.gif) Les Cohortes Célestes ont le devoir et le regret de vous informer que Libres Propos est entré en sommeil. Ce forum convivial et sympathique reste uniquement accessible en lecture seule. Prenez plaisir à le consulter.
Merci de votre compréhension. |
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| | Nouvelles en Langue Anglaise |  |
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+6Charly Shansaa Alice jam EddieCochran Biloulou 10 participants | |
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| | Sujet: Re: Nouvelles en Langue Anglaise 6/7/2009, 08:44 | |
| Rappel du premier message :Bonjour Biloulou  Il me semblait que cette nouvelle plairait! |
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| | Sujet: 1399 - 24/9/2009, 10:37 | |
| Erreur de manipulation en 1395, je pensais ouvrir un nouveau message, j'ai edite l'ancien. Pas grave. |
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| | Sujet: 1400 - 24/9/2009, 11:06 | |
| September 24, 2009 Obama's Time Warp: The U.S. Is Still the Bad GuyBy Michael BaroneIn the early 1980s, while planning a vacation in Latin America, I went to bookstores to look for histories of the region. All I could find were Marxist tracts arguing that "the people" were exploited by greedy corporations and military dictators, all propped up by the United States. - Spoiler:
Available literature on Latin America today includes much more sensible accounts. But some people, including Barack Obama, whose college thesis written in those years has never been made public, seem stuck in a time warp in which the United States is the bad guy.
That, at least, seems to explain Obama's latest foreign policy moves, starting with Honduras, where the president was ousted by the country's supreme court for violating a constitutional provision that forbids any moves to seek a second term. (Other Latin countries, notably Mexico, have similar constitutional prohibitions.)
The White House immediately interpreted this as a military coup and decided that, this time, the United States would come out on the side of "the people." In fact, we find ourselves siding with a friend of the Iranian mullahs, Hugo Chavez, who swept aside similar constitutional limits in Venezuela, and opposing the elected congress, courts and civil society of Honduras.
Honduras is not the only or, sad to say, most important example of where this administration has come out on the side of our enemies and against our friends. Israel has been told that it must stop all settlement construction, even the adding of spare rooms for newly arrived infants, while nothing is asked of the Palestinians.
In Eastern Europe, Obama acknowledged last spring the importance of placing missile defense installations in our NATO allies Poland and the Czech Republic, then reversed himself this month and cancelled the program.
The president of Poland, which has sent brave and effective troops to Iraq and Afghanistan, was given an after-midnight phone call, which he declined to take. The president of Russia, which has refused to aid our efforts to stop the Iranian nuclear weapons programs, expressed his delight -- and pointedly made no concessions in return.
Neither has Russia made concessions in return for Obama's announced plans to cut back sharply on our nuclear stockpiles. The idea behind this is either that others will make similar cutbacks out of gratitude for our example or, more worryingly, that the possession of so many nukes by the United States is somehow a bad thing.
Then there is Afghanistan. In March, Obama said we must persevere in the struggle there to protect ourselves against terrorists and installed a new general, ahead of schedule, to come up with a counterinsurgency strategy. That general delivered a report on Aug. 30 strongly implying that we must increase troops commitments. But as of Sept. 21, Obama has held only one meeting on the subject, according to The Washington Post's Bob Woodward.
On the Sunday talk shows a day before Woodward's story appeared, Obama said he had not yet decided on a strategy in Afghanistan. "I'm certainly not one who believes in indefinite occupations of other countries," he said on NBC's "Meet the Press," as if the U.S. were occupying a country against the wishes of most of its inhabitants to the detriment of "the people." Shades of those early 1980s Marxist Latin America tracts.
The reaction to the most recent moves has been harsh, and from unexpected quarters. Leslie Gelb, former head of the Council on Foreign Relations, and the editorial writers of The Washington Post have expressed astonishment at Obama's apparent switch on Afghanistan. Edward Lucas, former Eastern European correspondent for The Economist, wrote in the Telegraph of London: "The picture emerging from the White House is a disturbing one, of timidity, clumsiness and short-term calculation. Some say he is the weakest president since Jimmy Carter."
The influential blogger Mickey Kaus argues that "anti-Obama anger" is caused not by his race, but "because he's a relative newcomer, as presidents go -- an unknown quantity, an enigma, with a short track record and patches of that record left fuzzy."
But on foreign policy as his record emerges -- as he reverses himself on missile defense and perhaps on Afghanistan -- his motivating principle seems rooted in an analysis, common in his formative university years, that America has too often been on the side of the bad guys. The response has been to disrespect those who have been our friends and to bow to our enemies.
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| | Sujet: 1401 - 24/9/2009, 11:18 | |
| Evidemment, pour le Guardian, le discours aurait pu aller plus loin! Obama the un-Bush woos the UNAn admirable and bold speech to the UN general assembly – but Obama had the political capital to go much furtherBarack Obama's four-point agenda in his speech to the UN general assembly today was unobjectionable – well, to most people – and laudable: vast nuclear arms reductions, promotion of peace in the Middle East and elsewhere, new efforts on climate change and common resolve on global economic problems.- Spoiler:
Fair enough. But the four "pillars", as he called them, weren't really his strongest selling points. To a UN crowd, those were two: the fact of his not being George Bush, and the fact of his race.
In politics, leaders' moral authority is often derived not as much from what they say or do, but simply by virtue of who they are. That's especially true here. Whatever moral authority Obama commands in Turtle Bay, as we call the Manhattan district where the UN sits, stems less from any fancy words than from those two fundamental facts.
The world desperately wants an American leader to be the un-Bush. And the world, more than 80% non-white, would adore and perhaps even respond to an American president who said in essence: look, people, if the United States of America can elect a guy like me as its president, then some of you ought to be able to put your squabbles and ancient hatreds aside too.
Obama played both of these notes, but he played them sotto voce. Near the beginning of the speech, he referenced the fact that he "took office at a time when many around the world had come to view America with skepticism and distrust", but he certainly took no shots at Bush and even said that part of the distrust stemmed from "misperceptions and misinformation" about the US. And, towards the end, he said: "As an African-American, I will never forget that I would not be here today without the steady pursuit of a more perfect union in my country". But he pulled up short of using the fact as a prod to nations whose unions are more imperfect that America's (of which, in fact, there are still many).
In other words, he could have pitched the speech a bit more to a worldwide audience. But all politics is local. And here at home, Obama sits gingerly just above 50% popularity in the polls.
Everything right now is about healthcare reform, whose success or failure will frame the rest of his tenure (and perhaps determine whether it lasts three or seven more years). And he faces a right-wing attack machine that, as he well knew, would comb his text for evidence of his alleged secret desire for one-world government. So it's understandable if he felt he needed to proceed with a dose of caution.
But only a dose, to be fair – the four pillars are the right ones, and given that the American right will find plenty of fodder in them for its arguments, they were reasonably bold.
The section on the Middle East was the most interesting. A speech like this always has many authors – different branches of the government competing to get this or that problem mentioned, this or that phrase stricken. It will not pass unnoticed, in America and in the region, that his language against Israeli settlements was a tick stronger than his language urging the Palestinians to end incitement. I'd love to have been a fly on the wall in Hillary Clinton's office when she first read that sentence.
Obama said he was aware of "the expectations that accompany my presidency around the world".
