RUTHFULLY YOURS

Tens of trillions of cubic feet of gas lie waiting offshore, with the potential to transform the world’s energy map and perhaps even stabilize the Middle East.

What a difference a year makes.

A year ago, the Israeli government was at complete loggerheads with an American company and its Israeli partner over the future of “Leviathan,” Israel’s massive offshore natural-gas reserve. The question was whether either of the two companies, Noble Energy of Houston and the Delek Group of Israel, would be allowed to participate in actually developing the field they had discovered five years earlier. And then, in August, with negotiations stalled, and no other candidates in sight, the Italian energy giant ENI announced the discovery, in Egyptian waters, of an even larger and more easily accessible gas field. Some energy experts were beginning to wonder if Leviathan would ever be developed at all.

At the same time, Israel’s relations with Turkey, formerly one of its closest allies, could not have become worse. Ever since Recep Tayyip Erdogan took office as Turkey’s prime minister in 2005, a diplomatic chasm opened between the two countries, exacerbated in 2010 when the Israeli navy boarded the Mavi Marmara, a blockade-running ship bound for Gaza, and by Erdogan’s galloping regional ambitions. The latter have been accompanied by Erdogan’s growing penchant, now as Turkey’s president, to vilify the Jewish state in extremist language mirroring that of Tehran, Hamas, and the Muslim Brotherhood.

But then, this past December, things suddenly reversed on both fronts. Cutting through the Gordian knot of a half-decade’s negotiations, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu announced that, despite Knesset opposition, his office had reached a final deal with Noble Energy. Only a day later, the Wall Street Journal reported that top-secret talks in Switzerland had resulted in a diplomatic breakthrough: normal relations were being restored between Turkey and Israel. On his way back from a visit to Riyadh, Erdogan remarked to a reporter, “Israel and Turkey need each other.”

Provided Ankara doesn’t back out at the last minute, and provided Israel’s supreme court doesn’t overturn Netanyahu’s deal with Noble and Delek, these two breakthroughs—a double-play for Israel’s prime minister—could begin to change the energy landscape of the eastern Mediterranean and the entire Middle East.

“The Patient Ones,” Al-Sabireen, are seeking Palestinians as a group to become an Iranian proxy in the region, and redoubling efforts to eliminate the “Zionist entity” and replace it with an Islamist empire.

Loosed from its sanction-based constrictions, Iran is now free to underwrite terror throughout the region. This is precisely what is happening in Lebanon, Syria, Yemen, Iraq and the West Bank and Gaza Strip.

Iran’s infiltration of the West Bank should serve as a red flag not only for Israel, but also for the U.S. and other Western powers. An Israeli pullout, leading to a Hamas takeover of the West Bank, has been a subject of concern. Now, a growing number of Israelis and Palestinians are wondering if such a vacuum will provide an opening for Iran.

Emboldened by its nuclear deal with the world powers, Iran is already seeking to enfold in its embracing wings the Arab and Islamic region.

Iran’s capacity for intrusions having been starved by years of sanctions. Now, with the lifting of sanctions, Tehran’s appetite for encroachment has been newly whetted — and its bull’s-eye is the West Bank.

Iran has, in fact, been meddling for many years in the internal affairs of the greater region. It has been party to the civil wars in Yemen and Syria, and, through the Shiite Muslims living there, continues actively to undermine the stability of many Gulf states, including Saudi Arabia and Bahrain.

The lives of both the Lebanese and the Palestinians are also subject to the ambitions of Iran, which fills the coffers of groups such as Hezbollah and Islamic Jihad.

Until recently, Iran held pride of place as Hamas’s primary patron in the Gaza Strip. It was thanks to Iran’s support that Palestinian Islamist movement, Hamas, held hostage nearly two million Palestinians living in the Strip. Moreover, this backing enabled Hamas to smuggle all manner of weapons into the Gaza Strip, including rockets and missiles that were aimed and fired at Israel.

The January 16 Taiwan elections were the latest evidence of a new reality in Asia: Taiwan’s cross-strait neighbor, China, is in significant decline. Replacing a government that made integration with China its chief priority, incoming Taiwan president Tsai Ing-wen asked for and received a mandate to reform her island nation’s economy, precisely because the close links established by her predecessor have been dragging down the island nation as the depths of China’s economic challenges become obvious.

During the Great Recession, the belief among analysts, economists, and corporate leaders in the advanced economies was that China was the engine that would pull the world through. China’s sharply increasing inflationary policies did give some lift to the region, but one need only look at Taiwan’s sharp decline in economic growth over the past year to see that, as China’s economy has slowed under the weight of public debt that increased dramatically during and since the crisis, the situation has turned around: China’s slowdown imperils global growth, something that is immediately evident in Taiwan.

