave Gaza, competing pullout

2009-01-21T10:54:00.003-08:00

JERUSALEM – The last Israeli troops left the Gaza Strip before dawn Wednesday, the military said, as Israel dispatched its foreign minister to Europe in a bid to rally international support to end arms smuggling into the Hamas-ruled territory.

The timing of the troop pullout reflected Israel's hopes to defuse the crisis in still-volatile Gaza before President Barack Obama settled into the White House. The military said troops remain massed on the Israeli side of the border, poised for action if militants violated a fragile, three-day-old truce.

Obama called the Palestinian president and the leaders of Israel, Jordan and Egypt, in keeping with his promise to get involved with Mideast peacemaking from his first day in office.

The Israeli troops' exit marked the end of an offensive that ravaged Gaza and left some 1,300 Palestinians dead, at least half of them civilians, according to Gaza health officials and a Palestinian human rights group. Thirteen Israelis also died.

Israel launched the war to halt years of militant rocket fire on southern Israel and to stop arms smuggling that put one-eighth of the country's population within rocket range, but by Wednesday smuggling was under way again.

The death toll in Gaza provoked international outrage, but in Israel, the war was widely seen as a legitimate response to militants' attacks.

The Israeli military announced Wednesday that it would investigate claims by the United Nations and human rights groups that it improperly used white phosphorous — an ingredient in weapons that inflicts horrific burns. Although the use of phosphorus weapons to mask forces is permitted by international law, Amnesty International has accused Israel of committing a war crime by using it in densely populated areas.

U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon left the region early Wednesday after touring Gaza and southern Israel. Ban called for an investigation into the Israeli shelling of U.N. compounds in Gaza during the fighting, which he termed "outrageous." He also called rocket attacks against Israel "appalling and unacceptable."

Israeli Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni was headed to Brussels on Wednesday, hoping to clinch a deal committing the European Union to contribute forces, ships and technology to anti-smuggling operations.

"She will sum up with the the EU representatives their involvement in the international handling of the problem of smuggling into the Gaza Strip," said Foreign Ministry spokesman Yigal Palmor.

In a sign of Israel's concern over a hostile international climate, Livni's departure had to be approved by Foreign Ministry legal advisers concerned she could face lawsuits in Belgium over Israel's Gaza operation, government officials said. The trip was given the green light only at the last minute, they said, speaking on condition of anonymity because the deliberations had not been made public.

An EU commitment would build on a deal the U.S. signed with Israel last week promising expanded intelligence cooperation between the two countries and other U.S. allies in the Middle East and Europe.

EU officials said it was too early for that, saying providing humanitarian relief and efforts to secure a lasting cease-fire were their priorities.

"The situation is fragile," Javier Solana, the EU's foreign and security chief, said ahead of the meeting.

In the waning days of the Bush administration, the U.S. promised to supply detection and surveillance equipment, as well as logistical help and training to Israel, Egypt and other nations in the region. The equipment and training would be used to monitor Gaza's land and sea borders.

White House press secretary Robert Gibbs emphasized that Obama would work to consolidate the cease-fire between Israel and Hamas in Gaza and expressed "his commitment to active engagement in pursuit of Arab-Israeli peace from the beginning of his term."

Some EU nations, notably Germany, have promised to help Israel stop the arms smuggling. The issue will likely be debated at a regular EU foreign ministers meeting scheduled next Monday.

Most of the smuggling was carried out through tunnels underneath the 8-mile (15 kilometer) border between Egypt and Gaza. Egypt has proved unable or unwilling to halt the flow of weapons and medium-range rockets coming through the tunnels, alongside fuel and consumer goods.

AP Television News footage showed Palestinian smugglers Wednesday filling a fuel truck with gasoline that came through a cross-border tunnel from Egypt. The footage also showed workers busy clearing blocked tunnels and bulldozers carrying out other repairs.

Iran has rejected the international attempt to deny Hamas weapons. In statements reported Wednesday on the Web site of Iranian state TV, Foreign Minister Manouchehr Mottaki said because Israel is so well-armed, Palestinians shouldn't be barred from obtaining weapons.

Iran is one of Hamas' main backers but denies Israel's claims that it arms the Palestinian group.

Meanwhile, a Palestinian human rights group said it had completed its count of the death toll from the Israeli operation.

The Palestinian Center for Human Rights said a total of 1,284 Palestinians were killed and 4,336 wounded in the 23-day war. It said 894 of the dead were civilians, including 280 children or minors ages 17 and under. It cited data collected by its field researchers and checked against information from hospitals and clinics.

The PCHR was a main source of information about dead and wounded during the war.

The Israeli military says 500 Palestinian militants were killed in the fighting. Gaza's militant groups say they lost 158 fighters.

Last Israeli troops leave Gaza, competing pullout

2009-01-21T10:54:00.001-08:00

Is Gaza war inevitable?

2009-01-19T05:33:00.000-08:00

Government seems to have come to terms with inevitability of Gaza operation

Israel has been sitting on the fence for the last four months, biting its nails, counting Qassam rockets and looking impatiently as Gaza arms itself to the teeth and prepares for a confrontation. If we don't get off the grandstands and take some kind of action - on the security or diplomatic front - we shall invariably find ourselves on the court with thousands of troops, tanks and armored vehicles.

All the scenarios point to a war in the Gaza Strip, the most densely populated area in the world. The army is preparing for every eventuality, and it's beginning to look inevitable - a developing process that has reached the point of no return.

This is what Shin Bet Chief Yuval Diskin spoke about Tuesday. He didn't come to present armament figures, but to caution: A decision must be made to do something, whether diplomatic or a move that would thwart future developments. Otherwise we shall be dragged into a wide scale, uncontrollable conflict.

During a meeting with military reporters a month ago, Diskin noted that the timing of a large military campaign should be carefully weighed, because we must take "the day after" into account. No one is really interested in seeing the Palestinian Authority collapse, thus forcing Israel to reestablish the Civil Administration.

A senior defense establishment official says that each time the army asks the prime minister to change something in the rules of engagement pertaining to the Qassam launchers or to carry out a limited operation in the Strip along the fence the answer is: "No, we shall maintain the ceasefire to the end. So that when we have to strike we'll have clean hands in the eyes of the international community and we'll gain support."

The defense establishment feels that even the political echelons have already come to terms with the inevitability of a military operation.

Hamas prepares for IDF assault

A twin engine rocket with a 16 kilometer (10 mile) range has already landed in Ashkelon close to Kibbutz Bror Hail, and the clock is still ticking. The Palestinian military industry will soon have a production line for rockets with even longer ranges. Grad missiles with a 20 kilometer range have already been smuggled into the Strip and are being duplicated by the locals.

According to the Shin Bet chief's forecast, some 200,000 Israelis will find themselves under the threat of missile fire from Gaza as early as this year. The Home Front Command has already drawn up a plan at a cost of a billion and a half shekels (roughly USD 400 million) for reinforcing the communities located up to 20 kilometers (12 miles) from the Strip; however, it doesn't seem like anyone is planning to really budget the plan.

In parallel to upgrading the rockets against the Israeli home front, Hamas is working on efficiently hindering an Israeli ground assault. Four divisions have already been established. The Hamas army, which is based on the Hizbullah model and already numbers 8,000, is well equipped and trained. Its troops are sent to Iran for studies and training, where they learn the Hizbullah lessons from the last war.

The assumption is that Hamas' strength currently equals that of Hizbullah in 2001. And just like in Lebanon, bunkers and underground tunnels under built-up areas are also being constructed in order to withstand the IDF's aerial bombing.

This effective military might, which is improving daily, is being accumulated under the IDF's nose. A significant improvement was made recently in its capability to deal with the IDF's armored vehicles by enhancement of its explosive devices and purchase of innovative anti-tank weapons.

Then there are another 5,500 troops, the Hamas security forces, who demonstrated an impressive capability against Fatah in recent months. The war taking shape in the Gaza Strip is not inevitable. The question is where to find the leadership that would make the right decisions.

Gaza, Israel, War, Peace

2009-01-19T05:31:00.000-08:00

Obama said : "If somebody was sending rockets into my house where my two daughters sleep at night, I'm going to do everything in my power to stop that. I would expect Israelis to do the same thing."

