Looking For A Leader

Britain has always been blessed. Whenever there is a national emergency the country has found a leader to forge a path through the crisis. What a panoply of giants has graced us with their presence over the last millennia. The names read like a roll call of great heroes, Winston Churchill, The Duke of Wellington, Nelson, Queen Elizabeth the First, Walter Raleigh, the list is laced with infinite splendor.

In my own lifetime, my family and I left for America when the country no longer seemed governable. This was in the late 70’s, and we were suffering from innumerable strikes, industrial work limited to three-day weeks because of a lack of electric power, runaway inflation, a sinking pound, enormous unemployment numbers and a gigantic balance of payment deficit.

We left but Margaret Thatcher arrived. When we returned to this country from America it was a country in the midst of a transformation, which it has benefited from ever since. I am not saying that I loved the woman, because, if I was to tell the truth, I didn’t even like her. I found her cold, aloof, patronizing and unkind, but she saved my country from itself. From her genesis the UK was re-branded and re-launched. From a no hope country slipping to ignominy the country re-discovered its balls and over the last twenty years has become one of the world’s powerhouses.

Lest we forget it was Thatcher that changed the world’s mindset about de-nationalization and how the economy could work. It was Thatcher who destroyed the unseemly agglomeration of power that the unions had accumulated which was making the country ungovernable. Without this fundamental shift back to common sense there could have been no other fundamental changes.

Last night the government forced legislation through the House of Commons the new forty-two day detention rule. This means that, should the police believe there is a reason to arrest a terrorist suspect, this person could be held by them for up to six weeks before he is even charged. This is a shameful act, and is yet another breach of habeas corpus enshrined in this country’s original guarantee of democracy, the Magna Carta, signed in 1215. It states a prisoner is entitled to be bought before a court of law so that the legality of his detention can be verified. I quote Article 39, “No freeman shall be arrested or imprisoned or outlawed or exiled or in any way harmed. Nor will we proceed against him, or send others to do so, except according to the lawful sentence of his peers and the Common Law.” This is a disgraceful act of infamy by our lawgivers. It is a victory for the expedient, short-term tacticians who run our affairs, and clearly demonstrates their total lack of respect for the rights of its citizens.

Now, once again the country is on the slide. We need another leader, and it isn’t our present Prime Minister or David Cameron, the leader of the opposition, the man most likely to succeed him when we have our next election. Cameron is simply a watered down carbon copy of Tony Blair. Britain doesn’t need re-packaging, it needs a conviction politician ready to lead from the front, and Cameron doesn’t offer this. Let us all hope that somewhere, lurking in the wings, is such a person. Our country is looking for a leader, the need is becoming urgent!

Oops!

I posted a blog just a few hours ago in which I reminded everyone that you can't trust the government with your confidential information on any database. I told you that you shouldn't volunteer information to these national custodians.

How quickly the chickens came home to roost!

Within the last 10 minutes BBC TV announced that secret government documents, marked top secret, about Al Qaeda, had accidentally been left on a train in London, then handed to the BBC. The BBC showed the folder on air, without revealing the contents.

If we didn't see it with our own eyes we would have to believe this was a fabrication. It proves what I've been saying, the government's own people must be properly policed as they are clearly irresponsible, and constitutionally incapable of even average care and attention.

100 On Up!

Today is special for me, as it marks the 100th blog I’ve posted. It is quite a commitment to post a blog almost every day, but like everything it’s mostly about discipline.

I decided that I was going to use this opportunity to review the world’s current situation. This is My State of the Blog, in which I will offer solutions and predictions for the balance of the year.

Clearly there is no end in sight for the major conflicts in the world. Neither Iraq nor Afghanistan is anywhere near to a conclusion. However, what’s worrying me isn’t that we might lose militarily, but that we have done nothing to root out the endemic corruption of the Iraqis or Afghanistanis we have ceded power to. While this is the case there is no moral imperative for any local inhabitants to believe in our form of democracy. The answer is for us to do one of two things. Put in more force, and aim to win the conflicts rather than to contain them. Or we could simply pull out and leave those two countries to their fate. Personally I believe we will do neither and therefore everyone will suffer.

