Olmert: Next U.S. Administration May Not Be as 'Accommodating'

One Can Hope | 12.06.2008 02:01 | Anti-racism | World

Dare to dream ...

Judging by the carbon-copies the candidates the media allows coverage to gave at last week's AIPAC Conference, I don't think Zionist Extremism has much to fret about.

Olmert: Next U.S. administration may not be as accommodating

By Barak Ravid, Haaretz Correspondent and Reuters

Prime Minister Ehud Olmert on Tuesday said he was uncertain of whether the next United States administration would be as sympathetic toward Israel as that of President George W. Bush, and as such, efforts should be made to take full advantage of the current U.S. leadership.

(This doesn't bode well, as Israel is gearing up for attacks on Gaza, Lebanon, Syria, and Iran.)

This coming Monday, U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice plans to hold a three-way meeting with Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni and senior Palestinian negotiator Ahmed Qureia.

Palestinian negotiator Saeb Erekat announced the planned meeting after the U.S. proposed holding trilateral talks with Israel and the Palestinians in order to accelerate negotiations on the core issues and bridge the major gaps that still exist.

(It's about time the Palestinians tell Israel's sponsor where to go, and embarks on a real process.)

Analysts said the corruption scandal dogging Olmert has dramatically reduced the chances of a peace deal before Bush leaves office in January and could force Rice to consider scaling back her ambitions.

(This was always a facade anyway, designed to give Olmert some positive PR while his Government increased its attacks on Palestinians, the illegal annexation of further Palestinian land, and other policies which actually make reconciliation more unlikely.)

Olmert is currently under investigation over suspicions that he illegally received funds from an American millionaire.

So far there are few signs that she is prepared to do so as she leaves Washington on Wednesday on a trip that will take her to Paris for an Afghan donors' conference on Thursday and then to Jerusalem and Ramallah for her sixth visit this year.

(Rice has experienced Israel's duplicity first-hand, and when she called the Olmert Government on the many steps it's taken to obstruct peace, Israeli Extremists began attacking her.)

Rice is also expected to have a three-way meeting with Palestinian Prime Minister Salam Fayyad and Defense Minister Ehud Barak, who is a key player in determining how far Israel goes to ease Israeli-imposed restrictions (illegal measures of Collective Punishment) placed on the Palestinian residents of the West Bank.

Dspite Olmert's difficulties, the administration has said it will continue to press for a peace agreement this year - the goal Bush announced at a high-profile peace conference he hosted in November in Annapolis, Maryland.

"The question is not about his desire but about his ability," said a senior U.S. official of Olmert's predicament. "I'd rather be criticized for an element of romanticism than for an element of neglect."

However, Western, Palestinian and Israel officials have all acknowledged privately that Olmert's corruption investigation could trigger new elections, dimming - if not snuffing out - the chances of a deal this year.

(Possible successors, like Netanyahu the Extremist, have already stated that they would cancel any agreement Israel makes under Olmert.)

Some analysts said Bush should now concentrate simply on handing over an active peace process to his successor, rather than on striving to produce some kind of a deal that may be impossible to reach given Israel's political uncertainty.

They suggested Washington also work to improve conditions in the West Bank by strengthening Palestinian security forces and governing institutions and by pressing Israel to remove roadblocks Palestinians say cripple their economy.

http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/991492.html

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One Can Hope

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When will it end

12.06.2008 10:04

So once again the known Indymedia spammer, holocaust denier and antisemite Jordan Thornton is allowed to cut and past articles from other media and post it to the UK site without being hidden despite the fact this is against the Editorial Guidelines.

So so sick of IMC antisemitism

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Fancy a bet on this ?

12.06.2008 12:01

Question: What do America's premier investor, Warren Buffett, and Iran's president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, have in common? Answer: They've both made a bet about Israel's future.

Ahmadinejad declared on Monday that Israel "has reached its final phase and will soon be wiped out from the geographic scene."