They are high, and there is still reason for them to be so. Because of who he is, Obama has reserves of global political capital. But as the hard work begins, on climate change or the Middle East or what have you, he'll need to use it more forcefully than he did on Wednesday.
La question reste et demeure, Barack Obama est-il le president des Etats Unis ou le president du monde? S'il obtient supposement 98% des voix a l'etranger, ce sont tout de meme les Americains qui decideront en 2012, enfin j'espere...  |
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| | Sujet: 1402 - 24/9/2009, 12:11 | |
| Obama Makes Gains at U.N. on Iran and Proliferation By HELENE COOPERPublished: September 23, 2009 UNITED NATIONS — President Obama, in his first visit to the opening of the United NationsGeneral Assembly, made progress Wednesday on two key issues, wringing a concession from Russia to consider tough new sanctions against Iran and securing support from Moscow and Beijing for a Security Council resolution to curb nuclear weapons. - Spoiler:
The successes came as Mr. Obama told leaders that the United States intended to begin a new era of engagement with the world, in a sweeping address to the General Assembly in which he sought to clearly delineate differences between himself and the administration of President George W. Bush.
One of the fruits of those differences — although White House officials were loath to acknowledge any quid pro quo publicly — emerged during Mr. Obama’s meeting on Wednesday afternoon with President Dmitri A. Medvedev of Russia, the first between the two since Mr. Obama decided to replace Mr. Bush’s missile defense program in Eastern Europe with a version less threatening to Moscow.
With a beaming Mr. Obama standing next to him, Mr. Medvedev signaled for the first time that Russia would be amenable to longstanding American requests to toughen sanctions against Iran significantly if, as expected, nuclear talks scheduled for next month failed to make progress.
“I told His Excellency Mr. President that we believe we need to help Iran to take a right decision,” Mr. Medvedev said, adding that “sanctions rarely lead to productive results, but in some cases, sanctions are inevitable.”
White House officials could barely hide their glee. “I couldn’t have said it any better myself,” a delighted Michael McFaul, Mr. Obama’s senior adviser for democracy and Russia, told reporters after the meeting. He insisted nonetheless that the administration had not tried to buy Russia’s cooperation with its decision to scrap the missile shield in Europe in favor of a reconfigured system.
Privately, several administration officials did acknowledge that missile defense might have had something to do with Moscow’s newfound verbal cooperation on the Iran sanctions issue.
Whether Mr. Medvedev’s words translate into strong action once the issue moves back to the Security Council remains to be seen. American officials have been disappointed before by Moscow’s distaste for tough sanctions, and Prime Minister Vladimir V. Putin seemed to cast doubt on the need for stronger sanctions just last week. But Mr. Obama also got another boost from Russia, as well as from China, when they agreed to support strengthening the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty in a Security Council session scheduled for Thursday. *1
In an effort to lay the groundwork for toughening the treaty, the Obama administration circulated drafts of a resolution that “urges” countries to put conditions on their nuclear exports, so that international inspectors would be authorized to continue monitoring the use of some nuclear materials even if a country withdrew from the nonproliferation pact. That is a rare occurrence, but North Korea declared it was withdrawing in 2003, and inspectors were thrown out.
The Obama administration hailed the pending resolution as a significant step forward. But it would not be binding, and would become so only if the Security Council required countries to make their nuclear exports subject to such restrictions. Many countries balked at that requirement, an indication of how difficult it may prove to toughen the treaty itself when it is up for review next year.
Mr. Obama will preside over the Security Council meeting on Thursday, and is expected to call for a vote on the draft resolution. White House officials said they expected the measure to pass unanimously.
During his address to the General Assembly, Mr. Obama sought to present a kinder, gentler America willing to make nice with the world. He suggested that the United States would no longer follow the go-it-alone policies that many United Nations members complained isolated the Bush administration from the organization.
“We have re-engaged the United Nations,” Mr. Obama said, to cheers from world leaders and delegates in the cavernous hall. “We have paid our bills” — a direct reference to the former administration’s practice of withholding some payment due the world body while it pressed for changes there.
But even as Mr. Obama sought to signal a different tone, it was clear that old, entrenched issues would remain, including Iran’s nuclear ambitions and a Middle East peace process. And while much of his language was different and more conciliatory, the backbone of American policy on some issues remained similar to the Bush administration’s.
As Mr. Bush used to do before him, for instance, Mr. Obama singled out Iran and North Korea, which he said “threaten to take us down this dangerous slope.”
“I am committed to diplomacy that opens a path to greater prosperity and a more secure peace for both nations if they live up to their obligations,” Mr. Obama said.
But, he added, “if the governments of Iran and North Korea choose to ignore international standards; if they put the pursuit of nuclear weapons ahead of regional stability and the security and opportunity of their own people; if they are oblivious to the dangers of escalating nuclear arms races in both East Asia and the Middle East — then they must be held accountable.”
As he spoke, President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad of Iran sat in the fifth row, showing no reaction.
But a glittering array of world leaders sat in the hall for Mr. Obama’s speech, which was often
interrupted by applause and the flashes of cameras, including from some delegates.
Mr. Obama said he planned to work toward a comprehensive peace deal between Israel and its Arab neighbors. He indicated again that he was impatient with the slow pace of work on interim measures like a settlement freeze. He called on Israeli and Palestinian leaders to address the tough “final status” issues that had bedeviled peace negotiators since 1979.
“The goal is clear,” he said, “two states living side by side in peace and security.” *2
But the difficulty of achieving that goal was also on full display on Wednesday, one day after Mr. Obama held meetings with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel and the Palestinian president, Mahmoud Abbas, and admonished them to meet in person and negotiate a peace deal.
The two Middle Eastern leaders and their spokesmen spent much of the day Wednesday explaining why that could not happen soon.
In an interview on NBC, Mr. Netanyahu called Israeli settlements “bedroom suburbs” of Jerusalem and suggested Israel would not withdraw from all the territory it occupied after the 1967 Middle East war. Meanwhile, the chief Palestinian negotiator, Saeb Erekat, told The Associated Press that the two sides will “continue dealing with the Americans until we reach the agreement that will enable us to relaunch the negotiations.”
David E. Sanger contributed reporting from Boston.
*1 Leur interet de toutes facons *2 une pensee pour Biloulou  |
| | | | EddieCochran
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Date d'inscription : 03/11/2008
| | Sujet: Re: Nouvelles en Langue Anglaise 24/9/2009, 12:16 | |
| 1403 - - Consultant l'échelle de Richter des séismes politiques, très secouée la courageuse Sylvette a écrit:
- La question reste et demeure, Barack Obama est-il le president des Etats Unis ou le president du monde?
Faites-moi crédit d'avoir dès son avènement affublé l'élu de la Nation étatsunienne du sobriquet de El Mundial Presidente. C'est en général l'écot que payent les grandes personnalités politiques à l'écho universel de leur popularité extérieure. Regardez Churchill et De Gaulle avaient fini par être plus admirés et respectés hors des frontières de leur pays respectif. Chez eux les électeurs autochtones les ont virés tous les deux. Les citoyens sont ingrats envers leurs grandes figures. A sembler qu'ils s'accommoderaient facilement de gens plutôt ternes et diaphanes. | |
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| | Sujet: 1404 - 24/9/2009, 12:31 | |
| En fait, sauf erreur, j'utilisais NP (Notre President) en reference non au fait qu'il fut le president du monde entier, mais a celui que les soit-disants 98% de soutien mondial dont Barack Obama aurait beneficie aupres de non-electeurs hors US selon les media, aient pese lourd sur la decision de beaucoup d'Americains. Il est difficile d'accepter d'etre malaime et maltraite, certains ne le supportent pas.
