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Pedro Gonçalves

Afghanistan's Mineral Riches are China's Gain - by Aziz Huq | Foreign Policy - 0 views

www.foreignpolicy.com/...chinese_takeout

China Afghanistan Pakistan US

shared by Pedro Gonçalves on 16 Jun 10 - Cached
  • The real winner from new natural-resource wealth beyond the Khyber Pass will be China
  • Chinese foreign investment and aid has accelerated dramatically over the past decade, especially in Africa. In November 2009 alone, for example, China's largesse amounted to $10 billion in low-interest loans and $1 billion in commercial loans to the continent. With Beijing as cheerleader, trade has soared from $1 billion in 1992 to $106.8 billion in 2008.
  • The DRC provides the best cautionary parallel to Afghanistan: The discovery in the late 1990s of copper, coltan, and other minerals in eastern Congo gave new life to a civil war that has now claimed upwards of 4 million lives. Flagging combatants were funded by mineral extraction, and much of those resources eventually flowed to China.
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  • The fact that violence is still simmering in eastern Congo -- and despite the costs that extraction imposes on the Congolese people -- has not been enough to deter Beijing from wooing Congo's government for access to the country's abundant resources. So, if there's any thought that war in Afghanistan might dissuade Chinese investment there, it's best to dispense with that notion immediately.
  • China, which has a narrow land border with Afghanistan, already invests heavily in the war-torn Central Asian state. The state-owned China Metallurgical Group has a $3.5 billion copper mining venture in Logar province. Chinese companies ZTE and Huawei are building digital telephone switches, providing roughly 200,000 subscriber lines in Afghanistan. Even back in the war's early days in 2002 and 2003, when I worked in Afghanistan, the Chinese presence was acutely visible in Kabul, with Chinese laborers on many building sites and Chinese-run restaurants and guesthouses popping up all over the city. As Robert Kaplan has pointed out, these investments come with a gratuitous hidden subsidy from the United States -- which has defrayed the enormous costs of providing security amid war and looting.
  • With its massive wealth, appetite for risk, and willingness to underbid others on labor costs and human rights conditionality, China is the odds-on favorite for development of any new Afghan mineral resources. Chinese firms will control the flow of new funds, and the way those funds are distributed between the central and local governments. It's all well and good that Barack Obama's administration has recommitted to building civil projects in rural Afghanistan, but consider the relative scale of building a school to establishing a multimillion-dollar mine (not to mention the transport networks and infrastructure required to get the extracted minerals out) and it's easy to see what kind of influence the Chinese will bring to the table.
  • Although many have warned of a new Sino-colonialism, Brautigam's work suggests that perhaps China's awareness of its gargantuan and growing need for foreign export markets will make it a better "colonial" power than any European country ever was.
  • Stability in Pakistan should be an important goal for China. It is by now clear that the Taliban's campaign west of the Durand Line is inextricable from the destabilizing efforts of Islamist militants in Pakistan. If China does not want another nuclear basket case on its border, then it should care deeply about instability in Afghanistan. Currently, however, Beijing is still freeloading, relying on Washington to provide security for its limited interests. Perhaps the tantalizing prospect of $1 trillion in minerals might be enough to change the strategic equation.
Argos Media

Obama Ponders Outreach to Elements of Taliban - NYTimes.com - 0 views

www.nytimes.com/...08obama.html

Afghanistan David Petraeus Iraq Obama Pakistan Taliban US

shared by Argos Media on 09 Mar 09 - No Cached
  • Mr. Obama pointed to the success in peeling Iraqi insurgents away from more hard-core elements of Al Qaeda in Mesopotamia, a strategy that many credit as much as the increase of American forces with turning the war around in the last two years. “There may be some comparable opportunities in Afghanistan and in the Pakistani region,
  • Asked if the United States was winning in Afghanistan, a war he effectively adopted as his own last month by ordering an additional 17,000 troops sent there, Mr. Obama replied flatly, “No.”
  • Mr. Obama said on the campaign trail last year that the possibility of breaking away some elements of the Taliban “should be explored,
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  • now he has started a review of policy toward Afghanistan and Pakistan intended to find a new strategy, and he signaled that reconciliation could emerge as an important initiative, mirroring the strategy used by Gen. David H. Petraeus in Iraq.
  • “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,” Mr. Obama said. At the same time, he acknowledged that outreach may not yield the same success. “The situation in Afghanistan is, if anything, more complex,” he said. “You have a less governed region, a history of fierce independence among tribes. Those tribes are multiple and sometimes operate at cross purposes, and so figuring all that out is going to be much more of a challenge.”
  • administration officials have criticized the Pakistani government for its own reconciliation deal with local Taliban leaders in the Swat Valley, where Islamic law has been imposed and radical figures hold sway. Pakistani officials have sought to reassure administration officials that their deal was not a surrender to the Taliban, but rather an attempt to drive a wedge between hard-core Taliban leaders and local Islamists.
  • During the interview, Mr. Obama also left open the option for American operatives to capture terrorism suspects abroad even without the cooperation of a country where they were found. “There could be situations — and I emphasize ‘could be’ because we haven’t made a determination yet — where, let’s say that we have a well-known Al Qaeda operative that doesn’t surface very often, appears in a third country with whom we don’t have an extradition relationship or would not be willing to prosecute, but we think is a very dangerous person,” he said.“I think we still have to think about how do we deal with that kind of scenario,”
  • The president went on to say that “we don’t torture” and that “we ultimately provide anybody that we’re detaining an opportunity through habeas corpus to answer to charges.”Aides later said Mr. Obama did not mean to suggest that everybody held by American forces would be granted habeas corpus or the right to challenge their detention. In a court filing last month, the Obama administration agreed with the Bush administration position that 600 prisoners in a cavernous prison on the American air base at Bagram in Afghanistan have no right to seek their release in court.
Pedro Gonçalves

Powell Jousts With Cheney on Path of Republican Party - NYTimes.com - 0 views

www.nytimes.com/...25talkshows.html

US Politics Republican Party Colin Powell Dick Cheney Tom Ridge Karl Rove Newt Gingrich

