The U.S. terror suspect known as “JihadJane” represents a troubling breed of convert holy warrior. Reuel Marc Gerecht on why Western recruits are more likely to go on suicide missions. The arrest of “JihadJane,” aka Colleen Renee LaRose, a blond-haired, blue-eyed, 46-year-old American, ought to make us reflect on a major ingredient in contemporary jihadism: Westernization. European internal-security and intelligence officers have long feared Western converts to radical Islam—the type of people who once embraced Europe’s Cold War-era hard-core left-wing organizations. But with convert holy warriors, there’s an expanded target pool: down-and-out misfits like LaRose, who have brushes with the law or become criminals. Finding militant Islam is like finding a forgiving family. Past personal failures and insults to one’s dignity are consumed by the possibility of imminent, righteous revenge. Through the Internet, newly minted believers can now touch an enormous “virtual umma,” a borderless community of radicals and holy warriors. LaRose found the home and a higher calling that she never had through jihadist Web sites. Carrying Western passports and names, fluent in the idiom and manners of non-believers, usually distant from family, friends, and social organizations, and often imbued with a Nietzschean sense of an individual’s historic possibilities, such Westerners make ideal holy warriors.

The one last hope for Senate Democratic leaders was to avoid a vote altogether on the public option, thereby relieving Senators of having to take a position and being exposed. But that trick would require the cooperation of all Senators -- any one Senator can introduce a public option amendment during the reconciliation and force a vote -- and it now seems that Bernie Sanders, to his great credit, is refusing to go along with the Democrats' sham and will do exactly that: ignore the wishes of the Senate leadership and force a roll call vote on the public option. [Note: The rest of article here: http://www.salon.com/news/opinion/glenn_greenwald/2010/03/12/democrats/index.html]

A rash of new layoff announcements and government reports on job losses give the lie to the claims of the Obama administration and the media that the employment situation is “stabilizing.” Last Friday, the administration hailed the Labor Department’s report that US payrolls shrank by “only” 36,000 jobs in February and the official jobless rate remained at 9.7 percent as proof that its policies are working and the economy is recovering. In fact, the so-called “recovery” is limited to the big banks and major corporations, which are profiting from trillions of dollars in taxpayer bailouts, virtually unlimited and cheap credit, and the use of mass unemployment to drive down wages and increase the exploitation of the working class. An unprecedented assault on the living standards of the vast majority of the American people is being carried out under the direction of the Obama administration, creating a social crisis without parallel since the Great Depression. ~~~ The Obama administration and the Democratic-controlled Congress are doing nothing to provide serious relief for the unemployed or create new jobs to employ the jobless. They refuse to bail out cash-starved states and cities, having bailed out the banks to the tune of trillions of dollars, instead demanding that local governments carry out unprecedented attacks on basic social services. The real attitude of Obama toward the working class was demonstrated in his public support for the mass firing of teachers in Rhode Island, after they resisted demands for longer work hours with no increase in pay. This goes hand in hand with a health care overhaul entirely focused on cutting Medicare and rationing health care for ordinary Americans, and the setting up of a bipartisan commission to prepare major and permanent cuts in entitlement programs—Medicare, Medicaid and Social Security—on which tens of millions of working people depend.

New York may soon add salt to a growing list of prohibitions. Busy legislators around the world are fighting trans fat, smoking, high fructose corn syrup, and dozens of other unhealthy foods and habits. And they mean business, the proposed New York salt fine is $1000 a pop.

Full audio of talk; videos of the Q&A. "Famed linguist and political activist Noam Chomsky delivered a lecture titled “‘I Am Kinda’: Reflections on the Culture of Imperialism” last Monday, March 8, in McCosh 50. ... The lecture’s title refers to a woman named Kinda who introduced herself to Chomsky at a lecture he gave in Beirut in 2006. As a child, she had written a letter to President Ronald Reagan after the 1986 U.S. bombing of Libya, her home country. Chomsky had printed the letter in his book “Pirates and Emperors: International Terrorism in the Real World.”"