Pres. Bush se mettrait plus aisement dans la categorie de Churchill que le president que nous avons actuellement pret a tout donner pour etre adule.
Mais la encore, c'est une question d'appreciation et certainement de conviction politique. |
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| | Sujet: 1405 - 24/9/2009, 16:58 | |
| Elementary School Students Reportedly Taught Songs Praising President Obama
Nearly 20 young children are captured in an online video as they sing songs that overflow with campaign slogans and praise for "Barack Hussein Obama," as they repeatedly chant the president's name and celebrate his accomplishments.
FOXNews.com
Thursday, September 24, 2009
A video posted on YouTube appears to show a New Jersey elementary school class being taught to sing praises of the "great accomplishments" of President Obama.
The video shows nearly 20 young children taught a song overflowing with campaign slogans and praise for "Barack Hussein Obama," repeatedly chanting the president's name and celebrating his accomplishments, including his "great plans" to "make this country's economy No. 1 again.
The video identifies the kids as students at the B. Bernice Young Elementary School in Burlington, N.J., with taping taking place last June.
The song quotes directly from the spiritual "Jesus Loves the Little Children," though Jesus' name is replaced with Obama's: "He said red, yellow, black or white/All are equal in his sight. Barack Hussein Obama."
Among other lyrics, touting a fair-pay bill Obama signed in January: "He said we must be clear today/Equal work means equal pay."
Click here to see the video.
The author of the full lyrics is unknown, but a woman -- possibly a teacher -- can be heard in the beginning of the video correcting and helping a student who has forgotten the words.
The office of the superintendent of Burlington Township School District did not provide comment or confirmation to FOXNews.com that the songs were recorded at B. Bernice Young Elementary when contacted by phone Thursday.
The video was originally posted Sept. 6, two days before Obama made an address to the nation's schoolchildren in which he praised the American education system as the best in the world and urged students to stay in school.
"At the end of the day, we can have the most dedicated teachers, the most supportive parents, and the best schools in the world," Obama said. |
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| | Sujet: 1406 - 24/9/2009, 19:58 | |
| Elise Amendola/Associated PressFormer Kennedy Aide Will Fill His SeatBy ABBY GOODNOUGH and CARL HULSE [color=#a81817]31 minutes ago Gov. Deval Patrick, right, on Thursday appointed Paul G. Kirk Jr., a longtime confidant of the late Senator Edward M. Kennedy. Senator John Kerry is pictured at left. |
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| | Sujet: Re: Nouvelles en Langue Anglaise 25/9/2009, 10:18 | |
| Breaking News Officials: Iran Reveals Existence of Second Uranium Enrichment Plant |
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| | Sujet: Re: Nouvelles en Langue Anglaise 25/9/2009, 10:26 | |
| Donc les "grands" acceptent de limiter et meme eventuellement de se defaire des armes nucleaires et les autres, non...
Meme situation, lorsque des politiques font interdire la vente des armes a feu: Seuls les bandits en possedent. |
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| | Sujet: 1410 - 25/9/2009, 12:00 | |
| Toujours au sujet des chants glorieux a l'honneur de Barack Obama Ce sondage est NON-SCIENTIFIQUE et de FOX News! mais bon  Should Schoolchildren Be Taught Obama Songs?
A video that shows young kids at a school in Burlington, N.J., being taught to sing the praises of President Obama has surfaced on YouTube. Do you think it's appropriate for students at a public school to be taught to sing songs of praise about Obama, or any sitting president?
(La video plus haut en 1405) =====En meme temps, FLOTUS (pour rappel: la First Lady of the United States) a promis a une ecole de venir parler a leur fete de fin d'annee si les eleves travaillaient un total de 100 000 heures pour la communaute, rien de mal en soi. ... The Young America's Foundation is a conservative group on campus that has asked that their hours be deducted from the 100,000. They do not want to promote another liberal speaker on campus, said Joe Naron, a member of the Young America's Foundation....Pour les fans de notre FLOTUS, il suffit de se rendre sur une page du HuffingtonPost. Aucun culte de la personnalite, la non plus. |
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| | Sujet: 1411 - Green Al 25/9/2009, 13:25 | |
| SEPTEMBER 25, 2009 Gore-Backed Car Firm Gets Large U.S. Loan By JOSH MITCHELL and STEPHEN POWER WASHINGTON -- A tiny car company backed by former Vice President Al Gore has just gotten a $529 million U.S. government loan to help build a hybrid sports car in Finland that will sell for about $89,000. - Spoiler:
The award this week to California startup Fisker Automotive Inc. follows a $465 million government loan to Tesla Motors Inc., purveyors of a $109,000 British-built electric Roadster. Tesla, like Fisker, is a California startup focusing on high-end hybrids, with a number of celebrity endorsements that is backed by investors that have contributed to Democratic campaigns.
The awards to Fisker and Tesla have prompted concern from companies that have had their bids for loans rejected, and criticism from groups that question why vehicles aimed at the wealthiest customers are getting loans subsidized by taxpayers.
"This is not for average Americans," said Leslie Paige, a spokeswoman for Citizens Against Government Waste, an anti-tax group in Washington. "This is for people to put something in their driveway that is a conversation piece. It's status symbol thing."
DOE officials spent months working with Fisker on its application, touring its Irvine, Calif., and Pontiac, Mich., facilities and test-driving prototypes.
Matt Rogers, who oversees the department's loan programs as a senior adviser to Energy Secretary Steven Chu, said Fisker was awarded the loan after a "detailed technical review" that concluded the company could eventually deliver a highly fuel-efficient hybrid car to a mass audience. Fisker said most of its DOE loan will be used to finance U.S. production of a $40,000 family sedan that has yet to be designed.
"It's the ability to drive significant change in fuel economy across a large market segment" that swayed the department to approve the Fisker loan, Mr. Rogers said. "We got quite excited."
Henrik Fisker, who designed cars for BMW, Aston Martin and Tesla before starting his Fisker Automotive in 2007, said his goal is to build the first plug-in electric hybrids that won't sacrifice the luxury, performance and looks of traditional gas-powered luxury cars.
The Karma will target an exclusive audience -- Gore was one of the first to sign up for one. Mr. Fisker says all new technology starts out being expensive. He pointed to flat-screen televisions that once started at $25,000 but are now affordable to the mass market.
The four-door Karma, powered by a lithium-ion battery, will be able to run solely on electric power for 50 miles, and will achieve an average fuel economy of 100 mpg over the span of a year, the company says. Production is scheduled to start in December, with about 15,000 vehicles a year expected to hit the U.S. market starting next June.
Many of the 1,500 people who have made deposits on the Karma are former BMW and Mercedes owners who want an environmentally friendly car without sacrificing luxury, Mr. Fisker said.
He said he pitched the Karma to Mr. Gore at an event hosted by KPCB last year, and that the former vice president almost immediately submitted a down payment for the car.
Kalee Kreider, a spokeswoman for Mr. Gore, confirmed that the former vice president backs Fisker and purchased a Karma. "He believes that a global shift of the automobile fleet toward electric vehicles, accompanying a shift toward renewable-energy generation, represents an important part of a sensible strategy for solving the climate crisis," she said in a statement.