Tsai’s victory was complete, and there should be no doubt that the voters intended to send a clear message. In a three-way race, she carried 56 percent of the vote. She had coattails, too. Her Democratic People’s party earned its first majority in Taiwan’s parliament, the unicameral Legislative Yuan, gaining 28 seats to win 68 of 113 seats overall. Her predecessor’s party, long seen as the most accommodating to Beijing, lost 29 seats in a rout.

What is the message? Tsai’s DPP has been painted by Beijing — and many China analysts in the U.S. and elsewhere — as a pro-independence party. While Taiwan’s last (and only other) DPP president, Chen Shui-bian, was considered suspect by the U.S. for his pro-independence leanings, that is not Tsai’s message or mandate.

Further to my video observations about civilizational suicide as a form of moral narcissism comes this stark statistic from The Daily Mail:

In 2001 there were 1.5 million Muslims in England and Wales.

By 2014 there were 3 million Muslims in England and Wales.

So Britain’s reaction to the cultural fault line revealed by 9/11 was to double its Muslim population. So for the most part did the rest of the west. The Mail reports:

England is home to more than three million Muslims for the first time ever, new figures show.

The number in the country has doubled in just over a decade as a result of soaring immigration and high birth rates.

In some parts of London, close to half the population are now Muslims, according to detailed analysis by the Office for National Statistics obtained by The Mail on Sunday. On current trends they will be the majority in those areas within a decade…

A detailed breakdown obtained by this newspaper shows that Muslims are much younger than the general population. One in four Muslims in England and Wales – 746,000 – is aged under ten. In the whole country, the proportion is about one in seven.

The ONS has also identified eight areas around the country where Muslims make up a significant number of local residents.

In the East London borough of Tower Hamlets the proportion stood at 45.6 per cent in 2014, while in neighbouring Newham it is 40.8.

I suppose one shouldn’t gloat about the misfortune of your enemies, but what’s happening in Venezuela — politically and economically — is enormously satisfying.

This horrifying report on the state of the Venezuelan economy in The Economist, and the prospects for the future, seems like what a nation that celebrated a loony, paranoid view of the United States deserves.

The government has admitted that in the 12 months to September 2015 the economy contracted by 7.1% and inflation was 141.5%. Even Nicolás Maduro, Chávez’s hapless heir and successor, called these numbers “catastrophic”. The IMF thinks worse is in store: it reckons inflation will surge to 720% this year and that the economy will shrink by 8%, after contracting by 10% in 2015. The Central Bank is printing money to cover much of a fiscal deficit of around 20% of GDP.

The government has run out of dollars—liquid international reserves have fallen to just $1.5 billion, thinks José Manuel Puente, an economist at IESA, a business school in Caracas. While all oil-producing countries are suffering, Venezuela is almost alone in having made no provision for lower prices.

This spells misery for all but a handful of privileged officials and hangers-on. Real wages fell by 35% last year, calculates Asdrúbal Oliveros, a consultant. According to a survey by a group of universities, 76% of Venezuelans are now poor, up from 55% in 1998. Drugmakers warn that supplies of medicines have fallen to a fifth of their normal level. Many pills are unavailable; patients die as a result. In Caracas food queues at government stores grow longer by the week. Shortages will get even worse in March, worries a food-industry manager. Violent crime is out of control.

If we were to compile a list of history’s most prolific mass murderers, who would we put on our list? Attila the Hun ravaged the Roman Empire during the 5th Century, killing and maiming all who stood in his way. In the 13th Century, Ghengis Khan and his Mongol hordes roamed far and wide, creating a bloody empire that stretched from China and the Korean peninsula all the way to Iraq and Eastern Europe.
From 1921 to 1959, Josef Stalin ruled the Soviet Union with a cruelty unprecedented in human history, killing some millions of his own countrymen. In the 1930’s and 40’s, Adolph Hitler murdered millions of people – mostly Jews, Gypsies, and others who were deemed ineligible for membership in the “master race.” And from 1975 to 1979, the Khmer Rouge, under the leadership of Pol Pot, murdered nearly 4 million in a wanton political “cleansing” of the Cambodian countryside.
But who would we select as the greatest mass murderer of all time? The leading candidate for that title would be American marine biologist Rachel Carson, the author of Silent Spring, the principal force behind the banning of the pesticide DDT and the godmother of radical today’s radical environmentalists of the political left.
DDT is an odorless chemical pesticide used to control disease-carrying and crop-eating insects. Developed in Germany in 1874, it did not come into common usage until World War II when it was effectively used for pre-invasion spraying of jungles and marshes. Following the war, it was widely used throughout the world as a means of combating yellow fever, typhoid fever, malaria, and other diseases carried by insects.

The UN Security Council and the Quartet – Russia, America, the United Nations and the European Union – have ended any expectations they had of successfully negotiating a two-state solution between Israel and the Palestine Liberation Organisation, after failing to categorically reject UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon’s highly offensive remarks before the Security Council and in the New York Times.

Ban told the Security Council on January 26:

“Palestinian frustration is growing under the weight of a half century of occupation and the paralysis of the peace process.