Dennis Kucinich, an unwavering progressive Democrat, is saying that he will vote against the the Health Reform bill, as it stands in the Senate. That stance has led to him being attacked by fellow Democrats and some "progressive" pundits, particularly Markos Moulitsas, who are backing the existing senate and house health reform bills WITHOUT the public option or cover for state efforts to pursue single payer. Responding to me asking his take on Moulitsas attack on Kucinich, progressive talk radio host Thom Hartmann replied, " Progressives attacking Dennis Kucinich is the circular firing squad on steroids.

Patrick Kennedy railed against the media for covering Eric Massa 24/7 but not showing up for a debate on Afghanistan. He called them "despicable". But they have been despicable going all the way back to Clinton's impeachment and despicable ever since.

The unemployment rate last year for young Iraq and Afghanistan veterans hit 21.1 percent, the Labor Department said Friday, reflecting a tough obstacle combat veterans face as they make the transition home from war. The number was well above the 16.6 percent jobless rate for non-veterans of the same ages, 18 to 24. As of last year, 1.9 million veterans had deployed for the wars since the Sept. 11, 2001 terrorist attacks. Some have struggled with mental health problems, addictions, and homelessness as they return home. Difficulty finding work can make the adjustment that much harder. The just-released rate for young veterans was significantly higher than the unemployment rate of young veterans in that age group of 14.1 percent in 2008. Many of the unemployed are members of the Guard and Reserves who have deployed multiple times, said Joseph Sharpe, director of the economic division at the American Legion. Sharpe said some come home to find their jobs have been eliminated because the company has downsized.

The Financial Times has caught wind of a letter sent by U.S. Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner to to the EU’s Michel Barnier. In only thinly-veiled language Mr. Geithner accused the EU of financial protectionism for the way Brussels is moving forward with rules to regulate hedge funds and other parts of the shadow banking system. This marks the most open sign of the deteriorating US-EU relationship on matters of financial reform. The letter is embedded below. [Note: see the letter in the article.] Geithner Letter to Michel Barnier accusing EU of Protectionism ~~~ This latest development should not come as a surprise given the outline of EU-US disputes I put forward on 9 March. Europeans have shut the American firms out of sovereign bond deals. Meanwhile, European firms are fully able to participate as underwriters of Build America Bonds that are racking up huge fees for large banks. I began my post Wall Street barred from European bond sales in retaliation for credit crisis saying: We have a bit of a divide developing between the EU and the U.S. on banking and bank reform. The most significant move in this tiff has come in retaliation for Wall Street’s role in helping countries like Greece hide their debt burdens. According to the Guardian newspaper, all American banks have been shut out of the sovereign bond market in Europe. While many might think the U.S. government does not have a role to play in this dispute, I know from my own experience as a diplomat that the U.S. government is very aggressive about advocating for U.S. firms abroad. I ended the bond sale piece noting: how much of this is just politics. In the Greek case, up to fifteen banks may have helped Greece hide debt. Yet, the focus here is on Wall Street firms – I suspect purely for demagoguery. Should we expect a tit-for-tat move of some sort? In this context, Geithner’s letter makes perfect sense. The financial services industry is an important profit center for American business. Therefore, Geithner feels compelled to advocate on its behalf in Europe – as the American government is prone to do. Think of Geithner as lobbyist for American finance in Europe. The difference between the US Treasury Secretary and a mere lobbyist, however, is the veiled threats Geithner can make.

Researchers at Kuwait University and the Kuwait Oil Company have endorsed Peak Oil, and have concluded 2012 is the year world oil production will peak. This new study, from these sources will add fresh fuel to the debate about Peak Oil. The theory of Peak Oil has been dismissed and suppressed for years in order to prevent any serious effort to find alternatives before declining oil production and rising prices deal the death blow to industrialized economies.