Fisker's top investors include Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers, a veteran Silicon Valley venture-capital firm of which Gore is a partner. Employees of KPCB have donated more than $2.2 million to political campaigns, mostly for Democrats, including President Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton, according to the Center for Responsive Politics, a nonpartisan group that tracks campaign contributions.
Officials at Kleiner Perkins didn't return requests for comment.
Asked whether Mr. Gore had any influence on Fisker's application, the DOE's Rogers said, "None at all."
"This is a very attractive, very across-party-lines kind of vehicle," Mr. Rogers said. "All of the detailed due diligence [was] done by independent review teams."
Other Fisker investors include Eco-Drive (Capital) Partners LLC, an investment consortium, and Qatar Investment Authority, a state-run investor based in Qatar.
Fisker's government loans will come from a $25 billion program established by Congress in 2007 to help auto makers invest in the technology to meet a new congressional mandate to improve fuel efficiency. In June, the DOE awarded the first $8 billion from the program to Ford Motor Co., Nissan Motor Co., and Tesla, which are all developing electric cars.
Some companies that have been turned down for loans from DOE say they did not get much feedback from the department about their applications. O. John Coletti, president of EcoMotors International of Troy, Mich., said his company applied for a $20 million loan from the agency last December, and last month got a one-page rejection letter from the loan program's director, Lachlan Seward. EcoMotors' lead investor is Vinod Khosla, himself a former Kleiner Perkins partner and a longtime campaign contributor to Republicans and Democrats alike.
"I don't have an issue with the winners … it's possible somebody has better ideas than us," Mr. Coletti said. At the same time, he said, "More feedback from DOE on a timely basis would be wonderful. When you're running a business you'd like to know whether you're going to be able to take advantage of this opportunity."
Mr. Coletti's company -- which makes diesel engines and is still waiting to hear from the Department on a separate loan application to help it build a manufacturing facility -- isn't without politically well-connected patrons, either. Its major investor is Vinod Khosla, himself a former Kleiner Perkins partner who has donated to campaigns.
Scott Redmond, CEO of XP Vehicles Inc., said he met with DOE officials twice in Washington after applying for a $40 million loan to develop a $15,000 to $25,000 hybrid, and that both times he was told his application looked good. Since receiving a rejection letter from DOE in August, Redmond said, he has been unable to get a full explanation as to why his request was turned down.
Mr. Rogers said he was not at liberty to discuss individual applications that had been turned down, but said the process has been handled fairly and objectively.
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| | Sujet: 1412 - 25/9/2009, 15:13 | |
| Muslims to Conduct National Prayer Rally Outside Capitol Thursday, September 24, 2009  By Joshua Rhett Miller aoc.govUp to 50,000 Muslims from across the country on Friday are expected to descend upon the U.S. Capitol Building's west grounds, seen here.- Spoiler:
As many as 50,000 American Muslims are expected to gather on Capitol Hill Friday for the religion's first-ever national prayer rally, organizers of the event say.
The rally is intended to be all about prayer, and no political speeches or signs will be allowed, said the event's organizer, Hassen Abdellah, president of the Dar-ul-Islam mosque in Elizabeth, N.J.
But at least one of the prominent speakers who will read from the Koran has drawn criticism in the past for statements he's made about the Sept. 11 terror attacks, as well as for saying that the American media are largely under "Zionist control."
In 2005, according to the Middle East Media Research Institute, Sheik Ahmed Dewidar said the "suspicion towards anything Islamic" remained a burden on Muslim Americans and that "the media — most of which is under Zionist control — has helped to spread this perception.
"When [the media] see a bearded Muslim selling fast food on any street in any state, they put the camera lens in front of him and interview him as though he represents Islam. At the same time, they ignore every moderate Islamic voice, every serious, scientific Islamic model, and every expert religious scholar."
During another interview by the Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood's Web site, Dewidar hinted at an American government conspiracy in relation to the Sept. 11 terror attacks.
"Whether or not these events were planned, or pinned on the Muslims, or something else — [it] provided an opportunity for [the American government] to legislate dubious laws that restrict the growth and presence of Islam in the U.S.," Dewidar told ikhwanonline.com.
Dewidar also denounced then-President Bush's policy in the Middle East, claiming it was dictated by Israeli politician Natan Sharansky.
"This Jew has despicable goals, and we see their effects today in America's actions in the region, imposing its opinion and its outlook on democracy, education, and political involvement on our countries," Dewidar told the Web site.
According to a biography on islamoncapitolhill.com, the prayer rally's Web site, Dewidar was born and raised in Rashid, Egypt, and had memorized the Koran by age 12. Now an instructor at Manhattanville College in New York, he also established the Islamic Center in Manhattan, near the United Nations. Efforts to contact Dewidar were unsuccessful.
Despite the controversy surrounding Dewidar, Abdellah said politics will play no part in Friday's gathering outside the Capitol.
"This is just about prayer," he told FOXNews.com. "The purpose is Islamic unity, so we can display the beauty of Islam. We believe the group are going to be people who love and respect America, and we want to let America know that we're here and that we support the country.
"I know it's difficult for people to believe it could be that simple."
Another man scheduled to recite the Koran at Friday's rally is Sheik Muhammad Jebril. According to a biography, he is among the most prominent chanters of the Koran in the Muslim world. He has served as an instructor of the Koran at the University of Jordan and led a religious program on Jordanian television networks.
Contrary to reports, Jebril was not named as an unindicted co-conspirator in the Holy Land Foundation trial, which resulted in life sentences for five men found guilty of funneling $12 million from an Islamic charity to Hamas.
Abdellah, an attorney who has represented convicted and suspected terrorists, said President Obama's inaugural address and his subsequent speech in Egypt in June led him and a local imam, Abdul Malik, to form the idea of the prayer rally.
Any individuals who come to the gathering with the goal of disrupting the event will be left to Capitol Hill police, he said.
"If they come to the event with another agenda, then the Capitol police will take care of them," he said. "We're focusing on the positive, not the negative. The only question I would ask is, why would you come to disrupt prayer?"
"Buses are coming from everywhere," he said. "We love this country and we believe this country accommodates our religion and we're part of the fabric of this society."
But not all Muslims agree with Abdellah's approach. ISNA officials say the prayer gathering is misguided.
"We are not sure this is the best way to achieve the objective," Louay Safi, ISNA's director of communications, told FOXNews.com. "Our approach is really to encourage the community to become more active in society and the government by participating in interfaith and charitable activities. We fear that the gathering will not be understood by some Americans."
While ISNA will not participate in Friday's event, Safi said he respects the attendees' right to express themselves.
"We share the objective that Islam is not about politics but about being a good citizen and human being," he said. "But my concern is that the focus will be on political mobilization, and I'm not sure whether the objective will be articulated well."
Although "all shades of opinion and understandings" will likely be reflected at the gathering, Safi said he is not worried about the potential of extremist Muslims to join the prayer.
"Organizers have spread the word," he said. "But this may not really bring more understanding of Islam to the public."
Sofian Abdelaziz Zakkout, director of the American Muslim Association of North America, said her organization will participate in the "historical" event.
"It means a lot to me to come together and to pray in one voice," Zakkout wrote FOXNews.com.
"Our communities around the nation are deeply hurt after all the events came against Islam and Muslims after the tragedy of 9/11. This gathering will bring pride to our children. This kind of gathering will send a strong message that the American Muslims since the beginning have been against terrorism."
