Bush calls on Middle East nations to, “Empower women, release political prisoners, foster free trade, repudiate terrorism and defend freedoms of speech and religion.”
Seeing as how Bush is doing his best go the other way in the US, except possibly for the rich pig banker free trade stuff, it seems just a big hypocritical.
At least that’s how Bush just described it in front of the Knesset in his speech, because Gates believes that negotiations with Iran are a good thing, because by engaging them, we can derive the leverage necessary to prevent things like nuclear weapons.
North Korea has 18,822 pages in 314 volumes regarding its nuclear program, and for once the US envoy is saying something positive.
The largest stumbling block in negotiations with the DPRK has not been the paranoid and secretive rulers in North Korea. It has been the batsh&% insane folks at the top of the Bush administration, who think that peacefully settling disputes is capitulation.
Theoretically, the runoff for president of Zimbabwe is supposed to be held within 21 days of the announcement of results, but the electoral commission is saying that it will not be able to conduct an election in that time frame.
I’m not sure how much is organizational incompetence, and how much is the desire of ZANU-PF to have time to use the state security forces to intimidate the opposition.
The MDC has demanded outside observers/peacekeepers for the elections, and Mugabe’s government has not been receptive, to put it mildly.
They are now demanding an end to economic sanctions before allowing western observers in.
It looks like Henry Paulson and other members of the Bush administration are finally beginning to realize that the falling dollar may be a problem:
The Bush administration is leading the international effort to put a floor under the falling dollar.
The conventional wisdom holds that the Europeans, worried that the mighty euro is making their companies less competitive, prodded Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson and other group of seven finance ministers last month into signaling their joint disapproval of the dollar’s plunge. Canada has also been troubled by the strong loonie.
But a senior U.S. Treasury official says that the move actually came at the behest of the American side.
The problem with the dollar is not a speculative artifact, it is a result of two things, that the dollar is objectively overvalued when one looks at the fundamentals of the American economy, and that the Euro has become a reasonable alternative as a reserve currency.
The dollar will continue to trend down until some sort of equilibrium is reached in the best case.
More likely, we will see a stampede of the speculators and a significant downside overshoot.
The Pentagon assigned Major General Jay W. Hood as the senior military officer in Pakistan, where he would be crucial to fighting al Queida.
The problem was that because of his role as commandant at the Guantanamo gulag, the Pakistanis did not want him there.
When Bush leaves office, I think that there will be a slew of senior officers who will be told to retire because of their involvement in torture. They are simply too toxic to remain militarily useful.
Hood is just the tip of the iceberg.
This is my first post on the subject, because I have very little to say. I am not a student of the region, and what can you say about a tragedy like the cyclone and its associates storm surge.
This story, where authorities in Myanmar seized aid supplies from the UN, puzzles me.
I am aware of the paranoia and xenophobia of the military dictatorship there, but I’m not clear why they would not allow in aid workers in a time like this.
Basically, it comes down to the Poles wanting money, billions of dollar, to upgrade their defense forces as a condition for hosting the missile base.
One wonders how much of this is plain old extortion, and how much is the Poles trying to avoid signing the deal while Bush is still in office.
In any case, Congress has voted $10 million to the Poles, and they want around $10 billion.
There are now statements from representatives in the breakaway Georgian province of Abkhazia that Russia will be taking over full control of military operations, and the Georgian foreign minister is claiming that they are near to war with Russia.
Again, let me say that much of this* is a direct result of NATO’s expansion eastward, in violation of agreements, which has fed Russia’s long tradition of xenophobia and paranoia, and hence has led to these actions.
*Though there is an aspect of Russia attempting to create a sphere of influence in the area too.
One of the consequences of the bellicose and incompetent foreign policy put forth by Bush and His Evil Minions™ is the increasingly paranoid and militaristic foreign policy of Russia.
Perhaps the most extreme example is the return of missiles and tanks to the May Day (Victory Day) parade.