This is the very basic issue. Whether it is Bush or Obama, or Israel or France, or Russia or Egypt, no government is going to sit idly while thousands of rockets are fired at their citizens. Also if someone breaks into your house and kills one of your children with a club are you going to find a club to fight him proportionally while he attacks your other children or do you get your gun and shoot him?

On the other side Israel did occupy Gaza for 40 years and did little to improve the lives of the people. Israel did not allow self government and blocked any attempts to create an independent Palestinian state. In this Israel is guilty of neglect and inaction at the very least.

Israel, like it or not, is a permanent part of the middle east. 7 million Jews will not pack and move to Europe. Gaza must deal with this fact. Gaza cannot defeat Israel . They can as they have proved cause problems for Israel and even kill some of its citizens but as Israel has proved when this happens they can cause even more damage to Gaza. So for any resolution other than two more generations of war Hamas must accept Israel as a neighbor, while disputing the exact border, and learn to live in peace.

Israel can defeat and could even totally destroy Gaza if they are willing to commit genocide but they will not do that. If they did they would be a Jewish island surrounded by 200 million hostile Arabs, who would in the next generation overwhelm them.Israel must accept an independent Palestinian state, help it get started economically and engage in trade and cooperation with them. Otherwise Israel must reoccupy Gaza or face generations of fighting with Gaza.

And the debate on this is mostly not debate but is in in fact 90% propaganda talking talking points for or against one side or the other.

Israelis are Nazis.--Hamas are terrorists.

And more along this line. These types refuse to ad admit any right by the other side or any wrong by their side. "We are 100% right, they are 100% wrong." I even read one comment something like--go, Hamas, beat them we support you-- like some fanatic at a football game. Where is the real debate on the issues?

The primary issue now is to stop the fighting and killing. That involves two points. Israel must withdraw ground forces from Gaza and stop air attacks. Hamas must stop all rocket attacks against Israel. This cannot be one or the other but must be both. And it must be a sustainable cease fire. There was a 6 month cease fire that ended in December, which both sides violated. A sustainable one will require some kind of international presence on both sides of the border and enforceable sanctions for violations.

Can this be done? Yes. Will it be done? Maybe. Probably sometime this month there will be a withdrawal from Gaza and Hamas will stop firing rockets but observers on the ground probably will not happen. And probably before the end of this year there will be another round of fighting

Sad but true. I have no answer for this. There may not be an answer.

Israel's PR war

2009-01-18T07:46:00.000-08:00

It had to happen at some point. The army attacks a civilian building identified as a source of fire; dozens of civilians are killed, and what little sympathy Israel enjoyed in whatever war it's currently fighting evaporates. It happened in Qana during the Second Lebanon War, and yesterday a school in the Jabalya refugee camp became a global symbol of indiscriminate Israeli aggression.

When these things happen, Israel is quick to respond on the public-relations front. It didn't take long before we foreign correspondents started getting text messages from the Israel Defense Forces on our cell phones. One said that the school was targeted because it was "a source of mortar fire." Another informed us that video footage was available of rockets being fired from another UNRWA school several months earlier. A third told us the names of the Hamas operatives who were killed along with the children and mothers cowering nearby.

I frequently get asked by Israelis, "why aren't we winning the PR war? Why don't people understand that this is what we have to do?" Many are convinced that there is something wrong with Israeli hasbara (public advocacy), that the spokespeople aren't effective enough, or that the Palestinians have a huge and demonically efficient propaganda machine.

When I hear this I have to explain that Israeli hasbara is so sophisticated that there is still no adequate word for it in English; that some of Israel's spokespeople could talk the hind legs off a donkey and then persuade the donkey to dance the hora, and that the Palestinians barely even know what a spokesman is, let alone be able to provide one who is available when he needs to be and knows anything about what is actually going on. So why isn't Israel winning the PR war?

Partly, of course, it's because the numbers are against it. Six hundred Palestinians dead versus nine Israelis, as of today's figures: There's just no way to make that proportion look pretty. Retired generals can drone on all they like about what "proportionality" really means in the laws of war, ambassadors can helpfully point out that many more Germans were killed than British in the Second World War, but these are theoretical notions; on television, what looks bad looks bad. (Nor do I really buy the argument that if Israel's casualties were more visibly bloody - if, say, the media showed the gory pictures of the few people who have been hit by Qassams instead of holding them back to keep the home front from getting agitated - then you could counter the stream of barbaric images from Gaza. There's just no competition.)

But the deeper reason is this: Israeli hasbara is perpetually trying to answer the wrong question: "Why is this justified?" Of course, it's natural for either side in a conflict to try to explain why it, and not the other side, has the moral high ground. But, especially in a conflict where both sides have been claiming the moral high ground for decades, nobody in the outside world is all that interested. From a foreign correspondent's point of view, it makes for boring journalism: "The Israelis said this, but the Palestinians said that." And since we're all studiously trying to be "neutral," we'll always balance your view against theirs; so the fact that you make more of an effort to explain than they do doesn't really matter.

The question the foreign media really wants answered is invariably not "who's in the right?" but "how will this round of fighting improve the overall situation?" And on that point, Israel never has a convincing argument. Given the country's long history of engaging in wars that kill many more of its enemies than its own citizens but only buy a few months or years of calm, it's a tough call to explain how this latest escapade will change the strategic balance, bring peace and prevent the need for another such bloodbath further down the line. Often that's because there is in fact no good reason: Wars are fought for short-term gains. And it doesn't help that with the constant competition for power within Israeli coalitions, it's easy to interpret this war, like many others, as a political imperative, not a strategic one.

And so when the question the world is asking is not "who's right?" but "what works?" the consistent impression Israel leaves is that it kills people because, at best, it simply doesn't have any better ideas, and at worst, because some Israeli leader is trying to get the upper hand on one of his or her rivals. And no amount of hasbara can make that look good.

Gideon Lichfield, until recently The Economist's Jerusalem correspondent, will be moving to the weekly's New York bureau.

Real Israeli Heroes

2009-01-18T07:36:00.000-08:00

"My oldest son, Pinny, had just begun to trudge upstairs after a very hard week, and was looking forward to 11 hours of sleep. Just as he reached the top step, his beeper went off shattering the peace and Shabbat spirit which had enveloped in the house. We all waited tensely as he read the message "I have to go" he said tersely and bounded up the stairs all exhaustion forgotten.

Pinny, a former paratrooper, is a volunteer member of the search and rescue team from Gush Etzion which handles the Judean desert/hills region. "It's a little girl missing since this afternoon in the desert"
he shouted down answering questions before they were asked.

Within minutes he was shouldering his back pack with his GPS and climbing equipment . "Keys?" His mind was already far away. As he left the door, he called out a quick "Shabbat Shalom" as his cell phone rang, evidently from whoever he has to pick on the way to the rendezvous point.

A tension entered the house, we try to go to bed but sleep is difficult to come by. In our experience, it is the first look at his face when he comes through the door which will tell us all we need to know. Just after eight, his return was signaled by our dogs welcoming bark. He walked in, dirty and exhausted but with a smile which could clear a rainy day. "We found her around 7-right before the helicopters were to arrive. She was a 6 year old from Yatta, she had no shoes and was suffering from hypothermia, but she'll be fine."

Yatta is a well known village in the Hebron hills which according to historians converted from Judaism to Islam in mass, during the 8th century.
For hundreds of years they would still light candles on Friday night and would only marry among themselves. Today it is a known hotbed of anti-Israel and terror activities.

As he drank a cup of coffee he told us of standing on a hill, watching a beautiful desert sunrise with some of the other *chevra* thinking "This would be a great place for an early Shabbat minyan". There they were-seven guys with kippot, a number of Bedouin, and some Arabs from the Hebron area, planning their next move all to save a young girl's life.

As I walked with him to shul on this beautiful morning, I couldn't help but thinking (not for the first time) how grateful I am to be able to live in this country. Only in Israel can you find religious "settlers"
working all Friday night, to save the life of a 6 year old Arab girl from a town which no Israeli could ever visit."

