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Argos Media

Analysis: Crisis may lead to new world order - CNN.com - 0 views

edition.cnn.com/...index.html

Economy G20 G8 France Germany UK US

shared by Argos Media on 02 Apr 09 - Cached
  • U.S. President Barack Obama and Brown both favor driving on fiscal stimulus, even if the governor of the Bank of England is cautioning his prime minister he can't afford to throw any more money at the problem
  • Brown and Obama have limited room for maneuver since both their countries have such hefty current account and budget deficits. They just don't have the money to do it themselves, and they may have trouble persuading those who do have the cash to use it.
  • In an uncomfortable reminder of serious divisions over the Iraq war, Germany's Chancellor Angela Merkel and France's President Nicolas Sarkozy, each with more national traditions than Obama and Brown, and with their welfare states already pumping money into their economies as unemployment increases, are pursuing a different agenda. Blaming "Anglo-Saxon economics" and dodgy banking practices for the mess, they don't want more funds injected.
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  • They want to focus on tougher regulation of the financial community. They want the summit to start re-writing the global rulebook on capitalism.
  • The intriguing thing is that the economic crisis and Brown's lining up with Obama, who has proclaimed his belief in the enduring "special relationship" with Britain, has revived the Franco-German alliance which used to dominate EU affairs and which had seemed to wither under Merkel and Sarkozy. She doesn't like his touchy-feely ways, he finds her incremental style of politics frustrating. They had drifted apart, but they are back sharing a political tent.
  • The big question on the fiscal stimulus front is: What will China do?
  • Brown's hope is that China, worried about the safety of its money invested in the U.S., will be ready to commit extra funds to fighting the world recession. But if he agrees to do so, President Hu Jintao will surely exact a price.
  • If China comes up with the money to help, it will need assurances that it will in the future enjoy greater power within such multilateral institutions as the IMF and the World Bank. The U.S. and Europe, who have dominated the G-8, now have little option too but to accept a new world order.
  • Whatever the outcome in London it is unlikely now that the G-8 alone will ever carry the same sway. And not surprisingly, Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi, who hosts this summer's G-8 in Sardinia, has proposed that its gathering should be immediately followed by one of the G-20.
Argos Media

Venezuela: Chavez says he's willing to take Gitmo inmates - CNN.com - 0 views

edition.cnn.com/...index.html

Venezuela Hugo Chavez Guantanamo

shared by Argos Media on 03 Apr 09 - Cached
  • Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez says he would be willing to accept prisoners from the Guantanamo Bay detention center, which U.S. President Barack Obama has said he will close, the Venezuelan government said Thursday.
  • Chavez also said he hopes the United States will give Cuba back the land on which the naval base is located, the government said in a news release.
  • "We would not have any problem receiving a human being," the government release quoted Chavez as saying in an interview Wednesday with Al Jazeera TV.
Pedro Gonçalves

BBC News - Iran undecided on nuclear bomb - Israel military chief - 0 views

www.bbc.co.uk/...world-middle-east-17837768

Israel Iran Nuclear Weapons Nuclear Proliferation

shared by Pedro Gonçalves on 25 Apr 12 - No Cached
  • The head of the Israeli military has said he does not think Iran will develop nuclear weapons.
  • He added that Iran "is going step by step to the place where it will be able to decide whether to manufacture a nuclear bomb. It hasn't yet decided to go the extra mile". And speaking of the supreme leader he continued: "I don't think he will want to go the extra mile. I think the Iranian leadership is composed of very rational people."
  • these views appear to put him at odds with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. In an interview with CNN this week Mr Netanyahu said he would not want to bet "the security of the world on Iran's rational behaviour".
Pedro Gonçalves

Seeking Balance on the Mideast - NYTimes.com - 0 views

www.nytimes.com/...ng-balance-on-the-mideast.html

Israel Palestine US J Street

shared by Pedro Gonçalves on 05 Aug 11 - No Cached
  • A prominent Israeli politician, Isaac Herzog, has shrewdly suggested that Israel actually offer, with conditions, to vote in favor of Palestinian statehood at the United Nations.
  • Yet the American House of Representatives voted 407 to 6 to call on the Obama administration to use its diplomatic capital to try to block the initiative, while also threatening to cut the Palestinians’ funding if they proceeded to seek statehood.
  • Similarly, when Israel stormed into Gaza in 2008 to halt rocket attacks, more than 1,300 Gazans were killed, along with 13 Israelis, according to B’Tselem, a respected Israeli human rights group. As Gazan blood flowed, the House, by a vote of 390 to 5, hailed the invasion as “Israel’s right to defend itself.”
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  • Such Congressional tomfoolery bewilders our friends and fritters away our international capital. It also encourages the intransigence of the Israeli government of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and reduces the chance of a peace settlement.
  • American Jews have long trended liberal, and President Obama won 78 percent of the Jewish vote in 2008. Yet major Jewish organizations, like the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, or Aipac, embrace hawkish positions.
  • That’s because those Jews who vote and donate based on Israel are disproportionately conservative (the same is true of Christians who are most passionate about Israel issues). Ben-Ami argues that “the loudest eight percent” have hijacked Jewish groups to press for policies that represent neither the Jewish mainstream nor the best interests of Israel.
  • Some see this influence of Jewish organizations on foreign policy as unique and sinister, but Congress often surrenders to loudmouths who have particular foreign policy grievances and claim to have large groups behind them. Look at the way extremists in the Cuban-American community have insisted upon sanctions on Cuba that have helped sustain Fidel Castro’s rule.
  • “What happens as Israel continues to become more religious and conservative, more isolated internationally and less democratic domestically?” Ben-Ami writes. “What happens to the relationship between American Jews and Israel as the face of Israel shifts from that of Yitzhak Rabin and Shimon Peres to that of the national religious settlers and the ultra-Orthodox rabbis?”
  • When Glenn Beck becomes the best friend of Israel’s government and is invited to speak to the Knesset, what do liberals do? Some withdraw. Others join leftist groups like Jewish Voice for Peace, which supports divestment campaigns against companies profiting from the occupation of Palestinian territories.
  • (Whenever I write about Israel, I get accused of double standards because I don’t spill as much ink denouncing worse abuses by, say, Syria. I plead guilty. I demand more of Israel partly because my tax dollars supply arms and aid to Israel. I hold democratic allies like Israel to a higher standard — just as I do the U.S.)
Argos Media