"Too bad neither art, nor life answers to misdirected pigeonholing from admirable leftwing voices like Robert Scheer. Must outstanding movies to be reduced to partisan “messages” or platforms that reinforce our prejudices, whether about politics or art? “Disappointed” with “Hurt Locker’s” seeming apolitical stance, the ideological Scheer balks because a less than overtly anti-Iraq war film won Best Picture."

Faced with the dilemma of how they could possibly justify their year-long claimed support for the public option only now to fail to enact it, more and more Democratic Senators were pressured into signing a letter supporting the enactment of the public option through reconciliation; that number is now above 40, and is rapidly approaching 50. In other words, there is a serious possibility that the Senate might enact a public option if there is a vote on it, because it's very difficult for these Senators to vote "No" after pretending all year long -- on the record -- that they supported it. In fact, The Huffington Post's Ryan Grim yesterday wrote: "the votes appear to exist to include a public option. It's only a matter of will." The one last hope for Senate Democratic leaders was to avoid a vote altogether on the public option, thereby relieving Senators of having to take a position and being exposed.

Tom Hayden wants peace, but he's sincerely mistaken about how to get it. He claims that Wednesday's unsuccessful vote to end the war in Afghanistan makes ending the war less likely, and that the way to end the war is to pass a bill that would then have to pass the Senate and the President, a bill requiring an exit strategy, any exit strategy -- it could be "redeployment" to Iran in 2038 or anything else. I'm not against moving bills forward, even meaningless bills if they send a helpful message. I'm not against ending the war in a way that leaves the president in charge of Congress, if that proves the fastest way to end the war -- even though it leaves us in a state in which more wars are inevitable. I don't think we're especially likely to force the House to cut off the funding next month. But forcing a debate on the war, and forcing congress members to put their names down on one side or the other, does not make those members more likely to stick with those positions. It makes them more likely to oppose the wars. Why? Because it raises public awareness and public pressure. Those who voted to end the war are now being thanked and rewarded and pressured to vote no on funding what they just claimed to want to end. Those who voted to keep the war in Afghanistan going are now being pressured to change that position in a way that they were not when all was silent. Hayden, of all people, is leaving the public out of his calculations.

Though Bush 41 and Bush 43 often disagreed, one issue did unite them both with Bill Clinton: protectionism. Globalists all, they rejected any federal measure to protect America's industrial base, economic independence or the wages of U.S. workers. Together they rammed through NAFTA, brought America under the World Trade Organization, abolished tariffs and granted Chinese-made goods unrestricted access to the immense U.S. market. Charles McMillion of MBG Information Services has compiled, in 44 pages of charts and graphs, the results of two decades of this Bush-Clinton experiment in globalization. His compilation might be titled, "Indices of the Industrial Decline and Fall of the United States."

"The chamber spent more than $144 million on lobbying and grass-roots organizing last year, a 60% increase over 2008, and well beyond the spending of individual labor unions or the Democratic or Republican national committees. The chamber is expected to substantially exceed that spending level in 2010." --- This elite organization of oligarchs has been emboldened by the Supreme Court decision in the Citizens United case, which now allows corporations to spend freely on political campaigns right up until Election Day, and by the chamber's recent success contributing a million dollars for ads supporting Republican Senator Scott Brown in Massachusetts. --- What's more, writes the Los Angeles Times, "Using trade associations such as the chamber as the vehicle for spending corporate money on politics has an extra appeal: These groups can take large contributions from companies and wealthy individuals in ways that will probably avoid public disclosure requirements." --- So with the spring comes anonymous greed run rampant. "In the past a lot of companies and wealthy individuals stood on the sidelines" of politics, a corporate lawyer at Washington's influential law firm Covington & Burling told the Times. "That cloud has been lifted," he said. --- --- As the sun sets on democracy.