Israel's War with Iran

2009-01-17T08:32:00.000-08:00

Israel’s War with Iran: The Coming Mid East Conflagration -or- Israel Bombs Iran: The US Suffers the Consequences

Israel’s political and military leadership have repeatedly and openly declared their preparation to militarily attack Iran in the immediate future. Their influential supporters in the US have made Israel’s war policy the number one priority in their efforts to secure Presidential and Congressional backing. The arguments put forth by the Israeli government and echoed by their followers in the US regarding Iran’s nuclear threat are without substance or fact and have aroused opposition and misgivings throughout the world, among European governments, international agencies, among most US military leaders and the public, the world oil industry and even among sectors of the Bush Administration.

An Israeli air and commando attack on Iran will have catastrophic military consequences for US forces and severe loss of human life in Iraq, most likely ignite political and military violence against pro-US Arab-Muslim regimes, such as Saudi Arabia and Egypt, perhaps leading to their overthrow.

Without a doubt Israeli war preparations are the greatest immediate threat to world peace and political stability.

Israel’s War Preparations

Never has an imminent war been so loudly and publicly advertised as Israel’s forthcoming military attack against Iran. When the Israeli Military Chief of Staff, Daniel Halutz, was asked how far Israel was ready to go to stop Iran’s nuclear energy program, he said "Two thousand kilometers" – the distance of an air assault (Financial Times (FT) Dec 12, 2005). More specifically Israeli military sources reveal that Israel’s current and probably next Prime Minister Ariel Sharon ordered Israel’s armed forces to prepare for air strikes on uranium enrichment sites in Iran (Times (London), Dec 11, 2005). According to the London Times the order to prepare for attack went through the Israeli defense ministry to the Chief of Staff. During the first week in December, "…sources inside the special forces command confirmed that 'G’ readiness – the highest state – for an operation was announced" (Times, Dec. 11, 2005).

On December 9, Israeli Minister of Defense, Shaul Mofaz, affirmed that in view of Teheran’s nuclear plans, Tel Aviv should "not count on diplomatic negotiations but prepare other solutions." (La Jornada, Dec. 10, 2005) In early December, Ahron Zoevi Farkash, the Israeli military intelligence chief told the Israeli parliament (Knesset) that "if by the end of March, the international community is unable to refer the Iranian issue to the United Nations Security Council, then we can say that the international effort has run its course" (Times, Dec. 11, 2005).

In plain Hebrew, if international diplomatic negotiations fail to comply with Israel’s timetable, Israel will unilaterally, militarily attack Iran. Benjamin Netanyahu, leader of the Likud Party and candidate for Prime Minister stated that if Sharon did not act against Iran, "then when I form the new Israeli government (after the March 2006 elections) we’ll do what we did in the past against Saddam’s reactor." (Times Dec 11, 2005). In June 1981 Israel bombed the Osirak nuclear reactor in Iraq. Even the pro-Labor newspaper, Haaretz, while disagreeing with the time and place of Netanyahu’s pronouncements, agreed with its substance. Haaretz criticized "(those who) publicly recommend an Israeli military option…" because it "presents Israel as pushing (via powerful pro-Israel organizations in the US) the United States into a major war." However, Haaretz adds… "Israel must go about making its preparations quietly and securely – not at election rallies." (Haaretz, Dec 6, 2005) Haaretz’s position, like that of the Labor Party, is that Israel not advocate war against Iran before multi-lateral negotiations are over and the International Atomic Energy Agency makes a decision.

In other words, the Israeli "debate" among the elite is not over whether to go to war but over the place to discuss war plans and the timing to launch war. Implicitly Haaretz recognizes the role played by pro-Israeli organizations in "pushing the US into the Iraq war", perhaps a word of caution, resulting from increased US opposition to the activities of the Israel First campaigners in Congress (see below).

Israeli public opinion apparently does not share the political elite’s plans for a military strike against Iran’s nuclear program. A survey in the Israeli newspaper Yedioth Ahronoth, reported by Reuters (Dec. 16, 2005) shows that 58% of the Israelis polled believed the dispute over Iran’s nuclear program should be handled diplomatically while only 36% said its reactors should be destroyed in a military strike.

Israel’s War Deadline All top Israeli officials have pronounced the end of March as the deadline for launching a military assault on Iran. The thinking behind this date is to heighten the pressure on the US to force the sanctions issue in the Security Council. The tactic is to blackmail Washington with the "war or else" threat, into pressuring Europe (namely Great Britain, France, Germany and Russia) into approving sanctions. Israel knows that its acts of war will endanger thousands of American soldiers in Iraq, and it knows that Washington (and Europe) cannot afford a third war at this time. The end of March date also coincides with the IAEA report to the UN on Iran’s nuclear energy program. Israeli policymakers believe that their threats may influence the report, or at least force the kind of ambiguities, which can be exploited by its overseas supporters to promote Security Council sanctions or justify Israeli military action. Fixing a March date also intensifies the political activities of the pro-Israel organizations in the United States. The major pro-Israel lobbies have lined up a majority in the US Congress and Senate to push for the UN Security Council to implement economic sanctions against Iran or, failing that, endorse Israeli "defensive" action. Thousands of pro-Israel national, local and community groups and individuals have been mobilized to promote the Israeli agenda via the mass media and visits to US Congressional representatives. The war agenda also plays on exploiting the tactical disputes among the civilian militarists within the White House, between Cheney, Bolton and Abrams on one side and Rice and Rumsfeld on the other. The Cheney line has always supported an Israeli military attack, while Rice promotes the tactic of "forced failure" of the European diplomatic route before taking decisive action. Rumsfeld, under tremendous pressure from practically all of the top professional military officials, fears that an Israeli war will further accelerate US military losses. The pro-Israel lobby would like to replace the ultra-militarist Rumsfeld with the ultra-militarist Senator Joseph Lieberman, an unconditional Israel First Zealot.

US-Israeli Disagreements on an Iran War As Israel marches inexorably toward war with Iran, disputes with Washington have surfaced. The conflicts and mutual attacks extend throughout the state institutions, and into the public discourse. Supporters and opponents of Israel’s war policy represent powerful segments of state institutions and civil society. On the side of the Israeli war policy are practically all the major and most influential Jewish organizations, the pro-Israeli lobbies, their political action committees, a sector of the White House, a majority of subsidized Congressional representatives and state, local and party leaders. On the other side are sectors of the Pentagon, State Department, a minority of Congressional members, a majority of public opinion, a minority of American Jews (Union of Reform Judaism) and the majority of active and retired military commanders who have served or are serving in Iraq.

Most of the discussion and debate in the US on Israel’s war agenda has been dominated by the pro-Israeli organizations that transmit the Israeli state positions. The Jewish weekly newspaper, Forward , has reported a number of Israeli attacks on the Bush Administration for not acting more aggressively on behalf of Israel’s policy. According to the Forward , "Jerusalem is increasingly concerned that the Bush Administration is not doing enough to block Teheran from acquiring nuclear weapons…" (Dec. 9, 2005). Further stark differences occurred during the semi-annual strategic dialog between Israeli and US security officials, in which the Israelis opposed a US push for regime change in Syria, fearing a possible, more radical Islamic regime. The Israeli officials also criticized the US for forcing Israel to agree to open the Rafah border crossing and upsetting their stranglehold on the economy in Gaza.

Predictably the biggest Jewish organization in the US, the Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations (CPMAJO) immediately echoed the Israeli state line as it has since its founding. Malcolm Hoenlan, President of the CPMAJO lambasted Washington for a "failure of leadership on Iran" and "contracting the issue to Europe" (Forward, Dec. 9, 2005). He went on to attack the Bush Administration for not following Israel’s demands by delaying referring Iran to the UN Security Council for sanction. The leader of the CPMAJO then turned on French, German and British negotiators accusing them of "appeasement and weakness", and of not having a "game plan for decisive action" – presumably for not following Israel’s 'sanction or bomb them’ game plan.

The role of AIPAC, the CPMAJO and other pro-Israeli organizations as transmission belts for Israel’s bellicose war plans was evident in their November 28, 2005 condemnation of the Bush Administration agreement to give Russia a chance to negotiate a plan under which Iran would be allowed to enrich uranium under international supervision to ensure that its enriched uranium would not be used for military purposes. AIPAC’s rejection of negotiations and demands for an immediate confrontation were based on the specious argument that it would "facilitate Iran’s quest for nuclear weapons" – an argument which flies in the face of all known intelligence data (including Israel’s) which says Iran is at least 3 to 10 years away from even approaching nuclear weaponry. AIPAC’s unconditional and uncritical transmission of Israeli demands and criticism is usually clothed in the rhetoric of US interests or security in order to manipulate US policy. AIPAC chastised the Bush regime for endangering US security. By relying on negotiations, AIPAC accused the Bush Administration of "giving Iran yet another chance to manipulate (sic) the international community" and "pose a severe danger to the United States" (Forward, Dec. 9, 2005).