The Israel / Palestine conflict is really about Israel and Hamas and Israel and Hezbollah. Until these two terrorist organizations are cut off from their Iranian paymasters this conflict will continue and escalate into direct conflict between Iran and Israel. This will take the form of Israel attacking Iran’s nuclear capacity and Iran seeking some form of surrogate revenge via their terrorist proxies both regionally and internationally. The solution is that the rest of the world must act now to force Iran to abandon their nuclear weapons program, and their vicious rhetoric threatening Israel’s existence. Meanwhile Osama is still hiding in a cave somewhere in the border region between Pakistan and Afghanistan. Many moderate Muslims agree that the world will be better for his death. I hope they get their wish. He is truly an evil and misguided man, and his work has caused misery for many millions of people, most of them people he would claim as his own.

The sub prime mortgage induced credit crises will rumble on and recession is the result. In fact we will be lucky if this doesn’t worsen into a full-blown depression, complete with mass bankruptcies, unemployment and shrinking business opportunities. Today, in the UK the news organizations were reporting a forecast that, if property prices continue to drop at their present rate, more than two million homeowners face negative equity. Put another way this means that these mortgages are now bigger than the value of the properties. Wake up everyone, a great many of these mortgages were 100% or more of the value of the property when they were taken out, or put another way, they were in negative equity to start with! These greedy risk takers, otherwise known as the banks, were betting that there was going to be a never ending rise in prices and therefore it didn’t matter whether or not the loan was as big or bigger than the value, because values would overtake this loan in double quick time.

I am giving this subject it’s own second paragraph. The solution is for the banks not to panic and to find ways to help their clients survive where they are. It pays everyone to keep the borrowers in the properties under almost any foreseeable circumstance. This can be achieved by government working with the banks to create a shared ownership, affordable housing scheme designed, retroactively, to take over some of the equity, which could be recovered later, if possible. This could reduce the monthly exposure and divide it into some mortgage payment plus a reduced “rental” sum.

The next generation iPhone from Apple is being released momentarily and will be an even bigger smash hit than its first draft. It is said that this model is not only faster, thinner and more user friendly, but is also going to be a lot cheaper. I love my blackberry but I can’t resist for much longer. Whilst I am on things Apple I have to admit that I’m typing this on my Mac Book Air, and its bloody fantastic. Not only does it meet my every computing need but also it’s easy to schlep through airports on the run, and it really makes a difference.

Manchester United will have another great season in English and European football whether they still have Cristiano Ronaldo in the team or not. I idolize the young man as the best footballer on the planet, but if his greed overwhelms his common sense and he seeks to be released from his contract, that he signed last year, then the club should show him the door.

China will do exceptionally well in the Beijing Olympics, but I suspect you, like me, won’t be able to look at the athletic medalists without your suspicions being elevated. What a shame, these people once epitomized for the world, the finest attributes of human endeavor.

Freedoms will continue to erode in the Western democracies as America elects Barak Obama and he turns out to be more Jimmy Carter than John Kennedy. I sincerely hope that this prediction doesn’t come true as I have very little time for the peanut farmer from Georgia.

In my home country Gordon Brown will sink to immeasurably low numbers in the opinion polls, and instead of trying to chase the lost millions he does what he should have done in the first place, which is to relax and just do the best job he can rather than to be a pale imitation of Tony Blair. Nevertheless, it’s going to be too little too late for the iron Chancellor, who turned out to be the Prime Minister made out of putty.

Like you I shall generally not get thinner or fitter, but I shall keep trying. The sun will shine too little in the UK and too much elsewhere, when it doesn’t rain for more than a week here we call it a drought, and when it does rain for more than a week, we have floods, and we will blame both on global warming. I will continue to write my blog and I hope you will still read it. 100 blogs delivered, and many more to come.