If you want a signifier of the changed image of empire, and imperial adventures in foreign lands, think about last Sunday’s six Oscars for The Hurt Locker, including ones for Best Movie and Best Director. The film’s director, Kathryn Bigelow, said at the end of her acceptance speech, “I'd like to dedicate this to the women and men in the military who risk their lives on a daily basis in Iraq and Afghanistan and around the world and may they come home safe.” --- Suppose Bigelow’s former husband, James Cameron, had won Best Director for Avatar. --- There is surely no way Cameron would ever have dedicated his Oscar to any soldiers, American or Canadian, serving as members of the imperial coalition – volunteers all – in Iraq or Afghanistan, unless they had defected to the other side or mutinied and been put in the brig or were facing a firing squad for treason. --- I hoped Avatar would get a big Oscar rather than the consolations ones for cinematography and special effects. It would have honored a truly uncompromising anti-war, anti-American-Empire movie. I haven’t seen The Hurt Locker and don’t plan to. --- --- --- “The United States was born in rebellion against corporations.” “The U.S. Supreme Court soon began restoring their power. When it overreached, strong executives and popular movements set it back: under Andrew Jackson, Abraham Lincoln, Teddy Roosevelt, and FDR. Today it has overreached again; it remains to see if a new movement or leader will arise to set it back again.” --- Gaffney assays the best political strategies for popular counter-attack. As he concludes, “Will ‘ordinary’ taxpayers rebel, as they did in the American Revolution, Emancipation, the Progressive Age of Reform, and the New Deal, or will corporate power wax unchecked until it replaces democracy altogether? --- Cyclical theory says we will have another anti-corporate reaction, but history also records tipping points in the decline of nations, from which they do not recover for generations, if ever.

Are we finally in a recovery? Who’s “we,” kemosabe? Big global companies, Wall Street, and high-income Americans who hold their savings in financial instruments are clearly doing better. As to the rest of us – small businesses along Main Streets, and middle and lower-income Americans – forget it. Business cheerleaders naturally want to emphasize the positive. They assume the economy runs on optimism and that if average consumers think the economy is getting better, they’ll empty their wallets more readily and – presto! – the economy will get better. The cheerleaders fail to understand that regardless of how people feel, they won’t spend if they don’t have the money. ~~~ The picture on Main Street is quite the opposite. Small businesses aren’t selling much because they have to rely on American – rather than foreign – consumers, and Americans still aren’t buying much. Small businesses are also finding it difficult to get credit. ~~~ That’s a problem for most Americans. Small businesses are where the jobs are. In fact, small businesses are responsible for almost all job growth in a typical recovery. So if small businesses are hurting, we’re not going to see much job growth any time soon. ~~~ The Federal Reserve reported Thursday that American consumers are shedding their debts like mad. Total US household debt, including mortgages and credit card balances, fell 1.7 percent last year – the first drop since the government began recording consumer debt in 1945. Much of the debt-shedding has been through default – consumers simply not repaying and walking away from homes and big-ticket purchases. This is hardly good news. But here’s the Wall Street Journal’s take on it: “the defaults are leaving many people with more cash to spend and save, jump-starting the financial rehabilitiation” of the economy. Baloney.

As an isolated incident, it would be appalling and criminal. As a regular occurrence, it's state-sponsored terrorism against defenseless children, subjected to barbarism by Israeli soldiers committing crimes against humanity to crush their will for wanting to live free on their own land - what Westerners take for granted; what Palestinians since 1948 haven't had, and since 1967, under military occupation denying their very humanity. --- --- --- Since September 2000, the beginning of the Second Intifada, over 2,500 Palestinian children (as young as 12 or younger) have been arrested, hundreds at any time imprisoned within Israel, treated the same as adults, kept with Israeli prisoners, stabbed or otherwise harmed as a result, subjected to sexual abuse, and denied family visits or other outside contacts. --- Yet, numerous international laws, including the Convention on the Rights of the Child and Israeli law define a child as anyone under 18. So do UN Rules for the Protection of Juveniles Deprived of their Liberty with provisions stating: -- imprisoning children should only be a "last resort and for the minimum period and should be limited to exceptional cases;" -- fundamental international law must be respected at all times with no exceptions; -- the welfare, special needs, best interests, and human rights of juveniles "shall be a primary consideration;" and -- they must be helped to return to society as soon as possible. --- Yet, in violation of international law, Israel willfully and repeatedly arrests children randomly, at checkpoints, on streets, at play, and in the middle of the night at home, then subjects them to threats, cursing, beatings, detention, and imprisonment, often without informing their parents.