shared by Pedro Gonçalves on 25 May 09 - Cached
  • Colin L. Powell challenged Dick Cheney on the legacy of the Bush administration and the future of the Republican Party on Sunday, declaring that Republicans should not bow to “diktats that come from the right wing.”
  • The remarks by Mr. Powell, a former secretary of state, amounted to a public rebuttal of Mr. Cheney, the former vice president, and Rush Limbaugh, the conservative radio commentator, who have questioned Mr. Powell’s Republican credentials and suggested that he should leave the party. “Rush will not get his wish,” Mr. Powell said Sunday on “Face the Nation” on CBS. “And Mr. Cheney was misinformed. I am still a Republican.”
  • Mr. Powell broke with Mr. Cheney on the prison camp at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, saying that he agreed with President Obama that it should be closed and that Mr. Cheney disagreed as much with his former boss as with Mr. Obama.“Mr. Cheney is not only disagreeing with President Obama’s policy,” Mr. Powell said. “He’s disagreeing with President Bush’s policy. President Bush stated repeatedly to international audiences and to the country that he wanted to close Guantánamo. The problem he had was he couldn’t get all the pieces together.”
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  • Mr. Powell said Guantánamo prisoners could be safely housed in United States prisons, undercutting the main theme Congressional Republicans have been wielding against the president.
  • In another indication of Republican discord, Tom Ridge, who was a secretary of homeland security for Mr. Bush, said on CNN that he disagreed with Mr. Cheney that the nation was less safe because of Mr. Obama’s national security policies. He, too, supports the closing of Guantánamo.
  • Mr. Powell infuriated many in his party last fall when he endorsed Mr. Obama for president. His appearance on “Face the Nation” comes two weeks after Mr. Cheney, appearing on the same program, said he believed that Mr. Powell “had already left the party. I didn’t know he was still a Republican.”
  • He made clear that he thought a major threat to the party were suggestions by Republicans like Mr. Cheney and Mr. Limbaugh that there was no room for Republicans like Mr. Powell. “What the concern about me is, ‘Well, is he too moderate?’ ” Mr. Powell said. “I have always felt that the Republican Party should be more inclusive than it generally has been over the years.”
  • Mr. Powell’s call for expanding the party was embraced by Newt Gingrich, the former House speaker and a leading conservative in the party, who said Republicans would be doomed to minority status if they adopted a small-tent view.“I don’t think anybody has the authority to read anybody out of a free party,” Mr. Gingrich said in an interview. “Having started my career in Georgia when there were no Republicans and we were eager to show up, and having been in the House for 15 years as a member of the minority, I’ll tell you if we didn’t have moderates, we would never have become a majority party. You can’t be a national party without internal tension.”
Pedro Gonçalves

China launches green power revolution to catch up on west | Environment | The Guardian - 0 views

www.guardian.co.uk/...china-green-energy-solar-wind

China Climate Change Zhang Xiaoqiang US David Sandalow Europe

shared by Pedro Gonçalves on 10 Jun 09 - Cached
  • China is planning a vast increase in its use of wind and solar power over the next ­decade and believes it can match Europe by 2020, producing a fifth of its energy needs from renewable sources, a senior Chinese official said yesterday.
  • Zhang Xiaoqiang, vice-chairman of China's national development and reform commission, told the Guardian that Beijing would easily surpass current 2020 targets for the use of wind and solar power and was now contemplating targets that were more than three times higher.In the current development plan, the goal for wind energy is 30 gigawatts. Zhang said the new goal could be 100GW by 2020.
  • "Similarly, by 2020 the total installed capacity for solar power will be at least three times that of the original target [3GW]," Zhang said in an interview in London. China generates only 120 megawatts of its electricity from solar power, so the goal represents a 75-fold expansion in just over a decade.
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  • "We are now formulating a plan for development of renewable energy. We can be sure we will exceed the 15% target. We will at least reach 18%. Personally I think we could reach the target of having renewables provide 20% of total energy consumption."
  • That matches the European goal, and would represent a direct challenge to Europe's claims to world leadership in the field, despite China's relative poverty. Some experts have cast doubt on whether Britain will be able to reach 20%. On another front, China has the ambitious plan of installing 100m energy-efficient lightbulbs this year alone.
  • Beijing seeks to achieve these goals by directing a significant share of China's $590bn economic stimulus package to low-carbon investment. Of that total, more than $30bn will be spent directly on environmental projects and the reduction of greenhouse gas emissions.But the indirect green share in the stimulus, in the form of investment in carbon-efficient transport and electricity transmission systems, would be far larger.HSBC Global Research estimated the total green share could be over a third of the total package.
  • He said the government would also plough money into the expansion of solar heating systems. He said the country was already a world leader, with 130m square metres of solar heating arrays already installed, and was planning to invest more. The US goal for solar heating by 2020 is 200m square metres.
  • David Sandalow, the US assistant secretary of energy, said the continuation of business as usual in China would result in a 2.7C rise in temperatures even if every other country slashed greenhouse gas emissions by 80%."China can and will need to do much more if the world is going to have any hope of containing climate change," said Sandalow, who is in Beijing as part of a senior negotiating team aiming to find common ground ahead of the crucial Copenhagen summit at the end of this year."No effective deal will be possible without the US and China, which together account for almost half of the planet's carbon emissions."
Pedro Gonçalves

Prime Minister's Speech at the Begin-Sadat Center at Bar-Ilan University - 0 views

