In response to the angry reaction in Britain over President Obama’s cold reception of Prime Minister Gordon Brown last week, a White House official excused the slight by saying the new president has been “overwhelmed” by the economic meltdown. According to a piece in the Daily Telegraph that ran yesterday, President Obama’s “weary appearance in the Oval Office with Mr. Brown illustrates the strain he is now under, and the president’s surprise at the sheer volume of business that crosses his desk.” According to one insider, so far, the president has failed to “even fake an interest in foreign policy.”

There’s no doubting the strain the new administration must be under. But this appears to be a convenient excuse for the discourteous way America has treated its closest ally. “The real views of many in the Obama administration,” the Telegraph writes,

were laid bare by a State Department official involved in planning the Brown visit, who reacted with fury when questioned by the Sunday Telegraph about why the event was so low-key.The official dismissed any notion of the special relationship, saying: “There’s nothing special about Britain. You’re just the same as the other 190 countries in the world. You shouldn’t expect special treatment.”

That’ll win them back.

The U.S.-Israeli Collision Course

A report in Haaretz this week shows just how difficult Israel’s relationship with America is becoming. “The standard assessment says that after his return to power, Benjamin Netanyahu will have a tense time when he visits Washington—just as he did during his first term when he faced a president who demanded that he advance a peace process,” writes Haaretz. “That assessment isn’t quite right—because this time, Netanyahu is likely to have an even more tension-fraught time than he did in the ’90s. In his new term, he won’t be able to count on Congress as a counterweight to the administration in his relations with America.”

Gershom Gorenberg, writing for the left-wing Haaretz, believes even Netanyahu’s economic philosophy is at odds with the new U.S. government:

During his first visit to Washington as prime minister in 1996, Netanyahu spoke before Congress to repeated applause. The part of his speech praising deregulation and tax cuts helped him by warming the hearts of the Republican majority. Today … the Republicans are a defeated minority.

Besides that, Congress’s attitude toward the Arab-Israeli conflict has also shifted.

The principle of two states for two peoples has become conventional wisdom on the Hill, as someone with a close knowledge of Congressional discussions of foreign policy recently told me. That’s the same principle that Netanyahu refused to endorse during his talks with Tzipi Livni.

Haaretz concludes,

When Barack Obama demands that Netanyahu freeze settlement construction or resume peace negotiations, a certain amount of protest might be heard from Congress, but it will be muffled protest, a low grumbling. Netanyahu’s marketing skills and his fluent English won’t rescue him from the basic contradiction between his positions and those of the new administration. In liberated Washington, neither will Congress save him.

Archaeology Park in Jerusalem to Expand?

Though not discussed in the Haaretz piece quoted above, the biggest bone of contention between the U.S. and Israeli administrations may end up being over Jerusalem. Yesterday, outgoing Prime Minister Ehud Olmert said Israel would never make peace with the Palestinians or the Arab world unless “part of Jerusalem” becomes the capital of a Palestinian state.

Netanyahu has campaigned previously on keeping the city united. Speaking from the Regency Hotel in Jerusalem at the end of January, Netanyahu said, “If we gave up half of Jerusalem, there would be an Iranian base right near this hotel.”

Despite its acknowledgment of these security concerns, the new U.S. administration is set to apply pressure on Israel’s new government to split Jerusalem in half. Last week, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton criticized a proposal to expand an archaeology park in East Jerusalem that would require the demolition of 88 Palestinian homes. Any demolition of homes, she said, would be “unhelpful” for the peace process.

Nir Barkat, Jerusalem’s new mayor, blasted the secretary of state in response, saying there was “no substance” to her comments—that they were a lot of air. He implied that Clinton had been misled by Palestinian propaganda.

The newly elected mayor supports keeping Jerusalem united and is working to make various improvements to the city—discouraging young people from relocating by providing better job opportunities and hoping to consolidate neighboring Jewish towns and settlements into the broader metropolitan area. He is also working to impede what he calls “illegal immigration” by Palestinians from the West Bank to East Jerusalem.

The buildings slated for demolition are located in Silwan, a Palestinian neighborhood in East Jerusalem. The Associated Press reports,

Silwan, a ramshackle neighborhood in east Jerusalem, sits atop a site Israelis call the City of David, named for the biblical monarch who ruled a Jewish kingdom from the spot 3,000 years ago. Jews consider the site an essential link to their ancient history, and the government has designated it an archaeological park.

Plans to expand the park are impeded by these buildings that, according to Barkat, should not have been constructed in the first place since they do not have building permits. City officials and soldiers recently started knocking on doors and recording the names and id numbers of residents who failed to produce permits.

“I am not willing to say the houses will remain houses, ” Barkat said. “It is the wrong signal to send to people who break the law.” In a written statement last week, he wrote, “Illegal construction is illegal construction no matter where it is.”