It's called the Fair Sentencing Act, and it would have eliminated what has been a decades-long vast disparity in how those convicted of crack cocaine offenses receive punishments much more harsh than those convicted of powder cocaine crimes. Now, perhaps, it ought to be more honestly renamed the "Not So Unfair Sentencing Act," or the "Still Unfair, But Not As Bad Sentencing Act," since the Democrats had to accommodate a compromise with Republicans that still makes crack cocaine sentencing worse than comparable powder cocaine prison terms -- just less so.

Rachel, a film released last year about her life and the events in Rafah, is due to be screened in Tel Aviv on March 16, on the seventh anniversary of her death and in the midst of the legal proceedings. Until the court case in Haifa, the Corrie family had run into a series of administrative and legal brick walls in trying to get their daughter’s death independently investigated and to hold those responsible to account. Ariel Sharon, the Israeli prime minister at the time of Corrie’s death, promised a “thorough, credible and transparent investigation” would be conducted. But an internal military inquiry clearing the two soldiers operating the bulldozer was widely criticised, including by US officials. Human Rights Watch said it “fell far short of the transparency, impartiality and thoroughness required by international law”. The army’s report claimed that Corrie had been “hidden from view” behind a mound of earth and that the bulldozer had never come into contact with her. It concluded that “Corrie was struck by dirt and a slab of concrete” as earth slipped on top of her. The four former ISM activists due to appear in court this week have been told not to comment before giving their testimonies. But previous witness statements, backed by photographic evidence, have questioned the army’s account. Photographs show Corrie, wearing an orange fluorescent jacket and holding a megaphone, confronting the bulldozer over several hours. They also show the bulldozer’s track marks over Corrie’s body moments after she was crushed. Tom Dale, a British activist who was next to Corrie when she was killed, wrote two days later that she had climbed on top of a mound of earth as activists nearby shouted at the bulldozer driver to stop. The bulldozer, he wrote, “pushed Rachel, first beneath the scoop, then beneath the blade, then continued till her body was beneath the cockpit. They waited over her for a few seconds, before reversing. They reversed with the blade pressed down, so it scraped over her body a second time.” In 2007 a US court denied the Corrie family the right to sue the Caterpillar company, which supplies the Israeli army with the special D-9 bulldozers that killed their daughter and that Israel regularly uses to demolish Palestinian homes. This week’s hearing is the outcome of a private lawsuit filed by the Corries in March 2005, at the suggestion of the US state department.

Former Minnesota governor and one-time professional wrestler Jesse Ventura has run afoul of the Huffington Post's no-conspiracy-theory policy, and he's not happy about it. "I can't believe the Huffington Post today will practice censorship," Ventura says in astonishment. "I've got news for them. ... I won't ever write for 'em again."

The financial crisis started as a housing bubble with the financial industry convinced that home values never fall. How wrong they were even a they leveraged and securitized their investments to create a global crisis. Now, brace yourself because not only isn’t over until its over but in some respects its just begun. There will be more foreclosures this year than last and as a result more suffering for American families. Ed Harrison who monitors this industry for a website called Credit Write Downs sees a “second wave coming”---like a new tsunami in a industry that All of Obama’s horses and all of Obama’s Men have not been able to do anything about. The idea of challenging fraud and deception with a debt relief plan goes a bit too far for these self-styled centrists..