Fight For Freedom

Britain, my Great Britain, wake up, you the father of modern democracy, are sleepwalking to a totalitarian state. Inch by stinking inch we are allowing our freedoms to be eroded, all, of course, in the name of freedom. We seem unaware of what the result will be of reducing our freedom by the millions of cameras watching our every move. Now they link these systems. They are putting microphones and speakers in combination with many of these cameras.

Our leaders are allowing, or sanctioning or ordering that our tax and other, related financial information, be combined. What’s the reason behind this? When you undertake almost every meaningful financial transaction in the UK today you now have to show either a passport, or your driving license. Why should this be necessary? Ask yourself how many terrorists have been caught in the security net because there are these compliance measures? The official answer is, none!

Add to this the new, combined government information database in which our health information is to be held. We can all understand the theoretical and practical reasons that this might benefit us, but the truth is that this is another system that is completely open to abuse. Imagine if your prospective employer knew you had a medical problem that you wanted to keep private. Does this mean you don’t get the job, but will never learn why you were turned down?

We just don’t know whether the people being entrusted with the confidential information about us are well intended, but we do know they are hopelessly inefficient. This country’s government has, as I have written before, admitted that it is early stage development of a system that enables it to listen to and record every phone call, every visit to every website and study every text message at its leisure. This is a gross breach of our human rights and should be fought by every person who values their future freedom.

Various council authorities in this country are, apparently, sending out information forms for every household in their area to complete. This is compulsory and there are severe penalties for value to complete the forms. The kinds of questions being asked are an attempt by the authorities to spy on every aspect of that household’s lifestyle, expenditure and income levels.

These council authorities are using the anti terrorism legislation, never intended for this purpose, to spy on the householders in their districts. Under law they are doing so quite legitimately but clearly for illegitimate reasons.

Let’s examine another frightening outcome that will surely follow the misuse of medical knowledge in this country, and probably elsewhere. If all the data-bases become linked, and DNA sampling is progressively standardized we will have a situation in which we will be able to forecast which children are going to be born with or will develop various degenerative diseases in later life. Will society allow such children to be born into the poorer world that decreasing resources is likely to engender? If insurance companies are warned in advance that someone is going to develop a long-term illness, or one that might lead to premature death, how likely is it that they will provide any form of insurance cover?

What is the moral and ethical position of our society in dealing with these issues? We must have this debate and arrive at our conclusions BEFORE we enable this truly frightening technology not AFTER.

Remember that our governmental sanctioned data-bases failure rate is 70%. Remember the bigger the data collection the more likely we are to suffer what the American military used to call a SNAFU, Situation Normal All F…d Up!

We also have our government demanding new legislation in which terrorist suspects can be arrested and held without trial, for 42 days. I am, as those of you who have previously read my articles know, extremely hard line with terrorists. Note the difference, I am tough on terrorists, not suspected terrorists. Unless you’ve forgotten, like our government apparently has, you are innocent until you’re proven guilty in this country. There must be a presumption of innocence or we have truly become a totalitarian regime. It was bad enough that our legislators meekly allowed the previously demanded 28 days of arrest without charge, why do we need 42 days? What does 42 days precisely give us, that 28 days did not, or is this simply a number without any meaning?

The real terrorist organizations want our society to over react and turn on itself. Our government is falling into this trap. Obviously this is a difficult balance to achieve, and whatever route our leaders take will be open to error, but there are fundamental truths at stake. These must include the presumption of innocence and that includes the right to trial by a jury of your peers. Our governments must not behave beyond the law to protect us from illegal actions. There is one exception to this, and that's the extraordinary powers a democracy allows its government at time of war.

The question is, are we at war? If we are at war with a global terrorist threat, then you have to make that clear and then these, extraordinary powers could be allowed, but only for the duration of the conflict. When we are already asking questions as to whether it is allowable for the authorities to torture a terrorist suspect for the greater good we are clearly entering a new type of war situation. I find the idea of torture repugnant until this scenario is put into context. For example the terrorist knows where in London or New York, that his friends have planted a dirty nuclear device, ready to explode in one hour. Do you ask him politely to let you know where the bomb, that might kill 500,000 people is, or do you do whatever is necessary to find out where it is, immediately?

