Category: Politics

ISRAELI Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has again raised the prospect of a military strike on Iran.

The PM has said Tehran will cease its nuclear program only in the face of “a credible military option”.

He declared yesterday that as Prime Minister he was the only person capable of bringing the Israeli public behind any peace deal with the Palestinians.

In a confident performance before foreign correspondents in Jerusalem, Mr Netanyahu also said he had made clear to Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman his displeasure at his attack on members of Mr Netanyahu’s Likud party.

Mr Lieberman criticised members of Likud who are opposed to his proposal to investigate left-wing groups that he says are “delegitimising” the Israeli Defence Forces.

Mr Netanyahu was asked about an assessment by retiring Mossad director Meir Dagan that Iran is not likely to achieve nuclear weapons before 2015.

“Intelligence estimates are exactly that, estimates,” he said.

Of the UN economic sanctions against Iran, the Prime Minister said: “The only chance these sanctions will achieve their objectives would be to couple them with an understanding from Iran that if they don’t achieve their goal they would be followed by a credible military option.”

He said the only time Iran had paused its nuclear program was in 2003 when it believed there was a credible military option from the US.

Mr Netanyahu said there was no doubt the current sanctions had caused hardship in Iran “but they have not in any way altered Iran’s determination to pursue its nuclear program”.

He did not rule out a peace agreement with Syria but saw no willingness by Syria to break its relationship with Iran.

On Gaza, he said the economic circumstances of the Hamas-governed strip had improved since Israel had eased restrictions on imports but warned about consequences if the recent spate of rockets being fired into Israel continued.

“I think they will make a terrible mistake to test our will to defend our people. I think they will make a terrible, terrible mistake,” he said.

Mr Netanyahu was asked about comments by Opposition Leader Tzipi Livni that there was “an evil wave” sweeping Israel.

Ms Livni said Mr Lieberman was “harming the country” but held Mr Netanyahu responsible for rebuking his Foreign Minister for criticising Likud members but not for the substance of his proposals to target left-wing groups.

Ms Livni said Israel was “deteriorating and abusing the very values for which we want to fight”.

But Mr Netanyahu said: “I am committed to Israel as a Jewish, democratic state with democratic values.”

He contrasted that with the Palestinian Authority in Ramallah — “only 10 minutes from here” — where it was a law that anyone who sold property to a Jew faced the death penalty.

“Isn’t that worth reporting?” he asked.

BRITISH Prime Minister David Cameron said he trusted his deputy Nick Clegg but would not go so far as to say they were friends, in an interview out today.

Cameron told the Daily Mail newspaper that both his Conservatives and Clegg’s Liberal Democrats had taken a risk in governing together.

Asked if he would describe himself and Clegg as friends yet, Cameron replied: “Hmm. Well, we wouldn’t go to the cinema together, quite, but we’ve had him and (his wife) Miriam round for supper.”

Cameron has been accused of being closer to Clegg, in person and politics, than to some of his fellow Conservatives.

They are both aged 44 and went to similar high-ranking schools.

“Politics evolves. We trust one another. Both of us started off from the same position, taking a risk,” he said.

“It would probably have been easier not to do this, politically and personally.

“But in the end – and I don’t want to sound pompous or pious – you ask yourself if you are doing the right thing for the country. We both think we are.”

Cameron said he hoped the coalition would be about more than simply clearing Britain’s record deficit.

“I want this to be more than a ‘cuts-and-rescue’ government. I want this to be a genuinely reforming and modernising government,” he said.

Their coalition faces its first test at the polls on Thursday in a by-election in northwest England.

The opposition Labour Party narrowly beat the Lib Dems to the seat in the May general election, but bookmakers have Labour as the clear favourite to win this time as polls show Clegg’s party riding as low as seven percent.

BARACK Obama chose a new top White House aide overnight and challenged newly empowered Republicans to raise the US debt limit, as his foes vowed again to repeal his health care overhaul.