I have concluded that this is not a result of incompetence on the part of Republicans. This is actually one of their goals, because by restarting the cold war, they can create a climate that benefits themselves politically.
Let’s see, we add another carrier to the gulf to threaten Iran, call them the “Axis of Evil”, accuse them of supporting the Mahdi army and fomenting civil war in Iraq, and we should be surprised that when we suggest negotiations about how to make Iraq a safer place for Americans that they tell us to go Cheney ourselves.
It will take a generation to undo the damage done by Bush and His Evil Minions&trade.
4 Marines died today, and Hiro Ibrahim Ahmed, the wife of President Jalal Talabani was the target of an assassination attempt, a roadside bomb targeting her as she went to cultural festival.
Note that this was in Baghdad, not Kurdistan.
I would also point to this story describing a pretty massive buildup at the Al Kut air base, which is just 35 miles from the Iranian border.
I can’t see this as anything but a deliberate provocation, or a prelude to an attack on Iran.
I think that Bush may attack Iran out of a petulant need to leave something else on his successor’s plate.
They will holding talks with the Chinese.
Note that talks have been held before, with no positive results.
I’m shocked. It’s the first time I’ve seen some good come from the Olympics.
And to no one’s surprise, they are saying that there has to be a runoff between Tsvangirai and Mugabe.
No surprise here. The amount of vote fraud for Mugabe to win was simply not possible, but the amount to take it to a runoff, not so much a problem. 47.9% Tsvangirai, 43.2% Mugabe.
The opposition is saying, with decent justification, that they won outright, and are threatening not to participate in the runoff, which would give Mugabe exactly what he wants.
I would note that while Mugabe is promising to respect the results of a runoff, the fact is that a fair election and a fair campaign are simply not possible while Mugabe and ZANU-PF continue their campaign of terror and intimidation against the MDC.
UN voices reluctance to act on Zimbabwe – International Herald Tribune
And in the same old, same old category, South Africa is the major stumbling block to the security council doing anything.
I expect this to continue until Thabo Mbeki leaves office. He’s a bigger cheerleader for Mugabe than GW Bush was for the Yale Baseball team.
Nope, we’re not talking about the southern state, but the birthplace of Josef Stalin.
We are having problems. It appears that NATO is warning Russia not to interfere in Georgia, and Russia is warning NATO not to interfere in Georgia.
Fundamentally, this is an outgrowth of NATO’s disastrous policy of expansion, which was driven by post Berlin Wall euphoria and the lobbying of the various national defense industries, who saw a move to NATO as being a way to sell some expensive toys to the former Warsaw Pact nations.
Before the fall of the USSR, one of the conditions that Russia placed on the reunification of Germany was that NATO expand no further eastward. The fact that it has, and that the countries added no use for NATO but as a sword against Russia, contributes to the current bellicose and paranoid nature of Russian foreign relations.
And Fareed Zakaria is too much of a coward to say so
In his speech McCain proposed that the United States expel Russia from the G8, the group of advanced industrial countries. Moscow was included in this body in the 1990s to recognize and reward it for peacefully ending the cold war on Western terms, dismantling the Soviet empire and withdrawing from large chunks of the old Russian Empire as well. McCain also proposed that the United States should expand the G8 by taking in India and Brazil—but pointedly excluded China from the councils of power.
Let’s be clear on this one of the reasons that Russia is increasingly hostile to the West is that we have repeatedly lied to them.
We promised no Western expansion of NATO. We lied.
And then there was that whole privatization thing, which was sold as a way to prosperity for the whole society, as opposed to a campaign of rape and pillage that would have made Genghis Khan proud.
Now he’s talking about breaking another promise.
McCain is an idiot who has spent his life poking people in the eye, and unsuited to be president.
Well, China is now saying that it will hold talks with representatives of the Dalai Lama, and I just could not resist the pun.
The Dalai Lama has welcomed the opportunity to talk, though state run media seems to indicate that the Chinese are not quite as eager to talk as they are eager to be thought of as willing to talk, with the standard “running dog” screeds continuing.