Leading US spokesmen for Israel opposed President Bush’s instructing his Ambassador to Iraq, Zalmay Khaklilzad, to open a dialog with Iran’s Ambassador to Iraq. In addition, Israel’s official 'restrained’ reaction to Russia’s sale to Teheran of more than a billion dollars worth of defensive anti-aircraft missiles, which might protect Iran from an Israeli air strike, was predictably echoed by the major Jewish organizations in the US. No doubt an important reason for Israel’s setting an early deadline for its military assault on Iran is to act before Iran establishes a new satellite surveillance system and installs its new missile defense system.

Pushing the US into a confrontation with Iran, via economic sanctions and military attack has been a top priority for Israel and its supporters in the US for more than a decade (Jewish Times/ Jewish Telegraph Agency, Dec. 6, 2005). The AIPAC believes the Islamic Republic poses a grave threat to Israel’s supremacy in the Middle East. In line with its policy of forcing a US confrontation with Iran, AIPAC, the Israeli PACs (political action committees) and the CPMAJO have successfully lined up a majority of Congress people to challenge what they describe as the "appeasement" of Iran. According to the Jewish Times (12/6/05), "If it comes down to a political battle, signs are that AIPAC could muster strong support in Congress to press the White House to demand sanctions on Iran." Representative Illeana Ros-Lehtinen (R-Florida), who has the dubious distinction of being a collaborator with Cuban exile terrorist groups and unconditional backer of Israel’s war policy, is chairwoman of the highly influential US House of Representative Middle East subcommittee. From that platform she has echoed the CPMAJO line about "European appeasement and arming the terrorist regime in Teheran" (Jewish Times 12/6/05). The Cuban-American Zionist boasted that her Iran sanctions bill has the support of 75% of the members of Congress and that she is lining up additional so-sponsors.

The pro-Israel lobby’s power, which includes AIPAC, the Conference of Presidents, the PACs and hundreds of local formal and informal organizations, is magnified by their influence and hegemony over Congress, the mass media, financial institutions, pension funds and fundamentalist Christian organizations. Within the executive branch their influence in these institutions amplifies their power far beyond their number and direct control and representation in strategic public and private institutions (which itself is formidable). AIPAC’s "Progress and Policy Report for 2005" – published on its website – lists, among its accomplishments, getting Congress to approve 100 pro-Israel legislative initiatives, $3 billion in direct aid and more than $10 billion in guaranteed loans, transfer of the most advanced military technology to Israel’s multi-billion dollar arms export corporations, and the lining up by a 410 to 1 vote in the House of Representative committing the US to Israel’s security – as it is defined by Israel.

The conflict between the Israeli elite and the Bush Administration has to be located in a broader context. Despite pro-Israeli attacks on US policy for its 'weakness’ on Iran, Washington has moved as aggressively as circumstances permit. Facing European opposition to an immediate confrontation (as AIPAC and Israeli politicians demand) Washington supports European negotiations but imposes extremely limiting conditions, namely a rejection of the Non-Proliferation Treaty, which allows uranium enrichment for peaceful purposes. The European "compromise" of forcing Iran to turn over the enrichment process to a foreign country (Russia), is not only a violation of its sovereignty, but is a policy that no other country using nuclear energy practices. Given this transparently unacceptable "mandate", it is clear that Washington’s 'support for negotiations’ is a propaganda devise to provoke an Iranian rejection, and a means of securing Europe’s support for a Security Council referral for international sanctions. Washington has absolutely no precedent to object to Russia’s sale of defensive ground to air missiles to Iran, since it is standard in the arms export business. As for as the Ambassadorial meetings in Iraq, the US has had great success in securing Iranian co-operation on stabilizing its Iraqi Shiite client regime. Iran has recognized the regime, has signed trade agreements, supported the dubious elections and provided the US with intelligence against the Sunni resistance. Given their common interests in the region, it was logical for Washington to seek to bend Iran into further co-operation via diplomatic discussions. In other words, as the US seeks to withdraw its troops from a losing war in Iraq (largely supported by AIPAC and its organizational partners), pro-Israel organizations are pushing hard to put the US into a new war with Iran. It is no surprise that the Zionist Organization of America (ZOA) invited the most bellicose of US Middle East warmongers, UN Ambassador to the United Nations, John Bolton, to be its keynote speaker at its annual awards dinner (ZOA Press Release, Dec. 11, 2005). The ZOA has loyally followed all the zigzags of Israeli policy since the foundation of the State.

Despite the near unanimous support and widespread influence of the major Jewish organizations, 20% of American Jews do not support Israel in its conflict with the Palestinians. Even more significantly, 61% of Jews almost never talk about Israel or defend Israel in conversation with Goyim (non-Jews) (Jerusalem Post, Dec 1, 2005). Only 29% of Jews are active promoters of Israel. In other words, it is important to note that the Israel First crowd represents less than a third of the Jewish community and hence their claim to speak for 'all’ US Jews is false and a misrepresentation. In fact, there is more opposition to Israel among Jews than there is in the US Congress. Having said that, however, most Jewish critics of Israel are not influential in the big Jewish organizations and the Israel lobby, excluded from the mass media and mostly intimidated from speaking out, especially on Israel’s war preparations against Iran. The minority Jewish critics cannot match the five to eight million dollars spent in buying Congressional votes each year by the pro-Israel lobbies.

The Myth of the Iranian Nuclear Threat The Israeli Defense Forces Chief of Staff, Daniel Halutz, has categorically denied that Iran represents an immediate nuclear threat to Israel, let along the United States. According to Haaretz (12/14/05), Halutz stated that it would take Iran time to be able to produce a nuclear bomb – which he estimated might happen between 2008 and 2015.

Israel’s Labor Party officials do not believe that Iran represents an immediate nuclear threat and that the Sharon government and the Likud war propaganda is an electoral ploy. According to Haaretz, "Labor Party officials…accused Preme Minister Ariel Sharon, Defense Minister Shaul Mofaz and other defense officials of using the Iran issue in their election campaigns in an effort to divert public debate from social issues" (Dec. 14, 2005). In a message directed at the Israeli Right but equally applicable to AIPAC and the 'Presidents of the Major Jewish Organizations in the US, Labor member of the Knesset, Benjamin Ben-Eliezer rejected electoral warmongering: "I hope the upcoming elections won’t motivate the prime minister and defense minister to stray from government policy and place Israel on the frontlines of confrontation with Iran. The nuclear issue is an international issue and there is no reason for Israel to play a major role in it" (Haaretz, Dec. 14, 2005). Unfortunately the Israel lobby is making it a US issue and putting Washington on the frontlines…

Iran’s Nuclear Threat Fabrication Israeli intelligence has determined that Iran has neither the enriched uranium nor the capability to produce an atomic weapon now or in the immediate future, in contrast to the hysterical claims publicized by the US pro-Israel lobbies. Mohammed El Baradei, head of the United Nations International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), which has inspected Iran for several years, has pointed out that the IAEA has found no proof that Iran is trying to construct nuclear weapons. He criticized Israeli and US war plans indirectly by warning that a "military solution would be completely un-productive" (Financial Times, Dec. 10/11, 2005).

More recently, Iran, in a clear move to clarify the issue of the future use of enriched uranium, "opened the door for US help in building a nuclear power plant" (USA Today, Dec. 11, 2005). Iranian Foreign Ministry spokesman, Hamid Reza Asefi, speaking at a press conference, stated "America can take part in the international bidding for the construction of Iran’s nuclear power plant if they observe the basic standards and quality" (USA Today, Dec. 11, 2005). Iran also plans to build several other nuclear power plants with foreign help. The Iranian call for foreign assistance is hardly the strategy of a country trying to conduct a covert atomic bomb program, especially one directed at involving one of its principal accusers.

The Iranians are at an elementary stage in the processing of uranium, not even reaching the point of uranium enrichment, which in turn will take still a number of years, and overcoming many complex technical problems before it can build a bomb. There is no factual basis for arguing that Iran represents a nuclear threat to Israel or to the US forces in the Middle East.