www.pmo.gov.il/...speechbarilan140609.htm

Israel Palestine Benjamin Netanyahu Israeli Settlements

shared by Pedro Gonçalves on 15 Jun 09 - Cached
  • The Iranian threat looms large before us, as was further demonstrated yesterday.  The greatest danger confronting Israel, the Middle East, the entire world and human race, is the nexus between radical Islam and nuclear weapons.
  • I turn to all Arab leaders tonight and I say: “Let us meet. Let us speak of peace and let us make peace. I am ready to meet with you at any time.  I am willing to go to Damascus, to Riyadh, to Beirut, to any place- including Jerusalem.I call on the Arab countries to cooperate with the Palestinians and with us to advance an economic peace.
  • The economic success of the Gulf States has impressed us all and it has impressed me. I call on the talented entrepreneurs of the Arab world to come and invest here and to assist the Palestinians – and us – in spurring the economy.
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  • I turn to you, our Palestinian neighbors, led by the Palestinian Authority, and I say: Let’s begin negotiations immediately without preconditions.Israel is obligated by its international commitments and expects all parties to keep their commitments. We want to live with you in peace, as good neighbors.
  • I do not want war.  No one in Israel wants war.
  • to our regret, this is not the case with the Palestinians. The closer we get to an agreement with them, the further they retreat and raise demands that are inconsistent with a true desire to end the conflict. Many good people have told us that withdrawal from territories is the key to peace with the Palestinians. Well, we withdrew. But the fact is that every withdrawal was met with massive waves of terror, by suicide bombers and thousands of missiles. We tried to withdraw with an agreement and without an agreement.  We tried a partial withdrawal and a full withdrawal.  In 2000 and again last year, Israel proposed an almost total withdrawal in exchange for an end to the conflict, and twice our offers were rejected. We evacuated every last inch of the Gaza strip, we uprooted tens of settlements and evicted thousands of Israelis from their homes, and in response, we received a hail of missiles on our cities, towns and children.  The claim that territorial withdrawals will bring peace with the Palestinians, or at least advance peace, has up till now not stood the test of reality.
  • Territorial withdrawals have not lessened the hatred, and to our regret, Palestinian moderates are not yet ready to say the simple words: Israel is the nation-state of the Jewish people, and it will stay that way.
  • But we must also tell the truth in its entirety: within this homeland lives a large Palestinian community. We do not want to rule over them, we do not want to govern their lives, we do not want to impose either our flag or our culture on them.
  • The Palestinian leadership must arise and say: “Enough of this conflict. We recognize the right of the Jewish people to a state of their own in this land, and we are prepared to live beside you in true peace.”  I am yearning for that moment, for when Palestinian leaders say those words to our people and to their people, then a path will be opened to resolving all the problems between our peoples, no matter how complex they may be.
  • Therefore, a fundamental prerequisite for ending the conflict is a public, binding and unequivocal Palestinian recognition of Israel as the nation state of the Jewish people.  To vest this declaration with practical meaning, there must also be a clear understanding that the Palestinian refugee problem will be resolved outside Israel’s borders.  For it is clear that any demand for resettling Palestinian refugees within Israel undermines Israel’s continued existence as the state of the Jewish people.
  • Tiny Israel successfully absorbed tens of thousands of Jewish refugees who left their homes and belongings in Arab countries.  Therefore, justice and logic demand that the Palestinian refugee problem be solved outside Israel’s borders.
  • the connection between the Jewish people and the Land of Israel has lasted for more than 3500 years.  Judea and Samaria, the places where Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, David and Solomon, and Isaiah and Jeremiah lived, are not alien to us.  This is the land of our forefathers. The right of the Jewish people to a state in the land of Israel does not derive from the catastrophes that have plagued our people. True, for 2000 years the Jewish people suffered expulsions, pogroms, blood libels, and massacres which culminated in a Holocaust - a suffering which has no parallel in human history.  There are those who say that if the Holocaust had not occurred, the state of Israel would never have been established.  But I say that if the state of Israel would have been established earlier, the Holocaust would not have occured. 
  • our right to build our sovereign state here, in the land of Israel, arises from one simple fact: this is the homeland of the Jewish people, this is where our identity was forged. 
  • the simple truth is that the root of the conflict was, and remains, the refusal to recognize the right of the Jewish people to a state of their own, in their historic homeland.   In 1947, when the United Nations proposed the partition plan of a Jewish state and an Arab state, the entire Arab world rejected the resolution. The Jewish community, by contrast, welcomed it by dancing and rejoicing. The Arabs rejected any Jewish state, in any borders. Those who think that the continued enmity toward Israel is a product of our presence in Judea, Samaria and Gaza, is confusing cause and consequence. The attacks against us began in the 1920s, escalated into a comprehensive attack in 1948 with the declaration of Israel’s independence, continued with the fedayeen attacks in the 1950s, and climaxed in 1967, on the eve of the six-day war, in an attempt to tighten a noose around the neck of the State of Israel.  All this occurred during the fifty years before a single Israeli soldier ever set foot in Judea and Samaria .
  • In my vision of peace, in this small land of ours, two peoples live freely, side-by-side, in amity and mutual respect.  Each will have its own flag, its own national anthem, its own government.  Neither will threaten the security or survival of the other.
  • This policy must take into account the international situation that has recently developed.  We must recognize this reality and at the same time stand firmly on those principles essential for Israel.
  • Palestinians must clearly and unambiguously recognize Israel as the state of the Jewish people.  The second principle is: demilitarization. The territory under Palestinian control must be demilitarized with ironclad security provisions for Israel.  Without these two conditions, there is a real danger that an armed Palestinian state would emerge that would become another terrorist base against the Jewish state, such as the one in Gaza. 
  • In order to achieve peace, we must ensure that Palestinians will not be able to import missiles into their territory, to field an army, to close their airspace to us, or to make pacts with the likes of Hezbollah and Iran.
  • It is impossible to expect us to agree in advance to the principle of a Palestinian state without assurances that this state will be demilitarized.
  • Therefore, today we ask our friends in the international community, led by the United States, for what is critical to the security of Israel:  Clear commitments that in a future peace agreement, the territory controlled by the Palestinians will be demilitarized: namely, without an army, without control of its airspace, and with effective security measures to prevent weapons smuggling into the territory – real monitoring, and not what occurs in Gaza today.  And obviously, the Palestinians will not be able to forge military pacts.
  • Without this, sooner or later, these territories will become another Hamastan. And that we cannot accept.
  • Regarding the remaining important issues that will be discussed as part of the final settlement, my positions are known: Israel needs defensible borders, and Jerusalem must remain the united capital of Israel
  • The territorial question will be discussed as part of the final peace agreement.  In the meantime, we have no intention of building new settlements or of expropriating additional land for existing settlements. But there is a need to enable the residents to live normal lives, to allow mothers and fathers to raise their children like families elsewhere.  The settlers are neither the enemies of the people nor the enemies of peace.  Rather, they are an integral part of our people, a principled, pioneering and Zionist public.
  • Unity among us is essential and will help us achieve reconciliation with our neighbors.
  • If the Palestinians turn toward peace – in fighting terror, in strengthening governance and the rule of law, in educating their children for peace and in stopping incitement against Israel - we will do our part in making every effort to facilitate freedom of movement and access, and to enable them to develop their economy.  All of this will help us advance a peace treaty between us. 
  • Above all else, the Palestinians must decide between the path of peace and the path of Hamas. The Palestinian Authority will have to establish the rule of law in Gaza and overcome Hamas.  Israel will not sit at the negotiating table with terrorists who seek their destruction.   Hamas will not even allow the Red Cross to visit our kidnapped soldier Gilad Shalit
  • If we receive this guarantee regarding demilitirization and Israel’s security needs, and if the Palestinians recognize Israel as the State of the Jewish people, then we will be ready in a future peace agreement to reach a solution where a demilitarized Palestinian state exists alongside the Jewish state. 
Argos Media

Hemisphere's Leaders Signal Fresh Start With U.S. - NYTimes.com - 0 views

www.nytimes.com/...20prexy.html

US Obama Venezuela Cuba Hugo Chavez Lindsey Graham John Ensign Lula da Silva Evo Morales Daniel Ortega Brazil Organization of American States