Some have taken me to task for pointing out this indisputable truth.

Yet, as oppressed peoples have demonstrated throughout the ages, it is human nature to react to occupation, which often serves as a potent incubator of hate and extremism.”

Reacting to “occupation” can never justify the murder of Israeli civilians in their own homes, shopping in supermarkets, meeting in bars, or waiting at bus stops.

Such acts of murder are despicable and inhumane – and the Security Council and the Quartet should have said so clearly and unequivocally.

Following Israel’s trenchant criticism of these statements a clearly piqued Ban ran off to the New York Times on 31 January claiming he had been misrepresented:

“Some sought to shoot the messenger — twisting my words into a misguided justification for violence. The stabbings, vehicle rammings and other attacks by Palestinians targeting Israeli civilians are reprehensible. So, too, are the incitement of violence and the glorification of killers.”

It is too much to hope that those who wear their hearts on their sleeves for illegal arrivals, especially when news cameras are nearby, will ever grasp the wisdom of silence. Their yen to bask in the limelight makes a practical, low-key solution very nearly impossible
Courtesy of Fairfax Media’s Michael Gordon, another of those pseudo-thoughtful, reasonable-in-a-parallel-universe “analyses” of illegal immigration and the recent decision by the High Court to uphold the government’s right to detail and process illegal arrivalss in offshore locations. Apparently, if you follow Gordon’s logic, this adjudication is confronting Malcolm Turnbull with some big decisions. That would be, on the one hand, (a) to continue the successful policies instituted by Tony Abbott, as our latest Prime Minister solemnly promised to do or, on the other hand, (b) to repudiate his pledge and abandon them.

I’m guessing Gordon was expecting the government to be rebuffed by the High Court; if so, no surprise there. When you exist and work in a milieu where everyone you know — or everyone of whom you approve, in any case — thinks the same way and trades in the same pieties, it can be hard coming to grips with the concept that the law might see things in a different light.

Presumably, Gordon believes that, had the High Court gone the other way, Turnbull would have had an easy decision, one to which the Prime Minister would have been much more amenable. An adverse High Court ruling decision would have given him easy cover to break his solemn assurance to conservatives that, on offshore detention and other matters, he intended to cleave to the party line. Specifically, according to Gordon, Turnbull’s immediate ‘hard decision’ is:

whether he moves quickly to send around 100 children, including 37 babies, to the tiny, sweltering island with their mothers to face a precarious life in limbo.

The EU-Turkey agreement of 25 November, which provided Turkey with 3 billion euros over two years in order to stop the flow of refugees to Europe, has not achieved that goal. Speaking privately, EU officials complain that Turkey has not taken any concrete measures to reduce the flow of refugees. In our assessment, Turkey will continue to prevaricate on steps to stem the flow of refugees as pressure on the EU to give more concessions.

During the coming year there will certainly be further terrorist attacks that will push European public opinion further to the right.

We assess that Iran will continue in indirect channels with a parallel nuclear program, realized long before the 10-year target of the JCPOA.

The demand for unification of Kurdistan — Iraqi and Syrian — will also begin to be heard. It is highly likely that Russia will take advantage of the trend and support the Kurds, effectively turning an American ally into a Russian one.

The announcement by the IAEA that Iran has fulfilled its obligations according to the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) has triggered “Implementation Day” and the removal of the nuclear-related sanctions on Iran. The JCPOA, however, did not deal with Iran’s ballistic missile program, and the sanctions related to it are still nominally in force. These sanctions are minor and will not have any real effect on the Iranian missile program. The missile program will mature during this period and will include Ghadr missiles with ranges of 1,650-1,950 km, which may be capable of carrying nuclear warheads.

North Korea used both the Agreed Framework and the NPT as camouflage to cheat and proceed with its covert nuclear weapons program. Nuclear weapons are apparently an integral part of North Korea’s strategy eventually to reunify the Korean peninsula under North Korean communist rule.

According to Hwang Jang-Yop, highest-ranking North Korean defector in history, North Korea’s goal is to remove American military forces from South Korea. Once that withdrawal is achieved, the North would use its nuclear arsenal to deter Japan and the U.S. and prevent these two key South Korean allies from coming to the defense of the South once the North invades it.

Arms control, since the height of the Cold War, has cut both the U.S. and Russian strategic deployed arsenals by nearly 90% and thus can hardly be described as part of any “arms race” that might have compelled North Korea to build nuclear weapons.

The idea that the U.S. deciding to replace aging nuclear systems, some half-century after the last modernization, is somehow perpetuating an “arms race” is without foundation.

“Military critics” are already anticipating how to disembowel critical elements of the U.S. military — especially its aging nuclear deterrent — when the defense budget will be unveiled by the administration and sent to Congress February 9, 2016. In two recent essays, for instance, Gordon Adams, previously at the Office of Management and Budget in the Clinton administration, and Lawrence Korb, at the Center for American Progress, are both calling for dismantling the U.S. nuclear deterrent.