For me the answer is obvious, you do whatever you can, and you don't wait one second. The counter argument relates to the size of the threat, and the possibility that you might have the wrong suspect under arrest. I respond that if one person is under threat of being murdered it is worth the risk, and yes, there would be mistakes, and that's too terrible to contemplate, but is a legitimate price in times of war.

Back to the UK, pure and simple; here I have already written to my medical center telling them I want to opt out of the National Health database currently being collected.

I have also checked to see whether my council is one of those placing concealed mini cameras in our wheelie bins to check for “proper” segmentation of paper, glass and other rubbish. Would you believe they are now confirming whether the weight of the bin is too much for our over protected refuse collectors. They’re calling this the “two finger rule”. If it takes more than two of the bin collectors fingers to roll the wheeled bin to his truck they will not remove it. This is, of course, political correctness gone mad, but it is real nevertheless. In England we have a two fingered salute, which means the same as the single finger salute in the States. I want to share this salute with the town hall little Hitlers who are coming up with these ridiculous rules.

Watch out America, because for your Barak Obama read our Tony Blair a decade ago. What we’re experiencing now you can anticipate for your future. Like Blair there is something of the nanny state provider about Obama. All the things we now have in the UK that I‘m outlining were well intentioned laws, regulations and ideas that were founded in the absolute certain belief that these were all being done for our own good. Every day our lives are peppered with news of a never-ending barrage of such ideas. All conceived by our leaders to tell us how to live. This week there were announcements about our health, the packaging and pricing of alcohol, advertising on TV, further congestion charging in another of our major cities, Manchester, and I could go on without end.

My advice to the reader is to fight this type of legislation wherever you find it, and never give in. If there’s an alternative take it. If you’re compelled, try to resist. Tell them no, don’t fill in their forms, don’t volunteer any information, and if you get an opportunity to be in contact with your elected representative tell them, loud and clear what you think about this continual erosion of your freedom. Then, when there are elections, vote the idiots out, or it might be too late.

Some Animals Are More Equal...

Yesterday was a perfect English Summer's day; I watched some people walking their dogs through the countryside. Let’s be honest, I am not nature boy, and the reason for my being in the green area, grass I think is the name, is because they were selling me an ice cream cone with a Cadbury’s Flake in it. In England we call this concoction a 99, and it was what God invented for sunny days. Forgive the interruption. I looked at these people with their dogs and I compared them to other families with their children. No question, the people with the animals were treating the beasts better than the other families were treating their kids.

What sets us apart from the animals, our ability to laugh, to see the funny side of things? Animal lovers will always insist that their pet dog, cat, mongoose, fish or lizard is laughing, smiling or expressing angst. But, and I am sorry to have to insist, this is not true.

Leibniz, the early 18th. Century German philosopher said, “It is the knowledge of necessary and eternal truths which distinguishes us from mere animals, and gives us reason and the sciences, raising us to knowledge of ourselves.”

Animals are lovely, if you like that kind of thing, but they don’t have any sense of humour. They are, in fact, very limited intellectually. You could say the same about many of their owners, or if I am to be politically correct, keepers. Please be aware any animal nuts, that I do like animals myself, and that I have had many pet dogs, fish and even a tortoise or two when I was an ankle biter. I just don’t ascribe human abilities to the little beasts. I also don’t, and you should whisper this, hug any trees. They’re really nice to look at, but they don’t look cuddly to me.

Humans don’t learn to have a sense of fun and the ridiculous; we are born with this ability. There is something attractive about us when we smile, and that’s why almost every photograph you see has a smiling face in it. We look at our best when we’re happy. Animals can be happy or sad, but that is based purely on their basis needs being met or otherwise. They can’t express emotion facially or verbally; they don’t have the mental agility. Their brains simply don’t have the capacity or the synapses.