shared by Argos Media on 20 Apr 09 - Cached
  • Leaders from the Western Hemisphere, inspired by a new American president, closed a two-day summit meeting proclaiming a new dawn for relations in the region, which had been marked by bitter disagreements in recent years with the United States.
  • Despite the warm feelings, some old tensions remained. President Evo Morales of Bolivia confronted Mr. Obama during a private session on Saturday with a charge that the United States had plotted to assassinate him. Mr. Obama responded on Sunday, saying, “I am absolutely opposed and condemn any efforts at violent overthrows of democratically elected governments.”
  • Some of that good will went too far for President Obama’s critics in Washington, where seemingly friendly images of him with President Hugo Chávez of Venezuela and Mr. Obama’s overtures to Cuba drew criticism from Republican lawmakers.
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  • Senator John Ensign, Republican of Nevada, said on CNN that it was “irresponsible for the president” to be seen laughing and joking with “one of the most anti-American leaders in the entire world,” referring to Mr. Chávez.And Senator Lindsey Graham, Republican of South Carolina, pointed to Cuba’s estimated 200 political prisoners. “Release the prisoners and we’ll talk to you,” he said of the Cuban government on Fox News Sunday, adding, “Put up or shut up.”
  • Mr. Obama defended his overtures at a news conference on Sunday, saying the handshakes and the polite conversation he shared with Mr. Chávez here were hardly “endangering the strategic interests of the United States.”Wrapping up a four-day swing through Latin America, he said he believed he had paved the way for “frank dialogue” with countries like Venezuela and Cuba, whose relations with the United States have been badly strained.But he also sought to calibrate his message, saying Sunday that he had “great differences” with Mr. Chávez and insisting that freedom for the Cuban people would remain the guiding principle of his foreign policy.
  • The antagonism seemed to melt away, replaced by a palpable enthusiasm for a new openness from the United States and hopes of improved relations for Washington with Venezuela and Cuba, which emerged as a core issue here.
  • And President Daniel Ortega of Nicaragua, an old Washington nemesis, sought to embarrass Mr. Obama in a nearly one-hour speech filled with anti-American vitriol in which he likened the American embargo of Cuba to the Berlin Wall.
  • Hoping to push the process forward, leaders from Latin America and the Caribbean have volunteered to aid in a reconciliation between the United States and Cuba. “Brazil would be able to help,” Mr. da Silva said Sunday. In an interview published Sunday in the Spanish newspaper ABC, he said the United States should not wait for Cuba to take the next step in efforts to end their half-century of feuding.
  • Mr. Chávez took the initiative Saturday, saying he was naming Roy Chaderton, Venezuela’s representative to the Organization of American States, to be his new ambassador to Washington.
  • Mr. Chávez had ejected the American ambassador to Venezuela in September, saying he had discovered an American-backed plot to remove him from power. Washington responded in kind.
Argos Media

Clinton urges Nato to bring Russia back in from the cold | World news | guardian.co.uk - 0 views

www.guardian.co.uk/...clinton-nato-russia

Russia NATO EU

shared by Argos Media on 11 Mar 09 - Cached
  • The Obama administration moved today to resume high-level relations with Moscow when Hillary Clinton led a western push to revive contacts between Russia and Nato.Making her European debut as secretary of state, Clinton told a meeting of Nato foreign ministers that Washington wanted "a fresh start" in relations with Moscow.
  • "I don't think you punish Russia by stopping conversation with them," she said, adding that there could be benefits to the better relationship. "We not only can but must co-operate with Russia."
  • The meeting in Brussels agreed to reinstate the work of the Nato-Russia council, a consultative body that was frozen last year in protest at Moscow's invasion and partition of Georgia.
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  • Diplomats said the accord and the talks in Geneva tomorrow could pave the way for the Obama administration to press ahead with a common agenda with Russia which would entail talks on nuclear arms control and on Russian co-operation with US policy on Afghanistan and Iran.The new White House team are clearly hoping to bypass the prime minister and former president, Vladimir Putin, and focus its diplomacy on President Dmitry Medvedev.
  • For any big shifts in the Russian-­American relationship, Moscow would insist on the shelving of the Pentagon's missile shield project in Poland and the Czech Republic and a freeze in the ­prospects for Ukraine and Georgia joining Nato.
  • The US and Germany tabled a joint proposal for yesterday's Nato meeting, leaving the contentious issue of Ukraine's and Georgia's membership chances open and urging greater co-operation with Russia "as equal partners in areas of common interest". It went on: "These include: Afghanistan, counter-terrorism, counter-piracy, counter-narcotics, non-proliferation, arms control and other issues."
  • "Russia is a global player. Not talking to them is not an option," said Jaap de Hoop Scheffer, the Nato secretary-general.
  • In the first big foreign policy speech from the Obama administration, in Munich last month, the vice-president, Joe Biden, said the White House wanted to "press the reset button" in relations with Moscow after years of dangerous drift.
  • The agreement today was held up for several hours by Lithuania, which strongly opposed the resumption of dialogue with the Kremlin.France and Germany, keen to develop close links with Moscow, threatened in turn to cancel scheduled meetings last night between Nato and Ukraine and Georgia if "the opening with Russia" was not given a green light, diplomats said.
Argos Media

Influence of Israel Lobby Debated as Intelligence Pick Casts Blame for Pullout - 0 views

www.washingtonpost.com/...AR2009031104308_pf.html

Israel US Israel Lobby Charles Freeman AIPAC Jewish Institute for National Security Affairs Steve Rosen Zionist Organisation of America

shared by Argos Media on 12 Mar 09 - Cached
  • When Charles W. Freeman Jr. stepped away Tuesday from an appointment to chair the National Intelligence Council -- which oversees the production of reports that represent the view of the nation's 16 intelligence agencies -- he decried in an e-mail "the barrage of libelous distortions of my record [that] would not cease upon my entry into office," and he was blunt about whom he considers responsible. "The libels on me and their easily traceable email trails show conclusively that there is a powerful lobby determined to prevent any view other than its own from being aired, still less to factor in American understanding of trends and events in the Middle East," Freeman wrote. Referring to what he called "the Israel Lobby," he added: "The aim of this Lobby is control of the policy process through the exercise of a veto over the appointment of people who dispute the wisdom of its views." One result of this, he said, is "the inability of the American public to discuss, or the government to consider, any option for US policies in the Middle East opposed by the ruling faction in Israeli politics."
  • Only a few Jewish organizations came out publicly against Freeman's appointment, but a handful of pro-Israeli bloggers and employees of other organizations worked behind the scenes to raise concerns with members of Congress, their staffs and the media. For example, the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC), often described as the most influential pro-Israel lobbying group in Washington, "took no position on this matter and did not lobby the Hill on it," spokesman Josh Block said. But Block responded to reporters' questions and provided critical material about Freeman, albeit always on background, meaning his comments could not be attributed to him, according to three journalists who spoke to him. Asked about this yesterday, Block replied: "As is the case with many, many issues every day, when there is general media interest in a subject, I often provide publicly available information to journalists on background."
  • Yesterday, the Jewish Institute for National Security Affairs, which tried to derail Freeman's appointment, applauded his withdrawal. But it added: "We think Israel and any presumed 'lobby' had far less effect on the outcome than the common-sensical belief that the person who is the gatekeeper of intelligence information for the President of the United States should be unencumbered by payments from foreign governments."
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  • And Stephen Walt, one of two writers who in 2006 famously described the influence of the Israel lobby as dangerous, chimed in on ForeignPolicy.com: "For all of you out there who may have questioned whether there was a powerful 'Israel lobby,' or who admitted that it existed but didn't think it had much influence . . . think again." (Foreign Policy is owned by a subsidiary of The Washington Post Co.)
  • The earliest cry of alarm about Freeman's appointment -- a week before it was announced -- came from a former AIPAC lobbyist. Steve Rosen wrote Feb. 19 on his blog that Freeman was a "strident critic of Israel" and described the potential appointment as "a textbook case of the old-line Arabism" whose "views of the region are what you would expect in the Saudi foreign ministry." Rosen said yesterday that he had been "quite positive" about President Obama's previous appointments for Middle East positions but that he was "surprised" about Freeman. The appointee's "most extreme point of view," he said, was not what he had expected for the head of the NIC. Rosen has a unique position in Washington. A former chief foreign policy lobbyist for AIPAC, he and a colleague were indicted by the Bush administration in 2005 on suspicion of violating the Espionage Act, the first nongovernment employees ever so charged. AIPAC cut him loose, and a trial date has been set for May.
  • Also on March 2, the Zionist Organization of America called for support of a letter by Rep. Mark Steven Kirk (R-Ill.) that called on the DNI inspector general to investigate Freeman for possible conflicts of interest because of his financial relations with Saudi Arabia. That letter, signed by Kirk and seven other congressmen, including House Minority Leader John A. Boehner (R-Ohio), was sent to Inspector General Edward Maguire on March 3.
Argos Media