Obama picked William Daley, commerce secretary under Bill Clinton, as his new chief of staff, pursuing a staff shake-up that signals a potential change in course in response to his Democrats’ November 2 elections rout.

Daley, 62, is seen as a centrist powerbroker and has strong ties to the US business community, with which the president has had a rocky relationship, and has strongly backed efforts to expand international trade.

The move came one day after Republicans took over the House of Representatives and as US Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner formally asked lawmakers to let the US government borrow more money – the opening shot in a political war over the massive and swelling US debt.

Geithner warned in a letter to senior members of Congress that failure to raise the debt ceiling from 14.29 trillion dollars could prompt a US default as soon as this March, with “catastrophic economic consequences.”

“Never in our history has Congress failed to increase the debt limit when necessary. Failure to raise the limit would precipitate a default by the United States,” and would “lead to the loss of millions of American jobs,” he said.

Republican US House Speaker John Boehner responded with wary support for raising the US debt limit, saying “America cannot default” on what it owes, but insisted on deep spending cuts as well.

“While America cannot default on its debt, we also cannot continue to borrow recklessly, dig ourselves deeper into this hole, and mortgage the future of our children and grandchildren,” Boehner said in a statement.

Geithner’s request, although expected, came earlier than many observers had anticipated, challenging Republicans who had hoped to put off that debate until after votes on slashing government spending to please their core supporters.

And the request was expected to get a chilly welcome from newly elected Republicans drawn from the ranks of archconservative “Tea Party” activists dead set on slashing spending and, in many cases, opposed to raising the debt limit.

Republicans were also struggling to beat back charges they were breaking their campaign promises for deep spending cuts, slashing the deficit, and bringing new transparency to the divided US Congress.

Top Republicans have abandoned their vow to slashing $US100 billion in government their first year in office, a figure drawn from their signal election campaign “Pledge to America.”

But they doubled down on plans to target Obama’s signature health care overhaul with a symbolic repeal vote next week – their victory in the House as certain as their defeat in the Democratic-held Senate.

Boehner charged the sweeping measure, designed to extend coverage to 31 million of the 36 million Americans who currently lack it, was “destroying jobs in our country” with onublican House Speaker John Boehner.

“I do not believe that repealing the job-killing health care law will increase the deficit.”

Meanwhile, Defence Secretary Robert Gates unveiled deeper cuts in US military programs than initially planned, citing the country’s “dire” fiscal situation.

“The Pentagon cannot presume to exempt itself from the scrutiny and pressure faced by the rest of our government” to scale back spending, Gates told a news conference.

Later Democrats joined Republican to vote 410-13 to slice five percent from House expenses, a $US35 million drop in the roughly $US3.6 trillion bucket of annual US government outlays.

And House members also read aloud from the US Constitution – but omitted sections later amended, such as the original language defining black slaves as three-fifths of a person for the purposes of apportioning congressional seats.

NOGALES, Arizona — Of the 50 or so women bused to this border town on a recent morning to be deported back to Mexico, Inez Vasquez, eight months pregnant, stood out.

“All I want is a better life,” she said after the Border Patrol discovered her hiding in the bushes on the Arizona side of the border with her husband, young son and a very pronounced abdomen.

The next big immigration battle looming centers on illegal immigrants’ offspring, who are granted automatic citizenship like all other babies born on U.S. soil. Arguing for an end to the policy, which is rooted in the 14th Amendment of the Constitution, immigration hard-liners describe a wave of migrants like Vasquez stepping across the border in the advanced stages of pregnancy to have what are dismissively called “anchor babies.”

Still, Arizona — whose law granting the police the power to detain illegal immigrants is tied up in the courts — may again take the lead in what is essentially an effort to redefine what it means to be an American. This time, though, Arizona lawmakers intend to join with legislators from several other states to force the issue before the Supreme Court.