Israel’s war preparations and AIPAC’s efforts to push the US in the same direction based on falsified data is reminiscent of the fabricated evidence which was channeled to the White House through the Pentagon’s Office of Special Plans led by Abram Shumsky and directed by Douglas Feith and Paul Wolfowitz, both long-time supporters of the Likud Party. Israel’s war preparations are not over any present or future Iranian nuclear threat. The issue is over future enrichment of uranium, which is legal under the Non-Proliferation Treaty as is its use in producing electrical power. Iran currently is only in a uranium conversion phase, which is prior to enrichment. Scores of countries with nuclear reactors by necessity use enriched uranium. The Iranian decision to advance to processing enriched uranium is its sovereign right as it is for all countries, which possess nuclear reactors in Europe, Asia and North America.

Israel and AIPAC’s resort to the vague formulation of Iran’s potential nuclear capacity is so open-ended that it could apply to scores of countries with a minimum scientific infrastructure.

The European Quartet has raised a bogus issue by evading the issue of whether or not Iran has atomic weapons or is manufacturing them and focused on attacking Iran’s capacity to produce nuclear energy – namely the production of enriched uranium. The Quartet has conflated enriched uranium with a nuclear threat and nuclear potential with the danger of an imminent nuclear attack on Western countries, troops and Israel. The Europeans, especially Great Britain, have two options in mind: To impose an Iranian acceptance of limits on its sovereignty, more specifically on its energy policy and capacity to control the deadly air pollution of its major cities with cleaner sources of energy; or to force Iran to reject the arbitrary addendum to the Non-Proliferation Agreement and then to propagandize the rejection as an indication of Iran’s evil intention to create atomic bombs and target pro-Western countries. The Western media would echo the US and European governments position that Iran was responsible for the breakdown of negotiations. The Europeans would then convince their public that since "reason" failed, the only recourse it to follow the US to take the issue to the Security Council and approve international sanctions against Iran.

The US then would attempt to pressure Russia and China to vote in favor of sanctions or to abstain. There is reason to doubt that either or both countries would agree giving the importance of the multi-billion dollar oil, arms, nuclear and trade deals between Iran and these two countries. Having tried and failed in the Security Council, the US and Israel are likely to move toward a military attack. An air attack on suspected Iranian nuclear facilities will entail the bombing of heavily populated as well as remote regions leading to large-scale loss of life.

The principal result will be a massive escalation of war throughout the Middle East. Iran, a country of 70 million, with several times the military forces that Iraq possessed and with highly motivated and committed military and paramilitary forces can be expected to cross into Iraq. Iraqi Shiites sympathetic to or allied with Iran would most likely break their ties with Washington and go into combat. US military bases, troops and clients would be under tremendous attack. US military casualties would multiply. All troop withdrawal plans would be disrupted. The 'Iraqization’ strategy would disintegrate, as the US 'loyal’ Shia armed forces would turn against their American officers. Beyond Iraq, there would likely be major military-civilian uprisings in Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Lebanon, Jordan, Palestine and Pakistan. The conflagration would spread beyond the Middle East, as the Israel-US attack on an Islamic country would ignite mass protests throughout Asia. Most likely new terrorist incidents would occur in Western Europe, North America, and Australia and against US multinationals. A bitter prolonged war would ensue; pitting 70 million unified Iranian nationals, millions of Muslims in Asia and Africa against an isolated US accompanied by its European allies facing mass popular protests at home.

Sanctions on Iran will not work, because oil is a scarce and essential commodity. China, India and other fast-growing Asian countries will balk at a boycott. Turkey and other Muslim countries will not cooperate. Numerous Western oil companies will work through intermediaries. The sanction policy is predestined to failure; its only result will be to raise the price of oil even higher. An Israeli or US military attack will cause severe political instability and increase the risk to oil producers, shippers and buyers, raising the price of oil to astronomical heights, likely over $100 a barrel, destabilizing the world economy and provoking a major world recession or worse.

Conclusion The only possible beneficiary of a US or Israeli military attack on Iran or economic sanctions will be Israel: it will seem to eliminate a military adversary in the Middle East, and consolidate its military supremacy in the Middle East. Even this outcome is problematic because it fails to take account of the fact that Iran’s challenge to Israel is political, not its non-existent nuclear potential. The first target of the millions of Muslims protesting Israeli aggression will be the Arab regimes closest to Israel. An Israeli attack would be a pyrrhic victory, if a predictable political conflagration unseats the rulers of Jordan, Egypt, Syria and Saudi Arabia. The consequences would be even worse if the US attacks: major oil wells burning, US troops in Iraq surrounded, long-term relations with Arab regimes undermined, increased oil prices and troop casualties inflaming domestic public opinion. An attack on Iran will not be a cleanly executed 'surgical’ strike – it will be a deep jagged wound leading to gangrene.

No doubt AIPAC will celebrate "another success" for Israel in their yearly self-congratulatory report of missions accomplished. The Presidents of the Major Jewish Organizations in America will thank their obedient and loyal congressional followers for approving the destruction of an 'anti-Semitic and anti-American nuclear threat to all of humanity’ or some similar rubbish.

The big losers of a US-Israeli military attack are the US soldiers in Iraq and other Middle Eastern countries who will be killed and maimed, the US public which will pay in blood and bloated deficits, the oil companies which will see their oil supplies disrupted, their new multi-billion dollar joint oil exploitation contracts undermined, the Palestinians who will suffer the consequences of greater repression and massive displacement, the Lebanese people who will be forcible entangled in a new border war, and the Europeans who will face terrorist retaliations.

Except for the Israeli lobby in the US and its grass root Jewish American supporters and allies among the Presidents of the Major Jewish organizations there are no other organized lobbies pressuring for or against this war. The ritualistic denunciations of "Big Oil" whenever there is a Middle East conflict involving the US is in this instance a totally bogus issue, lacking any substance. All the evidence is to the contrary – big oil is opposed to any conflicts, which will upset their first major entry into Middle Eastern oil fields since they were nationalized in the 1970’s.

The only identifiable organized political force, which has successfully made deep inroads in the US Congress and in sectors of the Executive Branch, are the pro-Israel lobbies and PAC’s. The major proponents of a confrontationist policy in the Executive Branch are led by pro-Israel neo-conservative National Security Council member (and Presidentially pardoned felon) Elliott Abrams, in charge of Middle East policy, and Vice President Cheney. The principle opposition is found in the major military services, among commanders, who clearly see the disastrous strategic consequences for the US military forces and sectors of the State Department and CIA, who are certainly aware of the disastrous consequences for the US of supporting Israel’s quest for uncontested regional supremacy.

The problem is there is no political leadership to oppose the pro-Israel war lobby within congress or even in civil society. There are few if any influential organized lobbies challenging the pro-war Israel lobby either from the perspective of working for coexistence in the Middle East or even in defending US national interests when they diverge from Israel. Although numerous former diplomats, generals, intelligence officials, Reformed Jews, retired National Security advisers and State Department professionals have publicly denounced the Iran war agenda and even criticized the Israel First lobbies, their newspaper ads and media interviews have not been backed by any national political organization that can compete for influence in the White House and Congress. As we draw closer to a major confrontation with Iran and Israeli officials set short term deadlines for igniting a Middle East conflagration, it seems that we are doomed to learn from future catastrophic losses that Americans must organize to defeat political lobbies based on overseas allegiances.

Thanks to Jeff Blankfort for sending the complete and unabridged version of this important article which appeared in Counterpunch in an edited form.

Israel, Hamas accused of breaking the rules of war

2009-01-17T08:31:00.001-08:00

JERUSALEM — Your unit, on the edges of the northern Gaza town of Jabaliya, has taken mortar fire from the refugee camp nearby. You prepare to return fire, and perhaps you notice — or perhaps you don't, even though it's on your map — there is a U.N. school just there, full of displaced Gazans.

You know international law allows you to protect your soldiers and return fire but also demands that you ensure there is no excessive harm to civilians. Do you remember all that in the chaos?

You pick GPS-guided mortars, which are supposed to be accurate and of a specific explosive force, and fire back. In the end, you kill some Hamas fighters but also, the United Nations says, more than 40 civilians, some of them children.

Have you committed a war crime?