For Obama's Iran Plan, Talk and Some Toughness - NYTimes.com - 0 views

www.nytimes.com/...04diplo.html

Dennis Ross Gary Samore Iran Joe Biden Non-Proliferation Nuclear Proliferation Obama Thomas Pickering US

shared by Argos Media on 09 Mar 09 - Cached
  • The Obama administration may take a tough line with Tehran in coming months even as it signals a willingness to move toward direct talks with Iranian officials, according to President Obama’s aides and outside experts who have consulted with the government about Iran. While Mr. Obama is expected to soften the Bush administration’s line against talking to Iran, the aides said, he may also seek to toughen sanctions.
  • Mr. Obama told the Arabic-language television station Al Arabiya last week that “if countries like Iran are willing to unclench their fist, they will find an extended hand from us.” He has also spoken recently of the need to treat Iran with “mutual respect.”
  • Dennis B. Ross, the longtime Middle East peace negotiator who is expected to be named to a senior post handling Iran, has long argued that the United States must persuade America’s European allies to increase economic pressure against Iran.
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  • Gary Samore, a former Clinton administration arms control negotiator who is expected to become Mr. Obama’s nonproliferation czar, has argued that any carrot offered to Iran should be accompanied by a bigger stick.
  • Aides to Mr. Obama say that Mr. Samore has favored offering Tehran warmer relations with the United States, including lifting certain American sanctions against Iran and assuring the Iranian leadership that the United States will not pursue regime change. (Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr. said in the past that he thought the United States should assure Iran that it would not pursue regime change.) But Mr. Samore has also argued that such an offer is not enough unless it comes backed by the threat of stronger sanctions from the United States, Europe, Russia and China, like, for instance, a ban on foreign investment in Iran’s oil and gas industry.
  • United Against Nuclear Iran, an organization dedicated to stopping Iran from getting nuclear weapons
  • Several European diplomats said that France, Britain and Germany might be willing to consider sanctions if the Obama administration makes an effort to improve the atmosphere with Iran first.
  • American policy toward Iran is also likely to be complicated by presidential elections scheduled for June. An overture by the United States would raise two kinds of risks, experts say: that President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad of Iran would benefit politically from such a gesture, and that he may choose to rebuff Washington to score political points before the voting.
  • “Coming out of the barrel like a jack-in-the-box, saying, ‘Meet us in two days in Geneva for talks,’ would be a mistake,” said Thomas R. Pickering, a former undersecretary of state for political affairs
Argos Media

Pakistan Strife Raises U.S. Doubts on Nuclear Arms - NYTimes.com - 0 views

www.nytimes.com/...04nuke.html

Pakistan Nuclear Weapons US

shared by Argos Media on 04 May 09 - Cached
  • As the insurgency of the Taliban and Al Qaeda spreads in Pakistan, senior American officials say they are increasingly concerned about new vulnerabilities for Pakistan’s nuclear arsenal, including the potential for militants to snatch a weapon in transport or to insert sympathizers into laboratories or fuel-production facilities.
  • The officials emphasized that there was no reason to believe that the arsenal, most of which is south of the capital, Islamabad, faced an imminent threat. President Obama said last week that he remained confident that keeping the country’s nuclear infrastructure secure was the top priority of Pakistan’s armed forces.
  • Pakistani officials have continued to deflect American requests for more details about the location and security of the country’s nuclear sites, the officials said. Some of the Pakistani reluctance, they said, stemmed from longstanding concern that the United States might be tempted to seize or destroy Pakistan’s arsenal if the insurgency appeared about to engulf areas near Pakistan’s nuclear sites.
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  • The Obama administration inherited from President Bush a multiyear, $100 million secret American program to help Pakistan build stronger physical protections around some of those facilities, and to train Pakistanis in nuclear security. But much of that effort has now petered out, and American officials have never been permitted to see how much of the money was spent, the facilities where the weapons are kept or even a tally of how many Pakistan has produced. The facility Pakistan was supposed to build to conduct its own training exercises is running years behind schedule.
  • Mr. Zardari heads the country’s National Command Authority, the mix of political, military and intelligence leaders responsible for its arsenal of 60 to 100 nuclear weapons. But in reality, his command and control over the weapons are considered tenuous at best; that power lies primarily in the hands of the army chief of staff, Gen. Ashfaq Parvez Kayani, the former director of Inter-Services Intelligence, the country’s intelligence agency.
  • Several current officials said that they were worried that insurgents could try to provoke an incident that would prompt Pakistan to move the weapons, and perhaps use an insider with knowledge of the transportation schedule for weapons or materials to tip them off. That concern appeared to be what Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton was hinting at in testimony 10 days ago before the House Appropriations Committee. Pakistan’s weapons, she noted, “are widely dispersed in the country.”
  • “There’s not a central location, as you know,” she added. “They’ve adopted a policy of dispersing their nuclear weapons and facilities.” She went on to describe a potential situation in which a confrontation with India could prompt a Pakistani response, though she did not go as far as saying that such a response could include moving weapons toward India — which American officials believed happened in 2002. Other experts note that even as Pakistan faces instability, it is producing more plutonium for new weapons, and building more production reactors.
Pedro Gonçalves