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| | Sujet: 1413 - 25/9/2009, 15:45 | |
| Leaders accuse Iran of secret programBy JOSH GERSTEIN | 9/25/09 7:59 AM EDT PITTSBURGH — President Barack Obama on Friday accused Iran of building a secret underground facility to enrich nuclear fuel – calling it a direct breach of international laws governing nuclear weapons and demanding an immediate international investigation. - Spoiler:
“Iran is breaking rules that all nations must follow," Obama said at a news conference ahead of the G-20 economic summit.
“The existence of this facility underscores Iran’s continuing unwillingness to meet its international obligations,” Obama said, flanked by British Prime Minster Gordon Brown and French President Nicolas Sarkozy. "Iran’s decision to build yet another nuclear facility ... represents a direct challenge to the basic compact at the center of non-proliferation regime.”
The leaders called on Iran to open the facility to inspection by the International Atomic Energy Agency.
Western intelligence services have known about the secret facility for years but kept quiet about it, even as the controversy built over Iran's nuclear ambitions.
On Monday, Iran sent a letter disclosing a new "pilot plant" to the IAEA, several news agencies reported. Experts suspect that Iran made the disclosure after learning that Western governments had discovered the existence underground plant.
The maneuvering over the new facility came just days before the U.S. and five other nations are set to open talks with Iran over its nuclear program, which Iranian officials claim is peaceful.
The White House would clearly hope the disclosure of the secret facility would back up Western claims that Iran is trying to build a bomb in secret.
The United States will take part in a meeting of diplomats with Iran on Oct. 1 – a followthrough to Obama’s pledge to meet with the Iranians after years when President George W. Bush would not.
But Russia and China have long blocked sanctions or other punitive measures against Iran – one of their biggest business partners.
The U.S. was cheered this week at the United Nations when Russian President Dmitri Medvedev sounded open to sanctions for the first time – but the Chinese are still holding out against them.
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| | Sujet: 1414 - 25/9/2009, 21:47 | |
| Wednesday, September 23, 2009
Cavuto: The Democrats Are Scrambling
Neil Cavuto, Managing Editor & Anchor
FOXBusiness
Missed Wednesday's Cavuto? Catch "The Deal" right here on FOXBusiness.com
Nothing like talking up a new world order at the United Nations...
To get your mind off total healthcare disorder in the U.S. Congress.
Here's the deal:
We might not have a deal.
Not a sure thing, not a done thing. Let's just say looking more like a dicey thing.
You don't have to hear what they're saying.
Just watch how they're scrambling.
Democrats now challenging that $80 billion deal with drug makers to help pay for this reform.
As some Blue Dogs demand answers after that CBO study predicting some folks Medicare benefits will be "cut" under this reform.
And all this as the Governor of Massachusetts scrambles to fill Ted Kennedy's Senate seat with an interim appointment...
...probably Michael Dukakis...To make sure Democrats have a crucial vote in their hip pocket should they need it.
Apparently they do.
And then some.
Some incredible turn of events for a health-care reform effort that suddenly looks like it's falling apart and even its most limited expectations look like they're falling apart as well.
Lost in a sea of amendments...More than 450 of 'em still left to get through...
That have driven up reform's costs and now reform's very likely survival itself.
The nasty nitty gritty of grinding out the sausage in Washington.
No wonder the President chose to view it all...from the Waldorf.
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| | Sujet: 1415 - 26/9/2009, 22:01 | |
| Obama Aides: White House Unlikely to Close Gitmo By January DeadlineThe White House is acknowledging for the first time that it might not be able to meet President Obama's January deadline for closing the U.S. military prison at Guantanamo Bay. FOXNews.comSaturday, September 26, 2009 WASHINGTON -- President Obama is unlikely to close the much-maligned detention facility at Guantanamo Bay in time to meet the self-imposed deadline of January, as his administration runs into daunting legal and logistical hurdles in moving the more than 220 detainees still being held there.- Spoiler:
The difficulties in completing the lengthy review of detainee files and resolving other thorny questions mean the president's promised January deadline may slip, senior administration officials acknowledged for the first time Friday to FOX News.
The White House hopes to regain momentum -- Obama's aides have stepped up their work toward closure and the president remains as committed to closing the facility as he was when, as one of his first acts in office, he pledged to shut it down, officials told FOX News.
The White House in recent months has also shuffled its staffing for who will oversee the closure of the facility. White House Counsel Greg Craig has been replaced by senior advisers Pete Rouse, Tom Donilon and John Brennan.
But legislative difficulties and legal snares have made it inevitable that the facility will remain open for some inmates after the deadline passes.
The U.S. military prison in Cuba was created by former President George W. Bush after the Sept. 11, 2001 terrorist attacks as a landing spot for suspected Al Qaeda, Taliban and foreign fighters captured in Afghanistan and elsewhere. But it has since become a lightning rod of anti-U.S. criticism around the globe. There are approximately 225 detainees still being held at the prison.
Obama promised soon after taking office -- and many times since -- that he would close the prison, arguing that doing so would be a crucial step in restoring America's image in the world and creating a more effective anti-terror approach.
But eight months after Obama's initial pledge -- and with only four months to go before the January deadline -- a number of difficult issues remain unresolved. They include establishing a new set of rules for military trials, finding a location for a new prison to house detainees and finding host countries for those who can be released.
This has prompted top Republicans in Congress to demand that the prison stay open for the time being, saying it is too dangerous to rush the closure. Even Democrats defied the president, saying they needed more information about Obama's plan before supporting it. For the moment, Congress is denying Obama funds to shut down Guantanamo.
Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., said Saturday Congress won't reverse its stance.
"Americans and a bipartisan majority in Congress will continue to reject any effort to close Guantanamo until there is a plan that keeps Americans as safe or safer than keeping detainees in the secure detention center," he said in a written statement.
After Obama's promise, administration officials and lawyers began to review the files on each detainee. At issue: which prisoners can be tried, and whether to do so in military or civilian courts; which can be released to other nations; and -- the hardest question -- which prisoners are too dangerous or their cases too compromised that they must be held indefinitely.
A major complaint surfaced immediately -- that the Bush administration had not established a consolidated repository of intelligence and evidence on each prisoner. It took longer than expected to build such a database, the officials said, because information was scattered throughout agencies and inconsistent.
Those files have now been completed, and prosecutors have also concluded their initial review of the detainees and recommended to the Justice Department an unspecified number who appear eligible for prosecution, the officials told the AP. The Justice Department and the Pentagon will now work together to determine which prisoners should be tried in military courts and which in civilian ones, the officials said. They would not provide a number recommended for prosecution since it could change.
The decision on which prisoners will be prosecuted had been expected by Nov. 16, and the officials said they are on track to meet -- or beat -- that goal. Navy Capt. John F. Murphy, the chief military prosecutor, had said previously that about 65 cases are viable for prosecution.
In the meantime, Obama has kept pending several war-crimes trials that were already in progress when he took office. The administration has asked judges to suspend all proceedings to give it time to complete its review of cases.
Also, Obama has adopted some changes to the military tribunals, but wants Congress to enact more to address criticism that the courts favor the prosecution and will not withstand constitutional challenges. That legislation is moving forward on Capitol Hill, but is not complete.