Whatever the military and political results of Israel's war against Hamas in Gaza, Israel is again facing serious accusations and anguished questioning over the legality of its military conduct. As in Israel's 2006 war against Hezbollah in Lebanon, the popular perception abroad of how Israel fights, and hence of Israelis, may prove more lasting than any strategic gains or losses.

The televised images of devastation in the Gaza Strip and the large asymmetry in deaths, especially of civilians, have created an uproar in the Arab world and the West.

Western foreign ministers, U.N. officials and human-rights groups, Israeli and foreign, have expressed shock and disgust; some have called for investigations into possible war crimes. Such groups also say Hamas is violating the rules of war.

More than 1,100 Palestinians have died in the Gaza fighting, according to the Hamas-run Health Ministry, which estimates 40 percent were women and children younger than 18. Israel estimates a quarter of the dead are civilians. Israel, which has suffered 13 dead, three of them civilians, is being accused of a disproportionate use of force.

Under international law, proportionality is defined as a question of judgment, not of numbers: Is the potential risk to civilians excessive in relationship to the anticipated military advantage? That puts the weight on military advantage, since civilian risk is a given and must only not be "excessive."

Even if the target is legitimate, was the right weapon used to try to minimize civilian damage? The key is the expected damage the commander anticipated from the use of a certain weapon, not what happened when it was fired.

The other key legal principle is discrimination: Has a military struggled hard enough to hit only military targets and combatants?

While Israel is the focus of most criticism, legal experts agree Hamas, an Islamic group classified by the United States and Europe as terrorist, violates international law.

Shooting rockets out of Gaza aimed at Israeli cities and civilians is an obvious violation of the principle of discrimination and fits the classic definition of terrorism. Hamas fighters also are putting civilians at undue risk by storing weapons among them, including in mosques, schools and supposedly hospitals, making them potential military targets.

But Hamas' violations tend to be treated as a given and criticized as an afterthought, Israeli spokesmen and officials say. "The rules of engagement are very clear," said Mark Regev, the government spokesman. "Not to target civilians, not to target U.N. people, not to target medical staff. All this is very clear in Israeli military doctrine."

A senior U.N. lawyer authorized to speak only if she remained anonymous, said the military was not doing enough: "A proper weighing of proportionality on the battlefield is just not happening as it should."

700 Israelis arrested for protesting against war

2009-01-17T07:09:00.001-08:00

In eight years: twenty Israelis died from Gaza rockets, 4,000 Israelis died from car accidents.

PACIFICA – About 700 Israelis have been arrested for protesting against the war on Gaza since the beginning of the deadly offensive, said Neve Gordon, chair of the Department of Politics and Government at Ben-Gurion University of the Negev in Israel on Monday.

"700 Israelis have been arrested since this war began, because they protested this war. This has not made it to an international media, and it’s an act of intimidation by the state against those who protest the war," Gordon told Amy Goodman of Democracy Now!.

On the number of Israeli deaths, Gordon said: "between ten and twenty people, Israelis, have died from rockets in the eight years that rockets have been launched from the Gaza Strip into Israel. During the same amount of time, 4,000 Israelis have died from car accidents."

But Israel still used that as an excuse to bomb Gaza.

"From these twenty people, we’re allowed to enter into the Gaza Strip and bomb them from the air into their cage and kill 275 children," said Gordon, who is also the author of the book Israel’s Occupation.

Gordon criticized Israel's continuous violations of international law.

"Disproportionality is a term from international law. Israel has been defying international law and international agreements and international decisions from 1967, or probably from before. One of these decisions is that Israel must return these (Palestinian) territories. And by maintaining and holding onto these territories through violent means," said Gordon.

Although Gordon opposes Gaza rocket fire, he explained that the Palestinians are trying to defend themselves.

"The right to self-defense is a right to self-defense from violence. We have to understand that the occupation itself is violence. It’s an act of violence. Putting people in a prison, in a prison of one million and a half million people and keeping them there for years on end without basic foodstuff, without allowing them to enter and exit when they will, is an act of violence. Without electricity, without clean water, it’s all an act of violence. And these people are resisting. I am against the way they’re resisting, but we have to look at their violence versus our violence," said Gordon.

"Gaza is still under occupation, because Israel controls all of its borders, and the West Bank is under occupation, and East Jerusalem is under occupation. And the act—the first, the initial, the primordial act of violence is the occupation. The rockets are a reaction to that act of violence. And so, we have to keep in mind that within—it’s not between a state and another state. It’s been between an occupier and an occupied," he noted.

On the media war, Gordon noted: "Israel is dealing with a propaganda war. Israel is the one that disseminated a video of Hamas shooting rockets from a school, a video that’s almost two years old, claiming that the video was taken a day or two earlier. So Israel is in a propaganda war."

Gordon noted that "although Hamas did launch an incredible amount of rockets at the end of the ceasefire," it was Israel which broke the ceasefire on November 4th "when it attacked in the Gaza Strip."

"Israel actually is a first actor that broke the ceasefire," noted Gordon.

Gordon also accused Israel of committing acts of terrorism.

"Yes, the Hamas is fighting out from a civilian population, but Israel has the choice whether it’s going to bomb the civilian population or not, and it is intentionally deciding to bomb the civilian population. So in terms of intentionality in bombing areas where there are civilians, Israel is acting like a state terrorist. So, if your definition of terrorism doesn’t take into account the identity of the actor—and state actors can also be terrorists—then when you bomb a school and when you bomb a university and when you bomb a neighborhood and you’re killing much more civilians than militants, then you’re doing something that is an act of terror," he explained.

Gordon cited two reasons behind Israel's offensive against Gaza.

"I think the actual reasons have to do—the two major reasons—with rebuilding the reputation of the Israeli military after its humiliation in 2006 in Lebanon and the upcoming Israeli elections."

But the Israeli author believes that there is a way to solve the conflict.

"Hamas is the elected government of the Palestinian people. We don’t need to like them. I don’t like them. But they are the elected government, and we need to sit down and talk with them and not bomb them," he noted.

"We have to come out and say we are willing to talk with our enemies, even with people that say that they do not believe in the existence of Israel. The PLO said that they do not believe in the existence of Israel for many years. And ultimately, we sat down and talked with them, and they are now considered our Palestinian partner. I believe that if there is a pragmatic side, a strong pragmatic wing in Hamas, that if we start negotiation with them, over the years these people will also agree to the existence of Israel and be willing to live side by side with us," he added.

"If we do not talk with them, if we continue this cycle of violence, ultimately Israel will be destroyed, because ultimately, the technological edge that we have over our neighbors will not be meaningful. So we have to change our approach. We have to be pro—by changing our approach, we’re actually pro-Israeli. We say we want to see Israel a hundred years from now. And the only way we’ll see Israel exist a hundred years from now is if Israel makes peace with Syria, with Lebanon and with the Palestinian people," Gordon explained.

Israeli farmers beginning to feel the sting of worldwide boycott.

2009-01-17T07:05:00.000-08:00

Farmers claim UK, Jordan boycotting Israeli fruit

Fruit growers disappointed by canceled orders from abroad, leaving produce to rot in warehouses

Yair Hason

Published:

01.16.09, 07:37 / Israel Money

Fruit growers in Israel have reported delays and reductions in orders from abroad since the military operation in Gaza was launched, due to various boycotts against Israeli produce.

Farmers say much of their produce is being held in warehouses due to canceled orders, and fear a sharp decrease in fruit exports to countries such as Jordan, Britain, and the Scandinavian countries.

"We export persimmons, and because of the fighting a number of countries and distributors are canceling orders," Giora Almagor, of the southern town of Bitzaron, told Ynet. He said some of the produce had already been shipped while some was awaiting shipment in warehouses.

Almagor said a large number of cancellations came from Jordan. "The produce stays packed in warehouses, and this is causing us massive losses," he said.

"The longer the fruit waits in storage after sorting, the more its quality decreases. We also have to pay for cooling the merchandise that should have already left, and the cost in considerable," he added.

Ilan Eshel, director of the Organization of Fruit Growers in Israel, said Scandinavian countries have also been canceling orders. "It's mostly Sweden, Norway, and Denmark," he said. "In Scandinavia the tendency is general, and it may come to include all of the chains."