Iran Stepping Up Effort to Quell Election Protest - NYTimes.com - 0 views

www.nytimes.com/...25iran.html

Iran Mahmoud Ahmadinejad Iranian Revolutionary Guards Pasdaran Mir Hossein Mousavi

shared by Pedro Gonçalves on 25 Jun 09 - Cached
  • Analysts suggested that the unyielding response showed that Iran’s leaders, backed by the supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, had lost patience and that Iran was now, more than ever, a state guided not by clerics of the revolution but by a powerful military and security apparatus.
  • President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has maintained a low profile, but evidence suggests that he has filled security agencies with crucial allies.
  • “What has been going on since 2005 is the shift of the center of power from the clergy to the Pasdaran,” or the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps, said a political analyst with years of experience in Iran who feared retribution if identified. “In a way one could say that Iran is no longer a theocracy, but a government headed by military chiefs.”
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  • Mr. Moussavi, the defeated candidate who embodied the hopes of reformers, posted a notice on his Web site of a late afternoon rally in front of the Parliament, but he distanced himself from the action, saying it was not organized by the reform movement. It is not clear how far Mr. Moussavi, a former prime minister who is essentially an insider thrust into the role of opposition, would go to defy the system. He has not been seen since Thursday. So as the crackdown infuriates protesters, there is a greater gap with their ostensible leader, political analysts said.
  • Those arrested include officials who served from the founding of the Islamic republic in 1979, until Mr. Ahmadinejad’s election in 2005: Behzad Nabavi, a former deputy speaker of Parliament; Mohsen Aminzadeh, a key figure at the Intelligence Ministry for many years; Mostafa Tajzadeh, a deputy interior minister during the presidency of Mohammad Khatami; Mohammad Ali Abtahi, a vice president under Mr. Khatami; and Abdullah Ramezanzadeh, Mr. Khatami’s spokesman. They were all close to Mr. Khatami, then threw their support behind Mr. Moussavi.
Pedro Gonçalves

U.S. Steps Gingerly Into Tumult in Iran - NYTimes.com - 0 views

www.nytimes.com/...17media.html

Iran Iran Elections 2009 US Twitter E-diplomacy Iraq

shared by Pedro Gonçalves on 17 Jun 09 - Cached
  • on Monday afternoon, a 27-year-old State Department official, Jared Cohen, e-mailed the social-networking site Twitter with an unusual request: delay scheduled maintenance of its global network, which would have cut off service while Iranians were using Twitter to swap information and inform the outside world about the mushrooming protests around Tehran.
  • “This was just a call to say: ‘It appears Twitter is playing an important role at a crucial time in Iran. Could you keep it going?’ ” said P.J. Crowley, the assistant secretary of state for public affairs.
  • Twitter complied with the request, saying in a blog post on Monday that it put off the upgrade until late Tuesday afternoon — 1:30 a.m. Wednesday in Tehran — because its partners recognized “the role Twitter is currently playing as an important communication tool in Iran.” The network was working normally again by Tuesday evening.
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  • The episode demonstrates the extent to which the administration views social networking as a new arrow in its diplomatic quiver. Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton talks regularly about the power of e-diplomacy, particularly in places where the mass media are repressed.
  • There were also suspicions that some pro-government forces might be using new-media outlets to send out misinformation. One popular opposition site, Persiankiwi, warned its followers on Tuesday to ignore instructions from people with no record of reliable posts.
  • Last month, he organized a visit to Baghdad by Mr. Dorsey and other executives from Silicon Valley and New York’s equivalent, Silicon Alley. They met with Iraq’s deputy prime minister to discuss how to rebuild the country’s information network and to sell the virtues of Twitter.
  • Tehran has been buzzing with tweets, the posts of Twitter subscribers, sharing news on rallies, police crackdowns on protesters, and analysis of how the White House is responding to the drama.With the authorities blocking text-messaging on cellphones, Twitter has become a handy alternative for information-hungry Iranians. While Iran has also tried to block Twitter posts, Iranians are skilled at using proxy sites or other methods to circumvent the official barriers.
  • Mr. Cohen, a Stanford University graduate who is the youngest member of the State Department’s policy planning staff, has been working with Twitter, YouTube, Facebook and other services to harness their reach for diplomatic initiatives in Iraq and elsewhere.
  • In addition to Twitter, YouTube has been a critical tool to spread videos from Iran when traditional media outlets have had difficulty filming the protests or the ensuing crackdown. One YouTube account, bearing the user name “wwwiranbefreecom,” showed disturbing images of police officers beating people in the streets. On Monday, Lara Setrakian, an ABC News journalist, put out a call for video on Twitter, writing, “Please send footage we can’t reach!”
  • Journalists were told on Tuesday that they could not cover protests without permission. The restrictions “effectively confine journalists to their offices,” a spokesman for the BBC said.
Argos Media

Pakistani and Afghan Taliban Unify in Face of U.S. Influx - NYTimes.com - 0 views

www.nytimes.com/...27taliban.html

Pakistan Afghanistan US

shared by Argos Media on 27 Mar 09 - Cached
  • After agreeing to bury their differences and unite forces, Taliban leaders based in Pakistan have closed ranks with their Afghan comrades to ready a new offensive in Afghanistan as the United States prepares to send 17,000 more troops there this year.
  • A number of new, younger commanders have been preparing to step up a campaign of roadside bombings and suicide attacks to greet the Americans, the fighters said.
  • The refortified alliance was forged after the reclusive Afghan Taliban leader, Mullah Muhammad Omar, sent emissaries to persuade Pakistani Taliban leaders to join forces and turn their attention to Afghanistan, Pakistani officials and Taliban members said.The overture by Mullah Omar is an indication that with the prospect of an American buildup, the Taliban feel the need to strengthen their own forces in Afghanistan and to redirect their Pakistani allies toward blunting the new American push.
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  • At the same time, American officials told The New York Times this week that Pakistan’s military intelligence agency continued to offer money, supplies and guidance to the Taliban insurgency in Afghanistan as a proxy to help shape a friendly government there once American forces leave.
  • The new Taliban alliance has raised concern in Afghanistan, where NATO generals warn that the conflict will worsen this year. It has also generated anxiety in Pakistan, where officials fear that a united Taliban will be more dangerous, even if focused on Afghanistan, and draw more attacks inside Pakistan from United States drone aircraft. “This may bring some respite for us from militants’ attacks, but what it may entail in terms of national security could be far more serious,” said one senior Pakistani official, who spoke on condition of anonymity because he is not permitted to talk to news organizations. “This would mean more attacks inside our tribal areas, something we have been arguing against with the Americans.”
  • The Pakistani Taliban is dominated by three powerful commanders — Baitullah Mehsud, Hafiz Gul Bahadur and Maulavi Nazir — based in North and South Waziristan, the hub of insurgent activity in Pakistan’s tribal border regions, who have often clashed among themselves.
  • Mullah Omar dispatched a six-member team to Waziristan in late December and early January, several Taliban fighters said in interviews in Dera Ismail Khan, a town in North-West Frontier Province that is not far from South Waziristan. The Afghan Taliban delegation urged the Pakistani Taliban leaders to settle their internal differences, scale down their activities in Pakistan and help counter the planned increase of American forces in Afghanistan, the fighters said. The three Pakistani Taliban leaders agreed. In February, they formed a united council, or shura, called the Council of United Mujahedeen. In a printed statement the leaders vowed to put aside their disputes and focus on fighting American-led forces in Afghanistan.
Pedro Gonçalves