The government also must decide where inside the U.S. to move the detainees, and that highly fraught choice still has not been made, the officials said. A maximum security prison in Standish, Mich., and the military penitentiary at Fort Leavenworth in Kansas are under consideration as possible locations. Whatever facility is chosen, the Pentagon will have to make improvements necessary to safely house the prisoners.
The officials noted that the U.S. prison system already holds 216 people convicted as international terrorists.
Another hurdle in the effort to close the prison is the problem of finding countries willing to take in those detainees deemed eligible for release. The administration so far has transferred 14 prisoners to other countries, the officials said.
The administration will not "voluntarily release" any detainee inside the United States, the officials said. But this does not address what might happen if any of the detainees who are tried are found innocent -- a subject of considerable angst about Obama's plans, both in Congress and among the public. However, the U.S. could -- and likely would -- seek to transfer those people to other countries in that case, as none is a U.S. citizen.
FOX News' Major Garrett and The Associated Press contributed to this report.
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| | Sujet: 1416 - 26/9/2009, 22:21 | |
| Opinion: O'Reilly au sujet des installations nucleaires en Iran
Obama, Nukes and Afghanistan
Iran's Lies Exposed
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| | Sujet: 1417 - 26 septembre 2009 26/9/2009, 22:36 | |
| GOP Lawmakers Push for Cancellation of U.S. Funds to Qaddafi Foundations  The State Department notified lawmakers earlier this month of its intent to disburse $2.5 million in economic aid to Libya, including $400,000 for Muammar al-Qaddafi's foundations. FOXNews.comSaturday, September 26, 2009 GOP lawmakers are calling on the Obama administration to cancel $400,000 in economic aid to foundations run by Libyan leader Muammar al-Qaddafi following his rambling diatribe at the United Nations this week and the hero's welcome he gave to the Lockerbie bomber last month. - Spoiler:
The State Department notified lawmakers earlier this month of its intent to disburse $2.5 million in economic aid to Libya, including $400,000 for Qaddafi's foundations. Of the $400,000 half will go to a foundation run by the leader's son, Saif, and the other half to one run by his daughter, Aisha.
Florida Rep. Ileana Ros-Lehtien, the top Republican on the House Foreign Affairs Committee sent a letter to Secretary of State Hillary Clinton requesting the cancellation of the entire $2.5 million of economic aid.
Ros-Lehtien argued that Congress' goal of providing money to promote democracy and human rights in Libya has been undermined by the administration's decision to funnel the resources through the Qaddafi family.
"How could this assistance effectively promote democracy when entrusted to the dictator's family?" she wrote in the letter.
The White House deferred questions to the National Security Council, which could not be reached on Saturday. Neither could the State Department.
The Florida Republican added that "this windfall" will only work to "further entrench a dictatorial regime whose extremist dogma was most recently demonstrated" with Qaddafi's "bizarre diatribe against freedom-loving nations at the UN."
On Wednesday, Qaddafi launched into a rambling assault against the UN Security Council, calling it a "terror council." He also suggested Israel was behind the assassination of President John F. Kennedy.
Many were also outraged last month when Qaddafi warmly embraced Abdel Baset al-Megrahi, the man responsible for the 1988 Lockerbie bombing who was freed by Scotland to return to his native country of Libya where he could die from prostate cancer.
Rep. Mark Kirk, R-Ill., who is campaigning for Obama's former Senate seat, urged the president in a letter to withdraw the $400,000 in funds to Qaddafi's foundations.
"Just weeks after the Qaddafi family celebrated the return of a terrorist responsible for the murders of 189 Americans, the U.S. taxpayer should not be asked to reward them with $400,000," he wrote.
On croit rever! |
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| | Sujet: 1418 - 26/9/2009, 22:54 | |
| Comme quoi, on n'ait jamais si bien servi que par soi-meme: President Barack Obama is calling his marathon week of speechifying and summiteering at the United Nations and the G-20 in Pittsburgh a rousing success.
Grading Obama's foreign-policy forayBy JOSH GERSTEIN - 9/26/09 8:38 AM EDT
President Barack Obama is calling his marathon week of speechifying and summiteering at the United Nations and the G-20 in Pittsburgh a rousing success. “We achieved….a new commitment to meet common challenges, and real progress in advancing America’s national security and economic prosperity,” Obama declared in his weekly radio and Internet address out Saturday morning. - Spoiler:
But how much did Obama truly accomplish in furthering his overseas agenda amid a dizzying series of handshakes, one-on-one meetings, summit sessions, and diplomatic dining?
POLITICO talked with experts and handed out some grades for the president’s first big foreign-policy foray inside the U.S.
Jumpstarting Israeli-Palestinian peace
In New York, Obama strong-armed Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas into a meeting, a handshake and an agreement to move towards restarting peace talks.
But to get there, Obama had to put aside the demands he had been making for months that Israel cease building and expanding settlements in the West Bank and Gaza. Israel talked about budging but wouldn’t give much ground – and in the intricate ways of the Mideast peace process, it looked like a significant cave-in by Obama.
“A superpower pays a price any time a tinier power says no,” warned Aaron David Miller, a Middle East peace negotiator during the Clinton Administration.
He also said the public pressure from Obama on settlements has upset many Israelis. “We’ve broken a lot of crockery with the Israelis. This is not fatal, but it’s one problem they face” in the Obama White House, Miller said.
For their part, many Palestinians aren’t too happy either. Some see the decision by Obama to set aside the settlements fight for now as a blow to Abbas and a boon to hardliners in Hamas.
“People are still going to give [Obama] the benefit of the doubt and work with him, but they’re frustrated, obviously,” said Shibley Telhami, a professor at the University of Maryland.
The bottom line: the photo of Abbas and Netantyahu standing together is a baby step in the right direction, and something Obama badly wanted as a sign of progress in the peace process, but the cost in getting it was high. And it’s still not clear whether the White House is ready to make the intensive effort to get real compromise on the core issues.
POLITICO grade: C-plus
Tightening the screws on Iran
The biggest news of the week came out of an event that wasn’t even on Obama’s schedule when he left Washington Monday morning: the startling announcement by Obama and his French and British counterparts Friday that Iran has been secretly constructing a second underground site to enrich nuclear fuel.
The stern ultimatum from Obama and the other leaders was riveting, but it was thrown together at the last minute after Iran made a vague and pre-emptive disclosure of the site to the International Atomic Energy Agency this week.
“This probably wasn’t exactly the way we planned it,” said Kenneth Pollack, an Iran expert at Brookings Institution’s Saban Center. “We could have gone to the October 1 talks with the Iranians, pulled out the photos, slid them across the table and said, ‘Explain these!’”
Still, the images of Obama, French President Nicolas Sarkozy and British Prime Minister Gordon Brown jointly calling Tehran out were high drama that couldn’t have been easily arranged if the announcement were done after the leaders left Pittsburgh.
“It couldn’t have worked out much better,” said Pollack. “We’re in a much stronger position that we would have thought a week ago.”
That said, there were some wrinkles. The way it played out, the Iranians are claiming they made a unilateral decision to reveal the site. And the White House appeared a bit overly eager to portray a united front as Obama aides exaggerated the degree of public movement from the Russians. They told reporters that a statement Russian President Dmitri Medvedev made to Obama about sanctions sometimes being inevitable was a breakthrough when, in fact, he’d made similar comments in an interview days earlier.
And the usual sanctions holdout, China, issued a mild statement against Iran Friday, a sign that big-powers talks with Iran Oct. 1 won’t yield immediate action.