The Elad Foundation developed the archaeological park and is opposed to the division of Jerusalem. The organization’s international director, Doron Spielman, said the City of David has been “a microcosm of the Arab-Israeli conflict.” Indeed, as the Los Angeles Times reported last week, the battle over Silwan “is part of a larger struggle for control of Jerusalem.” Spielman, however, said further excavations to the area would bring in more tourists, which would provide a much-needed financial boost to the area.

For more information about the straining relationship between the U.S. and Israel, see our article “The U.S.-Israeli Collision Course Is Near.”

America Funds Beheadings in Mexico

America’s drug addiction is turning Mexico into a criminal’s paradise. With billions in drug money going directly into the pockets of drug cartels, the Mexican government is finding itself increasingly outgunned, and is beating a hasty retreat. Patrick Buchanan wrote on Friday in Human Events about the problem (emphasis ours throughout):

Some 2,500 federal troops are already in Juarez, where in 2008 there were 1,600 drug-related murders. Gun battles occur every day. Nationally, 45,000 army troops and police are committed to this war that Mexico is not winning. For, according to the March 3 Washington Times, the Pentagon now estimates the cartels field more than 100,000 foot soldiers.The chief of police of Juarez just resigned after a cartel threatened to kill an officer every 48 hours if he did not. To prove its seriousness, the cartel murdered four cops, including the chief’s deputy. Last year, 50 police officers in Juarez were murdered.”The decision I am taking is one of life over death,” said Chief Roberto Oduna. The chief would seem to have a point. In January, his predecessor’s head was found in an ice cooler outside a police station. The mayor keeps his family in El Paso, as they have been threatened with decapitation.Friday, the State Department declared, “Corruption throughout Mexico’s public institutions remains a key impediment to curtailing the power of the drug cartels.” [President Felipe] Calderon retorts that, while the murders may be committed in Mexico, the cash and guns come from the United States.

That’s the point. The cash and guns are coming from the United States! Buchanan asks,

How does one win a drug war when millions of Americans who use recreational drugs are financing the cartels bribing, murdering and beheading to win the war and keep self-indulgent Americans supplied with drugs?

You can’t, of course. Buchanan wonders whether the U.S. will eventually wave the white flag in the war on drugs and legalize the substances. “Which is the greater evil? Legalized narcotics for America’s young or a failed state of 110,000 million on our southern border?” he asks. “Some choice. Some country we’ve become.” For a more in-depth look at the cause of the problem, read “A Key to Winning the Drug War.”

U.S to Iran: How About Some Help?

The United States is preparing to meet with Iran directly at a March 31 summit to discuss the future of Afghanistan. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton formally proposed the conference at a meeting between nato’s foreign ministers on Thursday. “It is expected that Iran would be invited as a neighbor of Afghanistan,” she said. The Wall Street Journal reports,

Mrs. Clinton has said Iran could play an important role in stabilizing Kabul’s government and cutting off the flow of arms and narcotics into and out of the country.”Where it is appropriate and useful for the United States and others to see whether Iran can be constructive, that will be considered,” Mrs. Clinton told reporters Wednesday.

Remarkable that the White House is so determined to ignore all evidence to the contrary in order to maintain its search for evidence that Iran can be constructive.

As the Trumpet has pointed out, the U.S. has done more to strengthen Iran’s position in the region than Iranian leaders ever could have hoped for. It eliminated Iran’s number-one enemy in the region, Saddam Hussein. Just last week, it pledged $900 million in aid (which it clearly does not have to spend) to rebuild the Gaza Strip, an area controlled by Iranian terrorist proxy Hamas. And now, as it looks for solutions to the ongoing conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan, it is treating Iran as an important partner—in spite of the fact that Iran has contributed mightily to the insurgencies in both countries.

Expect the U.S.’s leverage to continue to decrease in both theaters, and for Iran’s to increase in direct proportion. To see how this trend fulfills biblical prophecy, read Gerald Flurry’s booklet The King of the South.

A Crumbling Coalition in Germany

Angela Merkel’s Christian Democrat party has now sunk to its lowest poll ratings since November—with only 32 percent of German support. In May 2005, at its peak, the party enjoyed 42 percent of the vote.

“The country, in short, appears to be tiring of the government in Berlin,” according toSpiegel. The coalition, which pairs Merkel’s cdu and the Social Democrats, appears to be tiring of itself as well.

“One can see the beginning of the end of the grand coalition,” a leader of the Christian Social Union said after hours of negotiation that resulted in little progress. The two parties found little common ground on the long list of issues. Spiegel wrote,

Indeed, the harder one looks for signs of solidarity between the parties that have governed Germany for the last three and a half years, the clearer it becomes that the pre-campaign political positioning has commenced.