Top Reformers Admitted Plot, Iran Declares - NYTimes.com - 0 views

www.nytimes.com/...04confess.html

Iran Iran Elections 2009

shared by Pedro Gonçalves on 04 Jul 09 - Cached
  • Iranian leaders say they have obtained confessions from top reformist officials that they plotted to bring down the government with a “velvet” revolution. Such confessions, almost always extracted under duress, are part of an effort to recast the civil unrest set off by Iran’s disputed presidential election as a conspiracy orchestrated by foreign nations, human rights groups say.
  • Reports on Iranian Web sites associated with prominent conservatives said that leading reformers have confessed to taking velvet revolution “training courses” outside the country. Alef, a Web site of a conservative member of Parliament, referred to a video of Mohammad Ali Abtahi, who served as vice president in the reform government of former President Mohammed Khatami, as showing that he tearfully “welcomed being defrocked and has confessed to provoking people, causing tension and creating media chaos.”
  • Ayatollah Ali Khamenei’s representative to the Revolutionary Guards, Mojtaba Zolnour, said in a speech Thursday that almost everyone now detained had confessed — raising the prospect that more confessions will be made public.
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  • Fars, a semiofficial news agency, reported the confession of a Newsweek reporter, Mazaiar Bahari, that he had done the bidding of foreign governments, as well as a confession by the editor of a newspaper run by Mir Hussein Moussavi, the opposition leader. And at Friday Prayer, Ayatollah Ahmad Jannati said the government planned to put on trial several Iranian employees of the British Embassy — after confessions were extracted.
  • In addition to Mr. Abtahi, other prominent reformers being held include Abdullah Ramezanzadeh, Mr. Khatami’s spokesman, and Mostafa Tajzadeh, a former deputy interior minister.
Pedro Gonçalves

Clinton Seeks 'Amnesty' for 2 Held by North Korea - NYTimes.com - 0 views

www.nytimes.com/...11diplo.html

North Korea US Hillary Clinton

shared by Pedro Gonçalves on 11 Jul 09 - Cached
  • Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton said Friday that the United States was now seeking “amnesty” for two American journalists imprisoned in North Korea, a remark that suggests that the Obama administration was admitting the women’s culpability in a bid to secure their freedom.
  • “The two journalists and their families have expressed great remorse for this incident, and I think everyone is very sorry that it happened,” Mrs. Clinton said Friday morning during a wide-ranging question-and-answer session with State Department employees. “What we hope for now is that these two young women would be granted amnesty through the North Korean system and be allowed to return home to their families as soon as possible.”
  • The two journalists, Laura Ling, 36, and Euna Lee, 32, both reporters for San Francisco-based Current TV, were sentenced in June to 12 years of hard labor after a trial in which they were accused of entering the country illegally and committing “hostile acts.”
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  • A scholar who visited the North said in an interview published Friday in a South Korean daily that the two women were not in a prison camp, but rather in a guest house in Pyongyang, a development that seemed to suggest that the North still wanted talks with Washington on the women’s release.
  • Her comments on Friday appear to reflect a changing picture that has been complicated by the North’s test of a nuclear missile in May and its decision to fire seven ballistic missiles into the Sea of Japan on the Fourth of July.
  • Mrs. Clinton at first said the charges against the women were “baseless,” while the administration pressed for them to be freed on humanitarian grounds.
  • Experts said that Mrs. Clinton appeared to be trying to keep the issue of the journalists separate from the conflict over the North’s nuclear ambitions. “It’s clear to me they don’t want this tail to wag the nuclear dog,” said Michael Green, a top Asia expert for former President George W. Bush. “They are trying to keep it in a separate lane.”
Pedro Gonçalves

Cyber Blitz Hits U.S., Korea - WSJ.com - 0 views

online.wsj.com/...SB124701806176209691.html

US South Korea North Korea Cyber Security Cyber Warfare

shared by Pedro Gonçalves on 09 Jul 09 - Cached
  • U.S. and South Korean computer networks were besieged for days by a series of relatively unsophisticated attacks, possibly from North Korea, that were among the broadest and longest-lasting assaults perpetrated on government and commercial Web sites in both countries.
  • South Korean officials are investigating whether the attacks originated in North Korea, and a senior U.S. official said the U.S. also is probing North Korea's possible role. U.S. officials noted that the attacks, which appear to have started primarily in South Korea on July 4, coincided with North Korea's latest missile launches and followed a United Nations decision to impose new sanctions.
  • The senior U.S. official said the attacks seemed to have come from South Korea, but it was possible Pyongyang was using sympathizers there. "We're trying to assess whether this is some random attack or the North Koreans might be working through a proxy," said the official.
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  • If a North Korea link is found, it would mark a new turn in Pyongyang's attempts to lash out at the U.S. North Korea has been building up its capability for cyberattacks in the past couple of years, computer security specialists said. North Korea recently increased the number of people in a cyber-warfare unit, South Korea's Yonhap news agency reported last month.
  • U.S. government Web sites attacked included those of the Defense Department, National Security Agency, Treasury Department, Secret Service, State Department, Federal Trade Commission and Federal Aviation Administration, according to the cyber-security unit of VeriSign Inc., a computer-security company, and others familiar with the attacks. The attacks appear to have occurred roughly from Saturday to Tuesday.
  • Private sites attacked, according to a cyber-security specialist who has been tracking the incidents, included those run by the New York Stock Exchange, Nasdaq, the Washington Post, Amazon.com and MarketWatch.
  • Most U.S. federal Web sites appeared to be running properly Wednesday. In South Korea, several government sites were down late Tuesday and early Wednesday but many were back to normal by Wednesday afternoon. "There is a connection between what is going on here in the states and what is going on in [South] Korea," said Richard Howard, director of intelligence at VeriSign's iDefense cyber-security unit.
  • Those responsible used a method similar to attacks in recent years on the governments of Estonia and Georgia, called a "distributed denial of service" attack. It is a maneuver in which many computers act in concert to overwhelm Web sites.
  • At the White House, spokesman Nicholas Shapiro said the attacks over the weekend "had absolutely no effect on the White House's day-to-day operations." The only effect, he said, was that some Internet users in Asia may not have been able to access the White House's Web site for a time.
  • President Barack Obama has made bolstering cyber-security a priority. He said in May he would create a new White House cyber-security post, though it hasn't yet been staffed. People familiar with the process say the White House has had difficulty finding someone to take the job.
  • Defense officials confirmed Pentagon networks were struck but said the intrusions were detected quickly and did no real damage. Adm. Mike Mullen, the nation's top military officer, said Pentagon networks are under near-constant attack. "I grow increasingly concerned about the cyber-world and the attacks," he said.
  • James Lewis, a cyber-security specialist at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, said of the attack, "It's really a test of which U.S. agencies are ready and which aren't."
  • The New York Stock Exchange's parent company, NYSE Euronext, announced at 12:35 p.m. Wednesday that its Web site, but not its trading systems, had been targeted. Exchange officials weren't aware of the attack until notified by the government on Tuesday, said a person familiar with the events. An NYSE spokesman said the exchange's systems detected zero impact either on the Web site or on the separate trading operations. An official of Nasdaq said there wasn't any impact on its business.
  • North Korea turned more antagonistic after the illness of dictator Kim Jong Il last August and September. The country had done little to prepare for a successor, and Mr. Kim's illness triggered an internal shuffle that apparently raised the influence of hard-line military figures.
  • The cyberattacks came as Washington's point man on North Korea sanctions, Ambassador Philip Goldberg, concluded a weeklong trip to China and Malaysia aimed at tightening the financial screws on Pyongyang. Last week, the Obama administration announced sanctions on two North Korea-linked arms companies. The U.S. Treasury last month listed 17 North Korean banks and businesses that it is seeking to constrict financially.
Argos Media