Eshel says the boycott did not exist before the Gaza offensive was launched. "It's getting worse, and more voices can be heard calling to boycott Israeli merchandise," he said. "Until the operation began we had excellent business, though the economic recession in Europe was causing a slight fall in the market."

He added that winter was an especially difficult season to be unable to export fruit, because the avocado, persimmon, and citrus markets are at their height.

Redditer draws supreme picture to a Digg fan.

2009-01-17T07:01:00.001-08:00

I found this on my car shortly after putting my new digg window sticker on

Seven Days

2009-01-14T15:16:00.000-08:00

Seven days

"But as we all prepare for that journey, we can't forget our commitment to help Hillary Clinton retire her campaign debt."

Vice-President Elect Joe Biden

Joe, is this really the best way to strategically use the 13 million strong mailing list? I realize Hillary has talents and debts, and that helping take care of her debts is probably part of some grand handshake that I don't know about or quite understand. Why not just go and ask her top supporters as well as Obama's and your own? Raising more money for change from the movement and then spending it on campaign debts doesn't jive with me.

On a "Are we ready for the Inauguration" note, I witnessed a humorous episode of security training at Union Station. Of course, we're becoming acclimated to squads of secret service police with machine guns poised -- reminds me of Europe in the 1970s. Those guns certainly change the atmosphere -- as they should.

Last Friday, I witnessed the confused interaction between a neophyte dog sniffer named Smitty, his black lab, and his wildy gesticulating supervisor in need of some training about how to coach employees. As morning commuter crowds poured into the station, we heard: "Smitty, work the crowd. Smitty, work the crowd." Smitty kept his composure in his brand new black uniform and hat and tried his best. The dog sniffed and twisted around people, lunged for the men's Room, and finally chased a fella with a striped shirt to the pretzel stand. "Smitty, work the crowd," grew more urgent. The supervisor, unsatisfied with Smitty's performance, took the leash and demonstrated how to move back and forth through the torrent of passengers. It was difficult for my unschooled eyes to distinguish the right way from the wrong way "Smitty, work the crowd" echoed as we left for our train.

It's good to practice -- and to start early. I'm sure we'll all be ready for the great day.

OH SHIT

2009-01-14T15:12:00.001-08:00

chicken

2009-01-14T11:19:00.001-08:00

I'm An Idiot

2009-01-14T10:02:00.000-08:00

Where Tijuana meets San Diego

2009-01-11T09:10:00.000-08:00

Girls&Cars - a perfect combination

2009-01-11T06:34:00.000-08:00

10 Fittest Movies of All Time

2009-01-06T08:31:00.000-08:00

RAGING BULL
While training with the film's real-life subject, Jake LaMotta, De Niro so impressed the former middleweight champ that he was convinced the actor could have had a successful pro boxing career.

FIGHT CLUB
Brad Pitt never had trouble winning over the ladies, but to most guys, he was still a skinny pretty boy—until Fight Club. As anarchist Tyler Durden, he inspired men everywhere to start crunching.

300
The film's CGI-backbone doesn't tarnish the exceptional shape the actors (like Gerard Butler, above) achieved to play a fearless Spartan army. After training for three months, the cast had to complete a 300-rep fitness test, including pull-ups, deadlifts, and pushups.

THE RAMBO MOVIES
In First Blood, he was trained to eat things "that would make a billy goat puke." In Rambo: First Blood Part II, he had to "become war." Sylvester Stallone returned in 2008 with Rambo, proving that muscle (even in lieu of a plot) can still sell movie tickets.

ANY GIVEN SUNDAY
It's got loads of former and current NFL players, like Terrell Owens, Jim Brown, and Warren Moon, plus MF cover guy Jaime Foxx's MET-Rx ad and solid gridiron action. Add Al Pacino's famous "inches" speech, and you're ready to run through a wall.

PUMPING IRON
The documentary that brought bodybuilding and its Austrian poster boy into the mainstream. With vintage footage of Gold's gym and the brutal workouts that forged champion bodies, Pumping Iron is a must-see for any musclehead.

THE ROCKY MOVIES
As inspiring as the story itself is Sylvester Stallone's dedication to showing up with the best possible body for each film. He ate raw eggs, did one-armed pushups, and boxed thousands of rounds. The training montages are legendary, the other actors were jacked, too, and the theme music is a staple of workout playlists everywhere. Rocky set a new standard for movie-star muscle.

BLOODSPORT
Before there was MMA, there was Bloodsport. The film that made Jean-Claude Van Damme a household name still inspires pushups during commercials and drunken backyard kumites.

ENTER THE DRAGON
In the most famous of Bruce Lee's badly dubbed kung fu movies, the martial arts legend reveals one of the best physiques in the history of film—as well as awesome techniques to match.

HERCULES
This is the movie that kicked off the "sword and sandal" epics of the '50s and '60s, in which musclemen were being drafted by the dozen to play Greek and Roman heroes. Steve Reeves, the 1950 Mr. Universe, ushered in a new era of muscle on film. Sylvester Stallone and a generation of bodybuilders cite this 1950s film as an influence on their decisions to pump up.

How Ecstacy could treat war veterans for Stress Trauma

2008-12-28T07:36:00.000-08:00

Agony and ecstasy

Ecstasy may be good for those who can’t get over something truly horrible

“I’VE been shot in the leg. I’ve been beat up. But that’s pretty minor,” says a 41-year-old American security contractor who spent four years in Iraq. “But when you get a vehicle blown out from under you and ambushed by six or eight al-Qaedas, it does tend to affect one a little bit.”

With a broken back, two broken feet and neurological damage, the man, who asked that his name not be used, spent the next three months in hospitals in Iraq, Germany and America. But though he was physically on the mend by the start of this year, he found himself incapacitated. “I was having nightmares right off the bat,” he recalls. “I couldn’t do anything. Mostly, I’d just retreat to a room and not leave.”

Post Traumatic Stress Disorder, or PTSD, is the persistence of debilitating psychological symptoms. It can include flashbacks and nightmares, increased arousal in the form of insomnia, anger and an inability to concentrate, and impaired personal relationships. Although lasting psychological damage from horrific experiences has been recognised since time immemorial, it is only since 1980, when veterans were still experiencing stress from the Vietnam war, that PTSD has been a formal psychiatric diagnosis.

By 2005 72,000 American veterans were receiving disability payments for PTSD. A study two years later estimated that 12% of American veterans from the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan suffer from PTSD. Thus far, 1.8m Americans have been deployed in those two theatres, implying 216,000 eventual cases.

Yet most PTSD sufferers are not drawn from the ranks of those for whom trauma is an occupational hazard: 5% of American men suffer from PTSD at some period in their lives. For American women, the rate is double that, mostly from exposure to such crimes as domestic violence and sexual abuse. Two in five rape victims are diagnosable with PTSD six months after the attack. “It can go on for ever”, says Kathleen Brady, a professor of psychiatry at the Medical University of South Carolina who studies the disorder, “but even after 30 years, PTSD is treatable.”

Treatment usually includes drugs and antidepressants such as Zoloft, sometimes combined with psychotherapy. “There is a lot of evidence supporting exposure-based therapy”, says Dr Brady, “which means re-living the events in a safe setting so patients can separate the inappropriate effect from the trauma.” Yet in at least a quarter of cases chronic PTSD is resistant to all treatment.

Gail Westerfield, a writer who lives in South Carolina, was sexually abused by a neighbour when she was a child, and later raped by an acquaintance when a university student. She suffered a range of symptoms including memory problems, bouts of depression, crying fits and tremors.

She was diagnosed with PTSD a decade ago when she was in her 30s. But she found this knowledge cold comfort. “I was probably on half a dozen different kinds of antidepressants over the years”, she says, “and they never worked for me. I’ve had this my whole life, pretty much.”

So the results of a clinical trial recently announced by Michael Mithoefer, a psychiatrist in Charleston, South Carolina, are encouraging. Twenty patients with PTSD who had resisted standard treatments—including both Ms Westerfield and the security contractor—were given an experimental drug in combination with psychotherapy. After just two sessions all of them reported dramatic improvement. The compound, methylenedioxymethamphetamine, or MDMA, is not new. Known as Ecstasy, it is illegal nearly everywhere.

