Foreign News and Analysis Since April 2005 -- formerly China Confidential -- for America and Israel and their friends abroadForeign Confidential ™
Saturday, October 29, 2011
Analyst Suspects Israel Preparing to Hit Iran
Taliban Bomber Kills 13 Americans
Friday, October 28, 2011
Al Qaeda Flag Flying in NATO's New Libya
Greeks Mad as Hell at Germany, EU
A Bright but Challenging Outlook for Israeli Solar
Panetta Warns Korean Conflict Possible
Secularists Sign Manifesto for Mideast, N. Africa
Root Cause of Alleged Iranian Assassination Plot is Fanatic Belief in Need for Chaos to Hasten Advent of the Muslim Messiah
Saturday, 29 October 2011
With U.S. and European appeasement of nuclear-arming, Islamist Iran making war between the Nazi-like regime and Israel inevitable, the Jewish State's prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, is channeling his inner Winston Churchill while U.S. President Barack Hussein Obama continues to pursue policies that recall Neville Chamberlain's appeasement of Hitler--and worse. Chamberlain merely appeased Hitler, accepting his assurances regarding territorial concessions at face value, failing to correctly interpret Hitler's true intentions. Britain's prime minister appeased in order to preserve the peace; but he never tried to side with Hitler (unlike the pro-Nazi English aristocracy).
Obama, after coming to power, appeased and actually attempted to align with the new Hitler--Iran's maniac-in-chief, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. Whereas Hitler hid his real aims--conquest of Europe and global domination--Ahmadinejad has mused openly about "a world without Zionism and Israel," and his henchmen have repeatedly threatened to "burn Tel Aviv" and to bomb Israel's Negev nuclear station.
That Israel must fight to prevent a second Holocaust is clear. What isn't clear is if the war will be fought on Iranian or Israeli terms (World War II was fought on Nazi Germany's terms because of appeasement) and if Obama will seek to punish Israel--viciously--for daring to defend itself.
J'accuse Obama--and Bush.
The Taliban and Al Qaeda in Afghanistan should have been obliterated within days of 9/11 by any and all means necessary, including use of tactical nuclear weapons to eradicate easily targeted bases and installations. From an American point of view, annihilating the enemy--pursuant to a formal declaration of war--was the only morally acceptable response to the Afghan/AQ massacre of 3,000 Americans on American soil. Instead, Bush and his crackpot advisors allowed the clerical fascist filth to flee into neighboring Pakistan, which, with Saudi support, had created and sustained the Taliban and had also aided Al Qaeda (along with Iran).
Obama ... of "the Muslim World" ... has made matters much worse. His appeasement of Islamism, undermining and assassination of secular Arab leaders, support for Islamist Turkey, and failed attempts to align with nuclear-arming, Islamist Iran have taken historical pro-Islamism--the old Anglo-American strategy of trying to ride the Islamist tiger without being consumed by it--to an entirely new level.
A decade into the disastrous and deliberately misnamed "War on Terror," ordinary Americans are disgusted and demoralized, dazed and confused, clueless, still, about the real root cause of the long nightmare--namely, decades of covert and overt American support for rightwing political and overlapping state and organized Islam. The awful truth is all too apparent: the United States has been and continues to be Radical Islam's best friend--not by backing beleaguered, little Israel in its struggle to survive in a sea of barbarism, as the Left would have you believe, but by supporting Islamists and their state sponsors.
Not discussed: the Turkish threat to Greece. Turkey is in, Greece is out. Turkey is important to the Power Elite; Greece is considered a hopeless beggar.
By John C.K. Daly
In any country, at the end of the proverbial day, both energy utilities and consumers are finally interested in the technologies that generate a kilowatt of electricity most inexpensively, all other considerations aside.
Accordingly, all countries involved in solar energy are optimists, but nascent industrial efforts to generate power on a commercial scale from the sun are without exception dependent upon current government subsidies to enter the market, which is littered with optimism, the failure of U.S. federally subsidized company Solyndra being Exhibit A.
But countries worldwide are seeking government support to shield their embryonic solar industries from market realities until conditions improve, and few countries are more caught between the realities of the "free market" and national priorities in developing energy alternatives than Israel, whose energy imports remain a major topic of concern to the government. Subsidies are viewed as critical worldwide by solar producers, especially in a recession market, but fiscal realities are asserting themselves, which alternative energy companies warn could kill their efforts.
Fiscal Constraints
Israel's government is now reconsidering its alternative energy policies due to fiscal constraints, to cut the incentives price for mid-sized photovoltaic power plants.