Delegates Walk Out of Racism Conference as Ahmadinejad Speaks - NYTimes.com - 0 views

www.nytimes.com/...21geneva.html

Iran Mahmoud Ahmadinejad Israel Zionism UN Ban Ki-moon Navi Pillay

shared by Argos Media on 21 Apr 09 - Cached
  • President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad of Iran on Monday used the platform of a United Nations conference in Geneva on combating racism to disparage Israel as a “cruel and repressive racist regime,” prompting delegates from European nations to desert the hall and earning a rare harsh rebuke from Secretary General Ban Ki-moon.
  • As Mr. Ahmadinejad began to speak, two protesters wearing rainbow-hued clown wigs — their statement on the tenor of the proceedings — pelted him with red foam noses. Hustled out the door by security agents, they were soon followed by lines of stony-faced diplomats from the 23 European nations attending the conference. They walked out to the sound of some other delegates applauding Mr. Ahmadinejad.
  • The United States and more than a half-dozen other nations had already boycotted the gathering out of concern that it would focus on maligning Israel rather than on the global problems of discrimination, replaying the disputes that marked the first United Nations conference on combating racism in Durban, South Africa, in 2001.
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  • Member states, who wrangled for months over the draft document for the Geneva conference, had ultimately removed controversial statements about Israel; about what constitutes defamation of religion, a position pushed by Muslim states; and about compensation for slavery.
  • Besides the United States, the countries staying away included Germany, Italy, Poland, the Netherlands, New Zealand and Australia. Canada and Israel announced months ago that they would not attend.
  • “Following World War II they resorted to military aggressions to make an entire nation homeless under the pretext of Jewish suffering,” Mr. Ahmadinejad said, grinning as he spoke, his remarks coincidentally falling on the day that Jewish communities mark the Holocaust. “And they sent migrants from Europe, the United States and other parts of the world in order to establish a totally racist government in occupied Palestine.”
  • The speech prompted the normally mild-mannered Mr. Ban and other top United Nations officials to voice uncommon criticism of the leader of a member state. “I have not experienced this kind of destructive proceedings in an assembly, in a conference, by any one member state,” Mr. Ban said.“I deplore the use of this platform by the Iranian president to accuse, divide and even incite,” he said, urging members to “turn away from such a message in both form and substance.”
  • Navi Pillay, the United Nations high commissioner for human rights, criticized Mr. Ahmadinejad for “grandstanding” from a United Nations dais and said his performance should not be an excuse to derail the important topic of the conference. She also made a not-so-subtle dig at Iran’s treatment of its own minorities, after noting that the president’s remarks were outside the scope of the conference. “This is what I would have expected the president of Iran to come and tell us: how he is addressing racial discrimination and intolerance in his country,” Ms. Pillay said.
  • Israel recalled its ambassador to Switzerland to protest both the conference and meeting Sunday between the Swiss president, Hans-Rudolf Merz, and Mr. Ahmadinejad.
  • Not everyone at the conference was critical of the speech, which also wandered through topics like the economic collapse and Iraq and Afghanistan. “If we actually believe in freedom of expression, then he has the right to say what he wants to say,” the Pakistani ambassador to the United Nations in Geneva, Zamir Akram, told The Associated Press. “There were things in there that a lot of people in the Muslim world would be in agreement with, for example the situation in Palestine, in Iraq and in Afghanistan, even if they don’t agree with the way he said it.”
yosefong

Are you're Asking Yourself, "Where Can I Find a Notary?" - 2 views

If you are asking yourself "where can I find a notary," we obviously believe the best place is right here on FindNotary. We make finding a notary near you extremely simple. Just search by notary or...

Where Can I Find a Notary

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yosefong

Are you're Asking Yourself, "Where Can I Find a Notary?" - 2 views

If you are asking yourself "where can I find a notary," we obviously believe the best place is right here on FindNotary. We make finding a notary near you extremely simple. Just search by notary or...

Where Can I Find a Notary

started by yosefong on 29 May 12 no follow-up yet
Argos Media

David Miliband: China ready to join US as world power | World news | The Guardian - 0 views

www.guardian.co.uk/...vid-miliband-china-world-power

China US EU David Miliband

shared by Argos Media on 18 May 09 - Cached
  • David Miliband today described China as the 21st century's "indispensable power" with a decisive say on the future of the global economy, climate change and world trade.The foreign secretary predicted that over the next few decades China would become one of the two "powers that count", along with the US, and Europe could emerge as a third only if it learned to speak with one voice.
  • Miliband said a pivotal moment in China's rise came at the G20 summit last month in London. Hu Jintao, China's president, arrived as the head of the only major power still enjoying strong growth (expected to be 8% this year), backed by substantial financial reserves."The G20 was a very significant coming of economic age in an international forum for China. If you looked around the 20 ­people sitting at the table … what was striking was that when China spoke everybody listened," Miliband said.
  • "Historians will look back at 2009 and see that China played an incredibly important role in stabilising global capitalism. That is very significant and sort of ironic," Miliband said. "There's a joke that goes: 'After 1989, capitalism saved China. After 2009, China saved capitalism.'"
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  • "China is becoming an indispensable power in the 21st century in the way Madeleine Albright said the US was an indispensable power at the end of the last century," Miliband said. "It has become an indispensable power economically, and China will become an indispensable power across a wider range of issues."
  • "I think that there is a scenario where America and China are the powers that count," the foreign secretary said. "It is massively in our interests to make sure that we have a stake in that debate, and the most effective way of doing so is … to ensure we do it with a European voice."
  • A report by the European Council on Foreign Relations argued that China was exploiting the EU's divisions and treating it with "diplomatic contempt". The report, published in advance of Wednesday's EU-China summit in Prague, said that European states, dealing with China individually, lacked leverage on issues such as trade, human rights and Tibet.
  • "Europe has not been sufficiently strategic in its relationship with China," Miliband said. "I think a significant part of that is institutional. The EU-China relationship is a good case for the Lisbon treaty. At the moment, at every EU-China summit, the EU side is led by a different presidency and every year there's a different set of priorities.
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