By coincidence, I heard the Iranian leader's statement on Israel Radio just as I was leaving the headquarters of Iscar, Israel's famous precision tool company, headquartered in the Western Galilee, near the Lebanon border. Iscar is known for many things, most of all for being the first enterprise that Buffett bought overseas for his holding company, Berkshire Hathaway.

Buffett paid $4 billion for 80 percent of Iscar and the deal just happened to close a few days before Hezbollah, a key part of Iran's holding company, attacked Israel in July 2006, triggering a monthlong war. I asked Iscar's chairman, Eitan Wertheimer, what was Buffett's reaction when he found out that he had just paid $4 billion for an Israeli company and a few days later Hezbollah rockets were landing outside its parking lot.

Buffett just brushed it off with a wave, recalled Wertheimer: "He said, 'I'm not interested in the next quarter. I'm interested in the next 20 years.' " Wertheimer repaid that confidence by telling half his employees to stay home during the war and using the other half to keep the factory from not missing a day of work and setting a production record for the month. It helps when many of your "employees" are robots that move around the buildings, beeping humans out of the way.

So who would you put your money on? Buffett or Ahmadinejad? I'd short Ahmadinejad and go long Warren Buffett.

Why? From outside, Israel looks as if it's in turmoil, largely because the entire political leadership seems to be under investigation. But Israel is a weak state with a strong civil society. The economy is exploding from the bottom up. Israel's currency, the shekel, has appreciated nearly 30 percent against the dollar since the start of 2007.

The reason? Israel is a country that is hard-wired to compete in a flat world. It has a population drawn from 100 different countries, speaking 100 different languages, with a business culture that strongly encourages individual imagination and adaptation and where being a nonconformist is the norm. While you were sleeping, Israel has gone from oranges to software, or as they say around here, from Jaffa to Java.

The day I visited the Iscar campus, one of its theaters was filled with industrialists from the Czech Republic, who were getting a lecture — in Czech — from Iscar experts. The Czechs came all the way to the Israel-Lebanon border region to learn about the latest innovations in precision tool-making. Wertheimer is famous for staying close to his customers and the latest technologies. "If you sleep on the floor," he likes to say, "you never have to worry about falling out of bed."

That kind of hunger explains why, in the first quarter of 2008, the top four economies after America in attracting venture capital for start-ups were: Europe $1.53 billion, China $719 million, Israel $572 million and India $99 million, according to Dow Jones VentureSource. Israel, with 7 million people, attracted almost as much as China, with 1.3 billion.

Boaz Golany, who heads engineering at the Technion, Israel's M.I.T., told me: "In the last eight months, we have had delegations from I.B.M., General Motors, Procter & Gamble and Wal-Mart visiting our campus. They are all looking to develop R & D centers in Israel."

Ahmadinejad professes not to care about such things. He was — to put it in American baseball terms — born on third base and thinks he hit a triple. Because oil prices have gone up to nearly $140 a barrel, he feels relaxed predicting that Israel will disappear, while Iran maintains a welfare state — with more than 10 percent unemployment.

Iran has invented nothing of importance since the Islamic Revolution, which is a shame. Historically, Iranians have been a dynamic and inventive people — one only need look at the richness of Persian civilization to see that. But the Islamic regime there today does not trust its people and will not empower them as individuals.

Of course, oil wealth can buy all the software and nuclear technology you want, or can't develop yourself. This is not an argument that we shouldn't worry about Iran. Ahmadinejad should, though.

Iran's economic and military clout today is largely dependent on extracting oil from the ground. Israel's economic and military power today is entirely dependent on extracting intelligence from its people. Israel's economic power is endlessly renewable. Iran's is a dwindling resource based on fossil fuels made from dead dinosaurs.

So who will be here in 20 years? I'm with Buffett: I'll bet on the people who bet on their people — not the people who bet on dead dinosaurs.

Paddy Power

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Another corporate repost from Jordan Thornton

12.06.2008 14:36

As the previous (and hidden) commenter puts it, when will it end?

gehrig

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Olmert: Next U.S. Administration May Not Be as 'Accommodating'

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When will it end

Hidden Comment

Fancy a bet on this ?

Hidden Comment

Another corporate repost from Jordan Thornton