Amazon, as one California lawmaker says, has "built an entire business model based on tax avoidance." Unfortunately, so have many other firms, as evidenced by Americaís $300 billion annual gap between taxes owed and paid. And as more commerce is transacted through tax-avoiding Internet conglomerates, that gap could grow, honest local business could be further disadvantaged and deficits could explode, forcing ever deeper cuts to public services. This is the dystopian outcome that multinational corporations and anti-government activists aim for in today's tax wars -- and they could make it a reality. If -- but only if -- states back down.

What would happen if America had leadership that stood up and coolly, intelligently described the economic and ecological peril we face, both of which are completely interrelated. What would happen if a president told the people, “What we have been doing has obviously not been working [they’d sure as hell agree on that], so we are going to have to remake America to save it, and it’s going to mean real sacrifice.” And what if he could do so without capitalist forces sending out ideological swiftboats to blow him out of the water, or launching hate campaigns against him, branding him as an evil fascist eco-socialist, or whatever. --- --- --- I dare say the number of Americans who would respond, be willing to sacrifice and meet a challenge issued by cohesive, focused leadership, might surprise us. They might well do it, if for no other reason than that Americans are the moist authority worshipping people on earth, outside of North Korea. --- The reasons why we will never hear a president or a cooperative congress say those things are manifold more than the reasons to believe that we will one day hear it. --- --- Maybe next time — even though there can be no next time in the usual sense, because the rip-off is in and it is total — we will choose better. --- --- The planet and the resource base that creates all wealth is pretty much shot, or soon will be. Over six billion people, otherwise known as the masses -- though we are not allowed to use that commie term in America — are closing in to finish off what is left. --- America and the industrialized world as we have known it are unrecoverable. --- Some of us find a certain kind regrettable of justice in that. --- There will be no recovery, but there will be numerous manufactured illusions of recovery. As Gunther says, we will poke the frog for one jump at a time. Deny the obvious limits of the earth’s sustenance, dry hump the ghost of a sick and unjust prosperity and pretend the thrill ain't gone.

The president’s incendiary claim that there is $100 billion in waste and fraud in the Medicare and Medicaid program is way off the mark. --- If the president were serious about the problem, he would call for an honest investigation to make certain that everyone potentially eligible for medical coverage and assistance in both programs gets the full benefits to which they are entitled, to minimize inadvertent overpayments to providers, and to prosecute to the full extent of the law those who defraud either program. --- --- That would be fine and appropriate. But at the same time, the president is also disingenuous in the extreme when he just attacks fraud and waste in Medicare and Medicaid, as though there is not massive fraud and waste in the private insurance industry and the rest of the medical industry. --- --- --- Indeed, much of the fraud in the Medicare program is in that part of it that is contracted out to the private insurance firms that offer the so-called MediGap insurance policies. Nearly all the rest of the actual fraud is perpetrated by private physicians, private hospitals and by other medical industry firms and pharmaceutical companies, which submit false invoices and charge for services and goods not delivered. And as CBS’s “60-Minutes” program and other news organizations have reported, there has been little or no effort devoted to prosecution of such fraud, though it totals in the tens of billions of dollars per year. --- --- --- That’s not a problem with “government-run health care”--a bogeyman that the president regularly pulls out to pillory--but with private healthcare. --- --- --- The president knows this, but since his whole “reform” proposal is built around the private insurance sector, he’s not going to say that. --- Then again, what political strategist guru in the White House came up with the idea that attacking alleged “waste and fraud” in “government health care” would be a good way to win support for Obamacare?

We were having a discussion about right-wing nut jobs at BuzzFlash HQ the other day and it seemed that most of them could be divided into these two categories: ignorant and shameless. To test our theory, we turn today to our readers. And who better to start with but the crown prince of right-wing nut jobs, Glenn Beck? Ignorance would imply that Glenn Beck doesn't understand what he's doing, either because he isn't smart enough or he's unwilling to learn. Shameless would imply that he's fully conscious of the horrifying misinformation, fearmongering, and propaganda he spreads, but is too blinded by money or influence to care. Click here to vote, and add your voice to the discussion.