Association of Renewable Energy of Israel CEO Eitan Parnass bluntly told Public Utilities Authority (Electricity) acting chairman Orit Farkash-Hacohen, "People will avoid private power production in Israel if the rates the entire industry relied on are changed."
As a consequence of the global recession that began in 2008 prices for photovoltaic solar panels worldwide have receded. Quite aside from substantial economic recessionary pressures, Chinese manufacturers of photovoltaic solar panels are now facing a substantial inventory backlog of unsold panels. Electricity market sources say that several Western countries that are prominent in the solar energy industry, such as Germany, Italy, and Spain, have reduced their subsidies and tariffs to solar energy producers, because of the global crisis.
In Israel however, the steep decline in prices for photovoltaic solar panels initially generated unexpected profits for solar power companies, as national electricity rates were set two years ago, but Israeli solar companies are now threatened by the proposed government reduction in subsidies.
Accordingly, the Public Utilities Authority plenum decision is awaited by Israel's solar community. In seeking to advance their arguments, solar companies aver that the Public Utilities Authority is not considering their expenses since 2009, when almost no power production licenses were issued, due to bureaucratic delays.
Not So Bleak
All is not bleak on the Israeli solar front, however. On October 24, SolarEdge Technologies Inc., a firm that developed a power harvesting and monitoring system for photovoltaic panels capable of improving the performance of solar energy systems, raised $37 million in venture capital, primarily from California-based Norwest Venture Partners.
Despite issues of funding of solar panels electrical production, in July Arava Power inaugurated its 4.95-megawatt solar power field. In the future, Arava Power projects launching 40 solar energy fields in the Negev desert region, assisted by tariffs for investors supported and guaranteed by the government.
Interestingly, despite Israel's renowned high technology base, Arava Power has partnered with Chinese-produced Suntech photovoltaic solar panels because Israel's nascent solar energy is currently unable to compete. Arava Power CEO Jonathan Cohen CEO said, "The technology needs to be time-proven to prove its bankability. When the means are made available to ensure Israeli novel technologies are included in Israel's solar drive, we and others will be looking to employ them as much as possible."
Cohen has reason to be sunny, as on October 21 Israel's Public Utilities Authority awarded Arava Power the country's first permanent solar license in the aftermath of Arava Power interconnecting its 4.95 megawatt Ketura sun field to the national grid by the Israel Electric Corporation.
So, is Israeli solar power a case of glass half-empty or half-full? Given Arava Power's experience, should the troubling issue of government support be resolved, it would seem that the container could soon be overflowing, with the only problem being what happens after twilight.
Just a question of government grants to tide companies over the rough patches.
The above article is republished with permission of OilPrice.com. Click here to read the original.
Ignored by the Obama administration and its fawning pundits and media flunkies, advocates of secularism--strict separation of religion and state--have signed and issued a manifesto for the Middle East and North Africa. Click here for the story.
Unfortunately (for civilized humanity), the Obama administration and its NATO allies are now pro-Islamist. The policy is to promote political Islam under the banner of "Islamic democracy," by covert and overt means, including armed interventions along the lines of the Libyan adventure.
Put differently, a decade after Afghanistan-sheltered, Saudi-financed, Iran-and-Pakistan-assisted Al Qaeda terrorists slaughtered 3,000 Americans on American soil, Washington and the alliance that was created to contain Soviet Communist expansion during the Cold War is now committed to using rightwing political Islam, or Islamism, in order to contain and perhaps, even, crack apart, or dismember, resurgent Russia and rising China. The definition of enemy Islamism has been narrowed to include AQ alone. Its affiliates and supporters, from the Taliban to the Islamist warlords of Afghanistan (allies of the U.S. against the Soviet Union) are all deemed OK for appeasement and collaboration.
Given this sordid state of affairs, secularism is doomed. The so-called Arab Spring is all about Islamism.
Lt. Colonel James G. Zumwalt (USMC ret) writes:
A disconnect exists between how we wish to perceive the theocratic government that has ruled Iran for 32 years and the reality of that leadership’s rationality. Through their appeasement policies, every US president from Jimmy Carter, who opened the door to Iran’s Islamic extremist takeover by pressing the Shah to leave and ushering in Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, to Barack Obama, who led us to believe he could talk to the Iranians, is guilty of contributing to the American perception that eventually Tehran’s mullahs would exercise reason. That has been far from the case. The Iranian leadership is devoid of rationality, only using the time that has been wasted to realize this to create a much more dangerous world. And, according to the script written in Tehran, the worst is yet to come for non-believers!
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