You could think differently had you watched the recent episodes of Britain’s Got Talent, or America’s Got Talent. Both these television shows featured dogs with immense ability. Dogs that could dance backwards, and in one case stand on a rope and seemingly, take a bow (wow)! Of course one does have a slight suspicion that these might be very small people in a dog suit, but that aside. These were very talented dogs. The one in England was probably able to quote Shakespeare. It was a great dog. But it isn’t a person. Please stop going berserk whenever you see a cute animal, you’ll only encourage the balls of fur.

Happily the animals did not win the contests and although they might consider litigation I for one was gratified that they were left to bark in the dark.

All animals are equal, but some animals are more equal than others, as George Orwell stated in his book, Animal Farm. We should all look after fellow humans first and animals come somewhere down the list. Please remember, humans are the animals that are more equal.

European Envy

Yesterday the European Football Championships started in the two host countries, Switzerland and Austria. The opening ceremony was as exciting and entertaining as watching wood warp or paint dry. Whoever thought that either of these countries could either play soccer or do an opening? They do clocks, cheese, prompt trains and some snow sports, they do top rate boring.

Of course, like every other Englishman, I am mourning the fact that England didn’t qualify to appear in this tournament. Surely, you will say, there must have been some mistake in the computation in the qualification games. Yes, there was, we didn’t win enough of them. We missed out by one point, but that one point might as well be as big as the Grand Canyon.

This would be bad enough in itself, but Michel Platini, the boss of the European Football Federation, decided to rub it in. He made a statement in which he said that no one would miss the English team or its supporters. This, from a Frenchman, is too much to bear. But he wasn’t happy yet. One of the journalists pointed out that English club teams currently dominate the European Champions League. In fact, as I have written previously, four of the quarter finalists and three of the semi finalists and the two finalists in that championship were English clubs. My own magnificent club, Manchester United, won the competition, beating Chelsea. Mister Platini’s response was to state that the English clubs were cheating, by both the finalists being in debt. They had, in his view, simply run up debts to achieve their dominance.

Of course this is just French jealousy because our teams are better than their teams. Can you name the last French club team to get anywhere in the European club championships? Well of course there is Arsenal, the club purportedly from London’s Highbury, who in reality could, more properly be re-named, Paris United. There are many more Frenchmen in that team, and only one Englishman.

Running up debt to achieve your commercial goals is called Capitalism. We might not like it, but last time I looked, it wasn’t illegal, or even improper. Do the European football bosses really believe that if say, Microsoft were to buy Google, they just reached into their back pocket and pay over the cash for the purchase. Grow up Mister Platini. You’re just green with envy of our well run, dynamic and ultra successful football clubs. Our league generates more money from television and from gate receipts because our football is exciting to watch and people everywhere want to see it.

We all agree that the English fans are both the best and worst to be found anywhere. We have bigger crowds watching our Premier league teams than anyone else in Europe, and they follow our clubs and national team wherever they go, all over the world. These fans do have a tendency to explore every pub and bar on route, but it would be simple to overcome the problem of their drunk and disorderly behavior. Close the local drinking establishments for a half-day before the matches. It’s not nuclear science.

There is another mainland European scheme to marginalize the dominance of English club teams. The method being employed is that the pesky Europeans, led by Sepp Blatter, have demanded a change to the laws governing the national make up of the competing teams. This is the infamous 6-5 rule, in which there would be a requirement for six natives from each club’s home country to appear in the team. There are two fundamental flaws in this argument. The first is that the European employment laws do not allow employers to differentiate between potential employees based on which European nation they originated from. The second problem with this plan is that Manchester United actually did have six English players in their championship winning team. The simplistic wish of a parochial xenophobe does not outweigh the employment laws of the European Union.