Even the most radical conservative can agree with Noam Chomsky on at least one thing. "No one in their right mind wants Iran to develop nuclear weapons." But to Chomsky, nonproliferation requires reciprocal action, rather than international condemnation. Chomsky's reputation as a prolific author of books on subjects including linguistics, philosophy, cognitive science, political science, and media might lead one to believe that his views stem from esoteric theoretical arguments, but Chomsky takes a pragmatic view of international relations. His conclusion is that Iran is developing nuclear weapons out of a rational fear for its national safety because of the systematically threatening posture of the United States and Israel. --- --- --- Speaking at Harvard's Memorial Church on Saturday, March 6th, Chomsky critiqued the foreign policy of President Obama '91 and explained the historical reasons that Iran would perceive a need to develop nuclear weapons. "If they're not developing a nuclear deterrent, they are crazy." The problem, said Chomsky, is the defiant and hypocritical insistence of the United States on holding the constant threat of military action over Iran as a punishment for its noncompliance with United Nations mandates. "Hostile actions of the United States and its Israeli client are a major factor in Iran's decisions of whether or not to develop a nuclear deterrent."

Kroll offers a veritable Ponzi-scheme mapping of America. --- Every great American boom and bust makes and breaks its share of crooks. The past decade -- call it the Ponzi Era -- has been no different, except for the gargantuan scale of white-collar crime. A vast wave of financial fraud swelled in the first years of the new century. Then, in 2008, with the subprime mortgage collapse, it crashed on the shore as a full-scale global economic meltdown. As that wave receded, it left hundreds of Ponzi and pyramid schemes, as well as other get-rich-quick rackets that helped fuel our recent economic frenzy, flopping on the beach. --- --- --- The World's a Ponzi, and We're All Getting Duped --- --- --- Ours is now a Ponzi nation. There is a new mood in the land. Just how it will play out is unknown, but a sense of having been conned is still spreading -- as if not just surprising numbers of investors, but the whole country had experienced the last days of a giant Ponzi scheme. With it goes a feeling that what we've been living through, even in "the best of times," wasn't an American dream, but pure nightmare. --- Welcome to America, sucker.

Participants at an otherwise informative discussion on "Iran at a Crossroads" at the Senate on Wednesday seemed at pains to barricade the doors against the proverbial elephant being admitted into the room - in this case, Israel. This, despite the fact that the agenda virtually dictated that the elephant be allowed in. The cavernous hearing room also could have accommodated it - however awkward and untidy the atmosphere might have become. Otherwise, as was entirely predictable, the discussion would be lacking a crucial element. Which is exactly what happened. Which is exactly what always happens. --- --- --- There are, of course, limits to what can be covered in an hour and a quarter. Still, there did seem to be distinct reluctance to include Israel in any discussion of the political obstacles preventing sensible accommodation between Tehran and Washington. No doubt the main obstacle can be traced to the timeworn "passionate attachment" of U.S. leaders to Israel's perceived interests, and the tendency to view them as identical to those of the United States. This politically and emotionally sensitive issue needs to be addressed openly and without fear-in the interest of Israeli, as well as Iranian and American citizens. --- --- --- If Not Now, When? --- Granted, volunteering to sponsor such a discussion would be seen as the kiss of death for the vast majority of lawmakers. But can it be that there is no group, no think tank with courage enough to arrange such a forum? For it truly needs to be done, and quickly, somewhere - whether permitted in a Senate office building, or not. --- --- --- Without free discussion and greater understanding, there is virtually no prospect of lessened tensions. Rather, the volatile situation seems likely to get still worse, and could even include an Israeli provocation and/or a preventive strike on Iran. --- Here Admiral Mullen is right; such actions would constitute a "big, big, big problem for all of us."

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi declared the public option dead during a press briefing moments ago.