World Watches for U.S. Shift on Mideast - NYTimes.com - 0 views

www.nytimes.com/...17prexy.html

US Israel Obama Rashid Khalidi Robert Malley Hamas Zbigniew Brzezinski Charles Freeman James Jones George Mitchell

shared by Argos Media on 17 May 09 - Cached
  • As a state senator in Chicago, Mr. Obama cultivated friendships with Arab-Americans, including Rashid Khalidi, a Palestinian-American scholar and a critic of Israel. Mr. Obama and Mr. Khalidi had many dinners together, friends said, in which they discussed Palestinian issues.
  • Mr. Obama’s predecessors, Presidents Bill Clinton and George W. Bush, came of age politically with the American-Israeli viewpoint of the Middle East conflict as their primary tutor, said Daniel Levy, a former Israeli peace negotiator. While each often expressed concern and empathy for the Palestinians — with Mr. Clinton, in particular, pushing hard for Middle East peace during the last months of his presidency — their early perspectives were shaped more by Israelis and American Jews than by Muslims, Mr. Levy said. “I think that Barack Obama, on this issue as well as many other issues, brings a fresh approach and a fresh background,” Mr. Levy said. “He’s certainly familiar with Israel’s concerns and with the closeness of the Israel-America relationship and with that narrative. But what I think might be different is a familiarity that I think President Obama almost certainly has with where the Palestinian grievance narrative is coming from.”
  • None of this necessarily means that Mr. Obama will chart a course that is different from his predecessors’. During the campaign he struck a position on Israel that was indistinguishable from those of his rivals Hillary Rodham Clinton and John McCain, going so far as to say in 2008 that he supported Jerusalem as the undivided capital of Israel. (He later attributed that statement to “poor phrasing in the speech,” telling Fareed Zakaria of CNN that he meant to say he did not want barbed wire running through Jerusalem.)
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  • Last year, for instance, Mr. Obama was quick to distance himself from Robert Malley, an informal adviser to his campaign, when reports arose that Mr. Malley, a special adviser to Mr. Clinton, had had direct contacts with Hamas, the militant Islamist organization that won the Palestinian legislative elections in 2006 and that controls Gaza. Similarly, he distanced himself from Zbigniew Brzezinski, a former national security adviser who was often critical of Israel, after complaints from some pro-Israel groups.
  • And Mr. Obama offered no public support for the appointment of Mr. Freeman to a top intelligence post in March after several congressional representatives and lobbyists complained that Mr. Freeman had an irrational hatred of Israel. Mr. Freeman angrily withdrew from consideration for the post.
  • But Mr. Freeman, in a telephone interview last week, said he still believed that Mr. Obama would go where his predecessors did not on Israel. Mr. Obama’s appointment of Gen. James L. Jones as his national security adviser — a man who has worked with Palestinians and Israelis to try to open up movement for Palestinians on the ground and who has sometimes irritated Israeli military officials — could foreshadow friction between the Obama administration and the Israeli government, several Middle East experts said.
  • The same is true for the appointment of George J. Mitchell as Mr. Obama’s special envoy to the region; Mr. Mitchell, who helped negotiate peace in Northern Ireland, has already hinted privately that the administration may have to look for ways to include Hamas, in some fashion, in a unity Palestinian government.
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

ANALYSIS / Can Iran ever be freed from its religious regime? - Haaretz - Israel News - 0 views

www.haaretz.com/...1094648.html

Israel Iran Iran Elections 2009 Intelligence

shared by Pedro Gonçalves on 22 Jun 09 - Cached
  • Israel - which hopefully is refraining from excessive meddling in the events - has something to gain from each of the scenarios. If conservative rule prevails it will be at the price of a brutal suppression of the protests. The international community, which over the years has developed a disturbing apathy toward Iranian threats to annihilate Israel, is much more concerned about the crushing of democracy in Tehran. This trampling of democracy may bring about a much harsher approach by the United States and European Union if the dialogue over the Iranian nuclear program fails and the sanctions are intensified.
  • The limits of intelligence. It's not much of a surprise, but what's happening in Iran, from the election results to the enormous protests, is a stark reminder of the limits of intelligence. We might even assume that the CIA is getting more information on the events from CNN (constrained as it is by the Iranian authorities), the blogosphere and Twitter, than from its agents deep in the land of the ayatollahs. Western intelligence has been focusing on the nuclear program a lot more than the Iranian regime's stability.
  • One of this week's big questions was why intelligence organizations didn't predict what was about to happen. But the events in Iran have taken the world by surprise, and one wonders if even Iranian intelligence had any idea what was about to unfold. Unlike counting tanks and centrifuges, less "physical" processes like leaders' intentions, election results and nations' willingness to rebel against oppressive regimes are much more difficult to predict.
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.
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