Lest we forget, in this article praising the success of our clubs, we should remember that our national team is not in the European national championships. Of course, as a patriot, and a football fan, this does perturb my equanimity. I can only struggle on with the knowledge that my club has the best team in the world and remembering that England will soon be trying to qualify for the World Cup, and we’ll all have something new to moan about. I’m convinced that if we won that competition the people who run it would try and disqualify us anyhow. Just because we're paranoid doesn't mean people aren't against us.

Will Barak Blink?

Today Hillary Clinton officially concedes defeat to Barak Obama. This might be the first clear sign of his sweeping to power in the election against John McCain later this year. I have to express grave concern about this. My concern is that he doesn’t have a grasp of the realities of the Middle East, and that is the biggest single problem facing an incoming American President. The one thing that must not be allowed to go wrong is the Middle East, or we will all pay a terrible price.

Let me take the positives first. It would be a wonderful step forward if America were to prove itself rid of its abhorrent racist past by electing its first black President. Obama is also clearly capable of being a spellbinding and amazing public orator, able to sum up emotion, common sense and a clarion call with disarming charm and power. Obama is a fresh face, unbound and unsullied by the strictures or deals done in the back rooms in the past.

Obama looks good, and that’s a big plus. Unlike Bush, who looked like a putz, Obama looks like a President. You cannot exaggerate the importance of visual perceptions. If I were wrong you would have seen some bald Presidents and Prime Ministers since Churchill and Eisenhower, but you haven’t.

And yet, with all these pluses I have a sneaking suspicion that just as McCain seems to have no grasp of economics, (well that is what he said) I have the same feeling about Obama and his lack of a real grasp of the Middle East.

I am concerned because, for years, questionable people surrounded Barak Obama and he did nothing about it. This group could be called Neo-Anti Cons and was led by his radical preacher friend, the Reverent Jeremiah Wright, who has a long history of race hate and anti-American sermons. Also this week a fundraiser for the Democrat nominee, a Syrian born property developer, Antoin Retzko, was convicted for corruption in a Chicago court. This is another questionable friend for the nominee; Obama seems to have way too many such associates for comfort.

I am not questioning Obama’s right to be friends with whomever he likes, but we do have to seriously question the man’s judgement of people. Obama did, immediately cut all ties, and did return the money donated by Retzko to charity, but again he has opened himself up to attack. Perhaps he has disassociated from these lunatics, villains and thieves that appear to have populated his world, a little too late.

In the example of Reverent Wright, his church appear to have had some very questionable friends from the far extremes of Islamic intolerance, like Louis Farrakhan. This man has soul mates in the leadership of Iran and has openly expressed his extreme and Nazi like anti-Jewish and anti Israel attitudes. Obama had years in which he could have pulled away from these people, but didn’t do so until political exigencies forced him to do so.

I recall my rabbi (she has since moved to another congregation) making a sermon from her pulpit, which I disagreed with. I articulated this difference of opinion to her. We wrote to each other and talked about our views. If I could do this so should Barak Obama have done so, there is no excuse for a man of principles to remain silent in the face of evil. But this leads us to ask, were his views different from those of his crazy Reverent.

At best Barak has proven himself to be a politician like any other, disingenuous. At worst he has been lying to us all, and the reason he didn’t protest at his preacher’s outrageous statements was because he agreed with them.

I do not share the liberal myth that George W. Bush and Tony Blair got it wrong with their “wars” in Afghanistan and Iraq. I think we needed to do more, earlier and better.

Let’s also get our history right. Whether you like it or not the United Nations Security Council and NATO were fully in accord with the action they led in both places. It is a fact, these were not illegal wars, and they were sanctioned.

But, for the liberal left, it appears that historical facts don’t matter, they are more selective. They will howl in anguish that the reasons given for the wars have since been disproved. I question that rationale also. There had been weapons of mass destruction in Iraq. The question is what happened to them. Between the two Gulf Wars enormous stocks of these weapons were dismantled. The man supervising the location and destruction of the nuclear program was from the Atomic Energy Commission, and was himself of Arabic origin. This man and that group clearly stated that there were stockpiles of weapons of mass destruction and much of the stockpile was destroyed. We do not know where the rest of it is, either buried in the desert, or transferred to a friendly, neighbouring country, such as Syria or Iran.