This coalition of lawmakers will unveil its specific plans today in Washington, but people involved in drafting the legislation say they have decided against the painstaking process of amending the Constitution. Since the federal government decides who is to be deemed a citizen, the lawmakers are considering instead a move to create two kinds of birth certificates in their states, one for the children of citizens and another for the children of illegal immigrants.

The theory is that this could spark a flurry of lawsuits that might resolve the legal conflict in their favor.

Most scholars of the Constitution consider the states’ effort to restrict birth certificates patently unconstitutional.

“This is political theater, not a serious effort to create a legal test,” said Gabriel Chin, a law professor at the University of Arizona.

Despite being called “anchor babies,” the children of illegal immigrants born in the United States cannot actually prevent deportation of their parents. It is not until they reach the age of 21 that the children are able to file paperwork to sponsor their parents for legal immigration status.

In April, Rep. Duncan Hunter, R-El Cajon, one of those pushing for congressional action on the citizenship issue, stirred controversy when he suggested that children born in the United States to illegal immigrants should be deported with their parents until the birthright citizenship policy was changed.

“And we’re not being mean,” Hunter told a tea party rally in Southern California. “We’re just saying it takes more than walking across the border to become an American citizen.”

Immigrant advocates say intolerance is driving the measure.

“They call themselves patriots, but they pick and choose which parts of the Constitution they support,” said Lydia Guzman, a Latino activist in Phoenix. “They’re fear-mongerers. They’re clowns.”

STUNG by criticism he is aloof and out of touch, Barack Obama has turned to the great communicator for inspiration.

He has used his Christmas holiday in Hawaii to read a biography of Ronald Reagan.

The icon of the Republicans and the Tea Party may seem an unusual choice of subject matter for the Democratic President, who spent the first day of 2011 with wife Michelle and daughters Malia and Sasha at Pyramid Rock, a secluded beach at Marine Corps Base Hawaii.

The first family then hit the tennis courts at Kailua Racquet Club, a private club near the neighbourhood where the Obamas are renting a luxurious ocean-front home.

Like Mr Obama, Reagan suffered a huge drop in popularity and heavy losses in mid-term elections, yet managed to bounce back to win a second term.

Reagan, like Mr Obama, endured what was until then the worst recession since the Great Depression of the 1930s and saw unemployment rise to more than 10 per cent.

Voter disenchantment led to a large swing to the Democrats in the 1982 mid-term elections.

As the economy recovered, however, he went on to trounce Walter Mondale, his Democratic challenger, in the 1984 presidential election, winning almost every state.

Mr Obama’s approval ratings, at 47 per cent according to last week’s Gallup poll, are nowhere near as low as Reagan’s, which fell to just 35 per cent at the beginning of 1983.

Mr Obama, a former law professor who is regarded as distant even by his own staff, is studying how the Hollywood actor achieved his remarkable comeback.

White House spokesman Robert Gibbs revealed the President’s holiday reading included Lou Cannon’s account of Reagan’s administration, President Reagan: The Role of a Lifetime.

“Like Obama, Reagan greatly valued his privacy and was not naturally gregarious,” noted Bradley Bloch on The Huffington Post, adding Reagan was a master of “the personal relationship”.

“Reagan knew that at the end of the day politics — even (and perhaps especially) at the global level — is ultimately about people,” Bloch wrote. “As Obama looks to get his groove back, Reagan may be his most accessible role model.”

Perhaps inspired by “the Gipper” — Reagan’s nickname from one of his film roles — Mr Obama is expected to return to Washington tomorrow to start the second half of his presidency with renewed vigour.

Apart from the political biography, he has been reading Our Kind of Traitor, John le Carre’s latest spy thriller, and The Thousand Autumns of Jacob de Zoet, by the British author David Mitchell.

But golf has dominated the 10-day holiday. “His swing looks a lot better this year,” said Mark Sousa, the golf professional at the Mid Pacific country club in Kailua, where Mr Obama played several rounds with old friends from Hawaii.