The spd’s candidate for chancellor, Foreign Minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier, is enjoying higher numbers in the polls than he has seen in months. Merkel, on the other hand, has alienated the conservative strand of her party in recent months because of her state-heavy solutions to the economical crisis. She also vexed German Catholics when she rebuked Pope Benedict over his acceptance of Holocaust-denying Bishop Richard Williamson.

Keep an eye on the upcoming Germany elections. As we have warned in the past, a strong leader will arise out of the turmoil. Editor in chief Gerald Flurry wrote, “Germany is the number-one political power we need to watch.”

“Kiss the Banks Goodbye”

“The futility and stupidity of the Fed’s and the Obama administration’s policy of pumping ever more money into failing banks and insurance companies in a vain effort to get them lending again was demonstrated—if anyone was paying attention—by the collapse in auto sales this past month, with all the leading companies, Ford, gm and Toyota, reporting sales down by about 40 percent,” Dave Lindorff writes.

Obtaining more financing obviously isn’t the problem. After years of overspending, people just can’t afford to spend more money—and this offers bad news for an economy that is addicted to over-consumption. Lindorff continues,

So, with the economy still in free fall, with companies laying off American workers at a rate of over 20,000 per day, with real unemployment soaring past 18 percent—one in six American workers are now either out of work and looking for a job, out of work and giving up looking, or involuntarily working part-time—and with family wealth more than 50 percent eroded away, there is simply no way that Americans are going to turn around and start borrowing and spending again. And given that the American economy is 72 percent composed of consumer spending, there is no way that the economy is bouncing back anytime soon.

It follows, then, that if American citizens and businesses don’t want to borrow money,

That means that the hundreds of billions of dollars that are being poured into the likes of Citibank and aig are being completely wasted. It is simply a pointless and scandalous transfer or wealth from the American public to the shareholders of these companies—the very companies and people who caused this catastrophe in the first place.

Reaching Out to the Enemy

We saw this one coming. Now that the United States is losing in Afghanistan, the International Herald Tribunewrites, President Obama is considering the prospect of reconciling with the “moderate” wing of the Taliban. He justifies the retreat by pointing to, of all places, Iraq. The president said,

If you talk to General Petraeus, I think he would argue that part of the success in Iraq involved reaching out to people that we would consider to be Islamic fundamentalists, but who were willing to work with us because they had been completely alienated by the tactics of Al Qaeda in Iraq.

Washington, remember, strongly condemned the Pakistani government for its own reconciliation deal with local Taliban, even though Pakistani leaders say the move was to drive a wedge between hard-core Taliban leaders and local Islamists. Evidently, this has now become America’s strategy in Afghanistan.

Elsewhere on the Web

What went wrong with California? That’s the question historian and long-time resident of California Victor Davis Hanson asks in this piece today in the Washington Times. Hanson explores how one of the world’s most richly endowed regions and America’s most agriculturally blessed state, that has a massive budget and unparalleled infrastructure, has ended up on the verge of all-out collapse. Hanson’s piece is great, but to fill out your understanding of why California is suffering so horribly, read “Is California Under a Curse?”

Lloyds is the second British bank to become effectively nationalized. According to the International Herald Tribune, attention is now turning to Barclays, which has seen its shares plunge by an astounding 29 percent in the past week alone. As part of the bailouts for Lloyds and the Royal Bank of Scotland, the government has put itself on the hook for hundreds of billions in risky assets. But by transferring private banking debt onto the taxpayer, the bigger worry is now whether the British government will be able to handle the load. The UK government is already carrying what many consider to be an unsustainable debt load. Will Lloyds be the straw the breaks the camel’s back? Read our article “UK Gambles National Solvency to Bail Out Banks.”

The divide between radical and moderate Islam is becoming more pronounced. Of course, both camps are enemies of Israel, but the so-called moderate group fears Iran. Stratfor reports, “Morocco broke off diplomatic ties with Iran on March 6 after accusing Tehran of engaging in hostile activities in the North African state. The move is part of a new Saudi initiative to forge a common Arab platform to counter the threat from a rising Iran. The Saudis are unlikely to achieve their aim because of the divisions in the Arab world, especially on the issue of how to deal with the Islamic republic.”

Yad Vashem, Israel’s Holocaust Museum, has been outspoken in its criticism of Pope Benedict for his silence about the Holocaust. In response to the criticism, the pope has decided to cancel his scheduled visit to the museum when he travels to Israel in May.

America is losing 23,000 jobs a day. The unemployment rate is the highest it’s been in 25 years. February saw a loss of 651,000 non-farm jobs, jumping the official figure from 7.6 percent to 8.1 percent.