Dr Mithoefer’s study is part of a broader resumption of research into the therapeutic uses of psychoactive compounds. Scientists in North America, Europe and Israel are studying the use of MDMA, LSD, hallucinogenic mushrooms, marijuana and other banned psychoactive substances in treating conditions such as anxiety, cluster headaches, addiction and obsessive-compulsive disorder. They are supported by private funds from a handful of organisations: the Beckley Foundation in Britain; the Heffter Research Institute and the Multidisciplinary Association for Psychedelic Studies (MAPS) in America.

This avenue of research—as opposed to research into the damage done by recreational drug use—came to a halt in the 1970s when drug prohibition became politically popular first in America and then in the rest of the world. Though the “war on drugs” continues, the approach is gradually becoming less dogmatic and more pragmatic. Even so, research into therapeutic uses of banned drugs is fraught with political considerations, often with bizarre results. For instance, though medical marijuana is now recognised in many parts of the world—in California more than 20,000 people are registered to use it—there are few studies into its benefits.

Fun has its uses

MDMA was first synthesised almost a century ago but was little noticed until the 1960s when young American chemists began to ingest it. Alexander Shulgin, a chemist at Dow Chemical in California who had invented Zectran, the first biodegradable insecticide, had been experimenting—in every sense—with mescaline and its chemical relatives. Then one of his students suggested that he try MDMA. “By golly”, he recalls, “she was absolutely right: this was an interesting compound.”

Mr Shulgin left Dow to pursue psychoactive chemistry full-time. Over a couple of decades he synthesised hundreds of chemicals, all of which he tried first on himself and a small group of volunteers. One of his collaborators was his wife, Ann. In the late 1970s the Shulgins introduced MDMA to Leo Zeff, a Californian psychotherapist who had developed LSD therapies in the 1960s when that drug was still legal. Dr Zeff was so impressed that he postponed retirement and became an enthusiastic proponent of the drug (which he called Adam), introducing it to hundreds of other therapists in America and Europe.

But in the 1980s MDMA, which at the time was still unregulated, escaped its semi-underground psychotherapeutic milieu and began to be taken by young people for the sheer fun of it. In a panic, America’s Drug Enforcement Agency (DEA), unaware of the therapeutic MDMA network, made an emergency classification in 1985 that placed MDMA in Schedule I—the most restrictive category for drugs with “a high potential for abuse” and “no currently accepted medical use”.

Schedule I also includes marijuana, LSD, psilocybin, mescaline and heroin (though rules vary widely: heroin, for example, is available by prescription in Britain and some other countries). Cocaine, amphetamines, opium, morphine and others are in Schedule II and can be prescribed by doctors under DEA supervision. Although 500,000 doses of MDMA had by this point been used in therapeutic settings, the compound was thereafter banned worldwide.

Some therapists went underground, continuing MDMA treatment illegally, using illicit supplies. “It’s a very simple compound to make,” remarks Mr Shulgin.

Ironically, once it became illegal, MDMA’s recreational use exploded. The UN estimates that at least 9m people—compared with 12m heroin and 16m cocaine users—consume round about 100 tonnes of MDMA and related compounds worldwide each year. The criminal nature of the business makes it difficult to assess the dosage or purity of the MDMA being consumed and it can have lethal effects. But millions of people, rolling about on fake fur pillows or waving glowsticks to electronic music, attest to feeling good. “The first time I ever did it was literally the first time in my life that I felt good in my body,” says Ms Westerfield, who took MDMA recreationally in the 1980s (half the study participants had swallowed the drug occasionally in the past).

In 1986 Rick Doblin, one of Dr Zeff’s students, founded MAPS with the goal of ushering MDMA through the formal drug-approval process of America’s Food and Drug Administration (FDA) and so bringing about its rescheduling. Drug approval often takes big pharmaceutical firms a dozen years at an average cost exceeding $1 billion. But Mr Doblin, then a student, had time and enthusiasm on his side.

“Our whole approach is based on the idea that science matters at the FDA,” he says. No studies had been performed on the effects of banned psychoactive drugs on humans since 1971 (though a thaw came in 1990 with a study to assess the relationship between schizophrenia and dimethyltryptamine or DMT, a potent hallucinogen that occurs naturally in the brain). Mr Doblin explains that since the FDA insists that psychedelics should be treated like any other drug, “we had to start with a Phase I safety study, where the drug is first used on humans—even though millions of people had taken MDMA by then.” The study got going in 1992 at the University of California, Los Angeles.

The results were positive but by the mid-1990s, when the study was complete, MDMA had become even more controversial. It was not until 2000, when Mr Doblin met Dr Mithoefer, another of Dr Zeff’s former students, that the opportunity arose to propose a Phase II study on the efficacy of MDMA in treating PTSD. Treatments began in 2004.

Dr Mithoefer’s Phase II research, which used MDMA from the only legal source—a chemist at Purdue University licensed by the DEA to distribute controlled quantities from a supply synthesised in 1985—is directly descended from the first generation of LSD psychotherapy. Subjects were given MDMA while attended by Dr Mithoefer and his wife, a psychiatric nurse. They rested on a futon, listened to music and were encouraged to revisit their trauma.

“I remember feeling incredibly safe and very motivated,” says Ms Westerfield of her first session. The security contractor from Iraq concurs. “It helped me put the pieces of the puzzle together,” he says. “I was blown 15 feet through the air in a vehicle, and I forgot the ride upwards. It made me remember it.”

The patients who received MDMA showed statistically significant improvement of their PTSD symptoms compared with those who received the same day-long therapy sessions with an inactive placebo. “All the major approaches involve revisiting the trauma in therapy”, says Dr Mithoefer, “but patients may be overwhelmed and retraumatised.” He believes the fear and defensiveness that characterise PTSD are obstacles to treatment, and that it is MDMA’s attenuation of these emotions that permits concurrent psychotherapy to be effective. He will publish the study shortly.

Several additional Phase II studies organised by MAPS are about to start in Israel, Switzerland and Canada. A Phase III trial, in which the methodology is extended to many more therapists and several hundred patients, is still more than two years away. But eventually, if two Phase III studies are successful, the next step would be rescheduling MDMA. Dr Mithoefer is cautious, suggesting that looking that far ahead is premature. “There’s reason to think this may be an exciting new treatment at some point,” he says. “But it’s a long way to proving it in larger trials.”

“We don’t have failures”, says Mr Doblin, “because we’re working with drugs that have been tested in the underground, and work.” Government research into the harmful effects of these drugs has, curiously, helped his cause: “There are over 3,000 papers on MDMA that have cost more than $200m to produce,” he says. He estimates that, thanks to these bodies of formal and informal knowledge, MAPS can take MDMA through the approval process for only about $10m.

While the bureaucracy rolls on, a few people are watching the results with personal interest—and impatience. “There are other things that I would still like to work on,” says Ms Westerfield, whose last MDMA-assisted therapeutic session was four years ago. “That’s why I hope it gets approved sooner rather than later.”

Israel and Gaza in one image (from BBC)

2008-12-28T07:32:00.000-08:00

The 30 Hottest Things to Say to a Naked Woman

2008-12-28T07:28:00.001-08:00

The 30 Hottest Things to Say to a Naked Woman

1. "Good morning."

2. "Is it okay with you if I take this slow?"

3. "I can't stop touching you."

4. "Want to join me in the shower?"

5. "I want to kiss/lick/touch every inch of you."

6. "I love how you taste."

7. "Do you feel this, too?" ("This" being an incredible emotional euphoria.)

8. "Hungry? Stay right here. I'll go make you a burrito."

9. Her name—her full name—followed by a "Wow."

10. "I'll get the light."

:)

Optical Illusions

2008-12-27T07:59:00.000-08:00

Chrysler closing all 30 plants for a month

2008-12-27T07:00:00.001-08:00

DETROIT — Chrysler says it will close all 30 of its manufacturing plants for a month starting Friday.

The company needs to match production to slowing demand and conserve cash.

Tighter credit markets are keeping would-be buyers away from their showrooms, Chrysler says. Dealers are unable to close sales for buyers due to a lack of financing, and estimate that 20 to 25 percent of their volume has been lost due to the credit situation.

Chrysler claims it is nearing the minimum level of cash it needs to run the company and will have trouble paying bills after the first of the year.

Operations at the 30 plants will be idled at the end of shift on Friday, Dec. 19, and will not come back online until Jan. 19, 2009, or later.