Some conservatives also say the scary Iran news – not one but two nuclear facilities -- is just plain scary and no coup for the Obama administration’s efforts to get a consensus for sanctions.
“Maybe if Iran tests a nuclear weapon, that will strengthen our hand, too,” former U.S. Ambassador to the U.N. John Bolton scoffed sarcastically. “This is a catastrophe.”
POLITICO Grade: B-plus
Projecting diplomatic gravitas
Obama’s maiden speech to the U.N. General Assembly on Wednesday was well-delivered and well-received, if not terribly compelling. He probably could have boiled the 38-minute address into four words – I’m not George Bush – but he also issued a challenge to the world’s nations that they can’t gripe about American unilateralism and then expect Obama to solve all their problems.
Conservatives think he offered too many regrets for torture and the Guantanamo Bay prison and resurrected their claims that Obama is on a world “apology tour.” (Obama, of course, didn’t tell the world body that he’s effectively given up hope of meeting his goal of closing the much-reviled Gitmo prison by January, due to the difficulties in finding new facilities for the prisoners there.)
Obama’s relatively tidy talk quickly became the morning’s hands-down favorite after he was followed at the podium by Libyan President Moammar Qadhafi, who spent an hour and 36 minutes ranting about drug companies making swine flu and Israel’s involvement in the JFK assassination. The New York Post reported Qadhafi’s translator collapsed at minute 75 – but Obama didn’t hang around to hear a word of it.
POLITICO Grade: A-minus
Dodging dictators
Obama proved unusually deft at this delicate task. Qadhafi, Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez, and Zimbabwe’s President Robert Mugabe all were in the audience at Obama’s big U.N. speech – a diplomatic obstacle course for a president just trying to make it out the door – but Obama managed to emerge without a single distracting photo of him glad-handing with an anti-American villain.
Obama’s aides were almost certain he would cross paths with Qadhafi at a Security Council session, but the Libyan skipped the meeting of what he had described a day earlier as a “terror council” akin to Al Qaeda.
POLITICO Grade: A-plus
Reforming the world economy
With the economic crisis losing some of its white-knuckle urgency, the betting line on the G-20 economic summit was that little would get done, especially with the United States and Europe at odds over on how to avoid Meltdown II.
But perhaps to everyone’s surprise, the nations’ actually agreed to some far-reaching steps along the lines Obama was pushing: The U.S. would try to stop being such a hungry consumer and increase savings. China will try to stop basing its whole economy on selling us everything in sight.
And all the nations will try to keep a tighter rein on big banks – and big bankers, and their big bonuses.
The biggest change was that each of the countries agreed to a “peer review” of its economic policies by other governments, along with monitoring by the International Monetary Fund – a rare bout of openness for policies most countries consider their national prerogative.
“We have achieved a level of tangible, global economic cooperation that we’ve never seen before,” Obama said -- and many experts said he’s right. His call for fixing dangerous trade “imbalances” in the world economy influenced the debate.
The caveats: much of what was hashed out in Pittsburgh was non-binding, with no enforcement mechanism. The U.S. pushed for a requirement that banks hold more cash reserves as a cushion against losses – but the nations couldn't agree how much. And when it came to curbing bonuses, the European push for hard caps fell short while the Obama administration’s approach of deferring the bonuses won out – a sign Wall Street’s influence was felt at the G-20.
POLITICO grade: B
Fixing Afghanistan
Officials acknowledged that nearly all the bilateral meetings were dominated by a possible showdown with Iran, not the showdown with the Taliban and Al Qaeda that U.S. and NATO troops are facing daily in Afghanistan.
The war did come up in passing at sessions with the Japanese prime minister and British PM Brown -- but the latter meeting had all the hallmarks of a perfunctory photo-op arranged to rebut perceptions that Brown was being snubbed, not a serious war council.
The timing of the leak of Gen. Stanley McChrystal’s report last weekend underscored the unresolved debate in Washington about American strategy in Afghanistan. In that environment, it was next to impossible to win, or even ask, for additional help this week.
Nothing gained on this front, which could be the most daunting national security challenge Obama faces.
POLITICO Grade: C
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| | Sujet: 1419 - 26/9/2009, 23:24 | |
| Financial Times Obama's age of atonementBy Christopher Caldwell Published: September 25 2009 22:43Last updated: September 25 2009 22:43There used to be a joke in San Francisco that the prettiest view of the Bay Area was from the top of the Transamerica building. Why? Because that was the only place in the city from which you couldn’t see the Transamerica building. In a similar way, the rosiest view of globalisation has traditionally come from the American governing classes – from which you cannot see the interests of the major globalisers, only the ideals. Barack Obama’s speech to the United Nations this week is a sign that he is having no more success than his predecessors in figuring out where interests leave off and ideals pick up.- Spoiler:
It is embarrassing to accuse an American politician of wishing for “global government” – a bête noire of uncouth anti-communists in the 1950s and 1960s. But Mr Obama’s arguments are meant to move matters in that direction – away from self-determination and towards what is today called co-operation. “Like all of you, my responsibility is to act in the interest of my nation and my people,” he said, “and I will never apologise for defending those interests. But it is my deeply held belief that in the year of 2009 the interests of nations and peoples are shared.” The key word in this passage, as anyone can see, is “but”.
Mr Obama talks about giving “meaning to the promise embedded in the name given to this institution: the United Nations. That is the future America wants.” Well, if he is right, then Americans have been lying to pollsters for a long time. Naturally, there are good arguments that the US should submit to the same international norms as everybody else. But those arguments need to be made to Americans, not to foreign heads of state.
From the very beginning of the speech, Mr Obama sought to atone for the administration of George W. Bush. But he did this in a bizarre way. He presented the behaviour of the US over the past decade as a kind of fugue – an aberration caused by the toxic leadership of Mr Bush himself.
Not for Mr Obama any Konrad Adenauer-style working through of the past – it was “Don’t look at me! I didn’t do it!” Mr Obama is entitled to say so, but he cannot speak for his country when he does. The Iraq war was enormously popular until the US began to lose it. One cannot mollify international detractors by referring to “the concrete actions that we have taken in just nine months”.
The US character goes back more than nine months, and so do US interests. The new order Mr Obama has in mind will either be too easy (leaving the structure of US interests untouched and hoping the world will be satisfied by the mere lack of Mr Bush) or too hard (throwing out the interests, too). “No world order that elevates one nation or group of people over another will succeed,” Mr Obama says. “The traditional division between nations of the south and north makes no sense in an interconnected world.”
Mr Obama has committed his citizens to an expensive and open-ended period of reparation and repentance, and placed himself in a logical contradiction. He promised in his speech that the US would “be a leader in bringing about change”, “lead by example”, move “from a bystander to a leader in international climate negotiations” and accept an “obligation to lead” on the environment.
But US leadership is a political fact, not a law of nature. The thing that the US leads is the world system that Mr Obama wants us to repudiate. If “the old habits and arguments are irrelevant”, as he says, then why should the US lead? Why shouldn’t someone else lead? Systems that elevate one nation over another can indeed be unjust. But the only alternative on the horizon is to let groups of nations with common interests (whether “the international community” or the UN) harass small countries they disapprove of, from Serbia to Honduras to Israel. Some may like the outcomes better. But it is no advance for legitimacy.
