Jerusalem - “The Israeli government on Sunday approved the creation of a new Ministry for Strategic Affairs, to be headed by a controversial ultra-nationalist, Avigdor Lieberman, and deal mainly with Iran’s nuclear ambitions, a senior cabinet official said.”

The purpose of this new Israeli ministry is to stay on top of developments in Iran and to recommend any action necessary to prevent Iran from making nuclear weapons. Lieberman has a powerful position in the Israeli government and if he advises an attack on Iran, an attack will
probably happen.

Speaking of attacks, the Palestinians are still firing rockets at Israel in spite of the so-called cease-fire, and the Israelis are about ready to give up and go back on the attack. We all knew it would never last anyway as the Palestinians have never once honored any agreement.

Meanwhile, the US has told UK banks operating within the US to shut down all connections and operations with Iran. “Several of the UK’s largest banks fear they could face the full legislative wrath of the US government unless they bow to Washington’s pressure to shut their operations in Iran. The US has imposed unilateral sanctions on Iran - because of its alleged support for international terrorism - and individuals found to have breached the economic restrictions face a fine of up to $250,000 (£126,000) and 20 years in jail.”

“The Turkish prime minister has held talks in Tehran with Iranian leaders on bolstering bilateral relations and stabilising the situation in their violence-ridden neighbour Iraq. Recep Tayyip Erdogan said that Iran and Turkey were soon looking to increase trade to some $10 billion per year, a huge rise on the figure of $1.2 billion from 2002 and the current $6 billion.”

So as we cut off the money flow to Iran on one end, the Turks turn on the faucet at the other end. Turkey is supposed to be an ally of ours? The quality of our allies has degraded so badly over the years since the end of WW II that what used to pass as outright enemies are now looked on as friends. The choice of evils has narrowed that much.

Iran on Sunday welcomed Russian opposition to tough sanctions backed by Washington and European capitals over Tehran’s nuclear program. Russia’s nuclear energy chief is due in Iran on Dec. 11th to “bolster bilateral economic and technological cooperation.”

So we have, as usual, the Israelis and us against everyone else. Even the United Kingdom is happy to do business with the worst single terrorist-supporting nation on the planet. I won’t argue that we do business with Saudi Arabia and other unsavory oil producing nations, which we do. The Saudis are a dirty lot but at least they aren’t out to build nukes that I’ve heard of. I would like to think that if the Saudis were threatening Israel with destruction like Iran constantly does, that we would sanction the Saudis. We probably would not, but that doesn’t stop me from wanting to think so.

Socialism has long been a much stronger political force in Europe than here. We aren’t friendly with it as it’s kin to Communism. This is behind most of the schism between the nations of Europe and the US. It’s also behind Multiculturalism and the creation of the European Union, whose purpose is to rival the US economically. Economic rivals with differing political agendas soon become less than friends. A lot of baloney has been printed about the arrogance of the US as being the cause of the rift, but it’s all economics.

This entry was posted on Monday, December 4th, 2006 at 6:13 am and is filed under News. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.