My guess is that in the end, nothing meaningful happens, and that the Chinese claim that the Tibetans were unreasonable.
Well, it looks like China has backed down, and the An Yue Jiang will be heading back without having offloaded its weapons shipment to Mugabe and his goons.
The article also notes that Jendayi Frazer, the assistant secretary of state for African affairs is saying that Tsvangirai was the “clear victor” in the race, but given the credibility of the US foreign policy apparatus, this means next to nothing for the principals or the surrounding government.
The recount continues apace with ZANU-PF being awarded one MCD seat so far. If they flip 9, and I think that the electoral commission is doing their level best to make that happen, then the MDC loses its parliamentary majority.
We are starting to see proposals for a unity government being floated, but I see that foundering on the shoals of control of the state security apparatus, which Mugabe will not give up.
Jacob Zuma is one of the people floating this, but he is also ratcheting up the rhetoric with regards to Mugabe and the ZANU-PF too.
I’m not sure how much of this is internal ANC politics, truth be told.
Over the past month, I appear to have gotten about 10 visits from South Africa and Zimbabwe, so if someone has a local perspective, I would appreciate it.
Every time that I think that the Bush Administration can’t get any more self serving venal and incompetent, they rais the bar.
This time, it’s the worst National Security Adviser ever, shortly to be the worst Secretary of State ever, Condoleeza Rice, who has just basically called Muqtada al-Sadr a c@cks#cker.
Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice mocked anti-American cleric Muqtada al-Sadr as a coward on Sunday, hours after the radical leader threatened to declare war unless U.S. and Iraqi forces end a military crackdown on his followers.
Rice, in the Iraqi capital to tout security gains and what she calls an emerging political consensus, said al-Sadr is content to issue threats and edicts from the safety of Iran, where he is studying. Al-Sadr heads an unruly militia that was the main target of an Iraqi government assault in the oil-rich city of Basra last month, and his future role as a spoiler is an open question.
“I know he’s sitting in Iran,” Rice said dismissively, when asked about al-Sadr’s latest threat to lift a self-imposed cease-fire with government and U.S. forces. “I guess it’s all-out war for anybody but him,” Rice said. “I guess that’s the message; his followers can go too their deaths and he’s in Iran.”
This from a woman unwilling to announce her visits to Iraq in advance, who spends her whole time in a heavily fortified walled city, and has something like 1000 soldiers, and an equal number of mercenaries protecting her.
Un f#$@ing believable.
I believe that the Ken Silverstein’s analysis in Harpers Magazine, that “
The only way to reach a political settlement in the Middle East is for an American president to pressure Israel to make concessions.
” is deeply wrong.
Negotiations are an artifact of power, both current and future, and frequently neither side is completely sure of their power, particularly in the future.
By providing the realistic possibility of a deus ex machina, the intervention of the US, EU, and Russia actually make realistic negotiation less likely, because at their core, negotiations are an artifact of power, and by adding an external pressures, you distort the positions held by the principals.
One need only look at the “mediation” performed by Thabo Mbeki in Zimbabwe to see the downside of this.
Because the Palestinians and Israelis expect an external intervention, any, “last best offer” is likely to demand far more than they would otherwise, because both sides expect that a “road map” will favor the Palestinians, so an Israeli keep concessions in their back pocket, because they expect that they will be pushed beyond their final offer, and the Palestinians keep concessions in their back pocket for the same reason.
Certainly, the US (and EU, and Russia) can in some manner or another take upon themselves to act as guarantors of a final status agreement (a peacekeeping/border force, economic aid for an eventual Palestinian state, etc.), but when you have two negotiating that have an expectation of significant external intervention, it interferes with the basic function of negotiations.
I would also note that Carter’s trip comes exactly the wrong time. With 9 months left in the Bush regime, and the rest of the world considering Bush and His Evil Minions™ both disastrously incompetent and bellicose, nothing is going to move, because both sides in this dispute cannot see his successor as being any worse.