Before any sceptical reader claims this to be a fabrication do remember that Iraq parked its entire air force in Iran when the first Gulf War began, and never managed to fly it home. It should also be remembered that Israel recently destroyed a secret Syrian nuclear facility that no one else had ever said existed. Take this in addition to the admitted facts surrounding Iran’s reaching out to become a nuclear power and you have the environment that Obama enters.

The next canard thrown at Israel, to level the playing field, is that Israel has never admitted or denied that it has a nuclear deterrent. The argument goes, what’s good for the goose is good for the gander. There is no equivalence. Israel has never threatened any of its neighbours with destruction, but its neighbours constantly threaten Israel. As Benjamin Netanyahu said, " If the Arabs put down their weapons today, there would be no more violence. If the Jews put down their weapons today, there would be no more Israel. "

The liberal left constantly claims that Israel is not a legitimate state. It’s as if they think that if they constantly repeat this lie that the country will be de-legitimised and then will cease to exist. Wait a second that is exactly what they are seeking to achieve. It is not only becoming an accepted, politically correct chant of the chattering classes that Israel is always wrong, and shouldn’t have been there in the first place.

Sadly for these people Israel is not just going to be vaporized, or conveniently commit national suicide. It is a legitimate state that does have a Jewish majority and was voted into existence by the United Nations. It was the first state to receive this honour. Since that time Israel has much more to be proud of than to be ashamed about. That’s about all you can demand of any country.

If Barak Obama were to win the election you can be certain that President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and the other leaders of Iran will quickly test him. In case your memory is incredibly short you should read the Iranian leader’s statement of last Monday in which he repeated his prediction that the “criminal and terrorist Zionist regime” would soon disappear off the map.

We saw the result of a response to this explicit threat when Israel’s Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Transportation and Road Safety Shaul Mofasz, responded to a question about Iran. Mofasz was born in Iran, and has a thorough knowledge of military reality having served the Israeli Defence Forces as a Lieutenant General and Chief of Staff. He speaks with some authority, as he knows both the mindset of the adversary and the military rationale behind any such need to attack. He stated, “If Iran continues its programme to develop nuclear weapons, we will attack it.” His comments struck fear into the oil traders. Their reaction to this plus the news of America’s unexpectedly high jump in unemployment pushed up the price of crude oil by $11 in one day. Ironically the headlines demonstrated the perversity of the global perception, “Oil hits record price as Israel threatens Iran” was the heading in today’s Daily Mail.

We live in a world turned upside down. Where black is white and insanity rules. Imagine a situation in which your neighbour constantly threaten to kill you, burn down your house and destroy your family, and then scatter the ashes. You go to the authorities and they tell you, that despite this same neighbour killing many people like you in the past, not to worry he doesn’t really mean it. You then tell the authorities that if this man shows you his loaded gun you will have no alternative but to stop him using it. You then get tried and convicted for threatening him! That’s what the world is currently doing if they blame Israel for any of this madness.

My central theme here is that the Middle East will decide the future for us all. The Middle East is the place we must pray our leaders get it right. It isn’t the economy stupid, as Bill Clinton once said, when describing what single element would decide his last election; it’s the Mid East, which decides whether we all live, or die.

The test of Obama is liable to take place against a background of escalating tensions between the West with Russia, which is beginning to flex its newfound economic muscle. This scenario is eerily reminiscent of the situation President Kennedy found himself in when Khrushchev tested his resolve with the placing of the nuclear missiles in Cuba. Before we all get to see who blinks first Obama needs to make it perfectly clear that he is not going to let his country, or his allies be pushed around. If he doesn’t show iron resolve at that point we will all face a very uncertain future.

Do we trust our very existence to Barak? This is a man of uncertain judgement of character. What does Obama really believe? When push comes to shove, will Barak blink?