Until today, China wonks have had little sense of how the new Obama administration will handle relations with Beijing. Today's written testimony from Treasury Secretary-designate Timothy Geithner hinted at a new, tougher tone.
"President Obama - backed by the conclusions of a broad range of economists - believes that China is manipulating its currency," Geithner wrote, adding that Obama would "use aggressively all the diplomatic avenues open to him to seek change in China's currency practices."
Exactly what that's going to mean for policy is unclear. Geithner did not say whether the Treasury would formally name China as an exchange rate manipulator in its annual currency report. "The question is how and when to broach the subject in order to do more good than harm," he said.
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A propaganda battle designed to promote the plan to spread war throughout the greater Middle East is now under way and will soon hit the airwaves in the United States. The plan will be presented as a television advertising campaign to promote Israel as the victim of terrorism backed by the government of Iran. The advertising campaign is due to air on television during the inauguration period of President-elect Barack Obama.
Comment: This story has since been scrubbed from Haaretz's page. However, it is still available on Google cache.
Just in case it disappears forever, an archived screen shot can be seen at this link.
So let's think about this for a moment; There are groups of Israeli agents running around Gaza dressed very convincingly as members of a Palestinian militant group that is claimed to be behind the firing of Qassam rockets from Gaza into Israel. Add to that the fact that Hamas has on several occasions in the past claimed that they did not know who was firing the rockets into Israel, suspected that agents of the state of Israel were behind the firing of rockets at very sensitive times, and appealed to whoever was doing it to stop, and we have are led to a very interesting tentative conclusion:
Israel is now and has been for many years taking steps to ensure that peace never breaks out with the Palestinians. This is a very reasonable and logical conclusion because it is clear to all with eyes to see that without an enemy against which to fight, the illegality of the present state of Israel would be clearly exposed for all to see.