The UN speech gives a hint to why the percentage of the US population that is uneasy with Mr Obama has grown steadily. The coolness that was so appealing in the campaigner is a liability in the president. Mr Obama is more comfortable analysing the international alignment of interests than in defending the particular interests of the US. In fact, to say, as he does, that “the interests of nations and peoples are shared” is to say that national interest is an illusion in the first place.
Mr Obama prefers idealism to pragmatism. He notes that the UN was forged in an “idealism that was anything but naive – it was rooted in the hard-earned lessons of war”. The idea that war cures people of their naivety is debatable. War can be a school for naivety, because naivety helps one survive a war with one’s sanity intact. The treaty of Versailles, the League of Nations, the Kellogg-Briand pact were all results of a naivety bred of the first world war. In the US, we owe those three great disasters of the last generation – urban renewal, the highway system and the Vietnam war – to the naivety bred of second world war.
A long US tradition made it possible for Mr Obama to talk the way he did this week. Presidents Reagan, Clinton and both Bushes decked out their foreign policy in a lot of shining-city-on-a-hill rhetoric – the belief that there is no conflict between US values and the values of ordinary people round the world. This belief is false. The conclusion earlier presidents drew was that the world should follow America. We know how the world reacted. The conclusion Mr Obama draws is that America should follow the world. Americans’ reaction will not be hard to predict.
The writer is a senior editor at The Weekly Standard
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| | Sujet: 1420 - 27/9/2009, 07:24 | |
| U.S. to Demand Inspection of New Iran Plant ‘Within Weeks’ By DAVID E. SANGER and WILLIAM J. BROADPublished: September 26, 2009 WASHINGTON — The Obama administration plans to tell Iran this week that it must open a newly revealed nuclear enrichment site to international inspectors “within weeks,” according to senior administration officials. The administration will also tell Tehran that inspectors must have full access to the key personnel who put together the clandestine plant and to the documents surrounding its construction, the officials said Saturday. - Spoiler:
The demands, following the revelation Friday of the secret facility at a military base near the holy city of Qum, set the stage for the next chapter of a diplomatic drama that has toughened the West’s posture and heightened tensions with Iran. The first direct negotiations between the United States and Iran in 30 years are scheduled to open in Geneva on Thursday.
American and European officials say they will also press Iran to open what they suspect are nuclear-related sites to international inspectors, and to turn over notebooks and computers that they think may document efforts to design weapons.
President Obama has repeatedly said that Iran must show significant cooperation by the end of the year, establishing what officials say is effectively a three-month deadline. Interviews with American and European officials, however, suggest differences of opinion about how much time Iran should be given to show full compliance.
On Saturday, Iran’s nuclear chief, Ali Akbar Salehi, said the International Atomic Energy Agency would be invited to visit the site near Qum that American intelligence agencies estimate was designed to house 3,000 centrifuges, enough to produce about one bomb’s worth of material a year.
But he did not say when, nor did he say whether Iran would meet any of the other American and European demands.
Mr. Salehi, who spoke on Iranian state television, added that Mr. Obama’s dramatic release of the information about the site at a global economic summit meeting was a “plot” meant to “unite the whole world against us.”
Iranian officials have long maintained that their nuclear program is designed to produce energy, not weapons, and they said the facility near Qum is for peaceful purposes. They have not explained why it was located inside a heavily guarded base of the Revolutionary Guards.
From the White House to Europe, senior officials were pushing to exploit the disclosure of the covert facility as a turning point in negotiations to try to get Iran to halt its nuclear program.
“This is the most important development in the three and a half years since the U.S. has offered negotiations with Iran,” said R. Nicholas Burns, a Harvard professor who served as the Bush administration’s chief strategist on Iran. Mr. Burns said Mr. Obama “now has much greater leverage to organize an international coalition to confront” the country’s leaders with sanctions should the negotiating effort fail.
David A. Kay, a nuclear specialist who led the fruitless American search for unconventional weapons in Iraq, said the discovery “reopens the whole question of the military’s involvement in the Iranian nuclear program.”
For now, the most urgent issue, current and former officials agree, is gaining immediate access to the hidden tunnel complex that Iran now acknowledges is a uranium enrichment plant still under construction. Quick access to the facility is considered crucial because of fears that Iran would move incriminating equipment or documents.
It is still unclear what kind of incentives the United States and its allies might offer Iran if it completely opened, and ultimately dismantled, its nuclear program. On Saturday, Mr. Obama, in his weekly radio address, said he remained committed to building a relationship with Tehran.
“My offer of a serious, meaningful dialogue to resolve this issue remains open,” he said. “But Iran must now cooperate fully with the International Atomic Energy Agency, and take action to demonstrate its peaceful intentions.”
Now that the clandestine site has been revealed, however, American and European officials say they see an opportunity to press for broader disclosures. Iran will be told that to avoid sanctions, it must adhere to an I.A.E.A. agreement that would allow inspectors to go virtually anywhere in the country to follow suspicions of nuclear work.
Iran would also have to turn over documents that the agency has sought for more than three years, including some that intelligence agencies obtained that they say appear to suggest work was done on the design of warheads and technologies for detonating a nuclear core.
The negotiators would also insist, officials say, that Iran abide by I.A.E.A. rules, which Iran agreed to and then renounced, requiring it to announce in advance any plans to build nuclear facilities. Iran says it will adhere only to an older rule, requiring notification when a plant is about to become operational.
For several years, Iran has deflected I.A.E.A requests to interview key scientists, presumably including those who ran the highly secret Projects 110 and 111. American intelligence officials, after piercing Iran’s computer networks in 2007, said they believe that those projects are at the center of nuclear design work. Iran has denied that the projects exist and has denounced as fabrications the documents the United States has shared with the agency, and with other nations.
Administration officials acknowledge that it is unlikely that Iran will accede to all of their demands. But they say this is their best chance to move the seven-year standoff over Iran’s nuclear program sharply in their favor.
In interviews and public comments, the administration’s tone has clearly changed in recent days, becoming tougher and more confrontational.
In an interview to be broadcast Sunday on ABC, Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates said the hidden facility was “part of a pattern of deception and lies on the part of the Iranians from the very beginning with respect to their nuclear program.”
But he deflected a question that has been circulating inside the government: Is the Qum facility one of a kind, or just one of several hidden facilities that were intended to give Iran a covert means of enriching uranium, far from the inspectors who regularly visit a far larger enrichment facility, also once kept secret, at Natanz.
“My personal opinion is that the Iranians have the intention of having nuclear weapons,” Mr. Gates concluded, though he said it was still an open question “whether they have made a formal decision” to manufacture weapons.
In recent years, Tehran has slowly and systematically cut back on the access of atomic sleuths. Early in 2006, for instance, it unilaterally began redirecting the international inspectors from dozens of sites, programs and personnel all over the Islamic republic to a single point: Natanz, where Iran is enriching uranium.
Pierre Goldschmidt, a former I.A.E.A. official who is now a senior associate at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, said the revelation of the secret enrichment plant drove home the urgent need for enhanced legal authority for tough inspections. “It’s proof that, without additional verification authority, the agency cannot find undeclared nuclear activities,” he said.
Beneath the dry language of reports issued every three months by the international agency lies the story of an intense cat-and-mouse game in which inspectors seek documents or interviews with key scientists.
The I.A.E.A.’s agenda of inspection is already huge, as is its record of failing to get the Iranians to address the most serious clues and charges, inconsistencies and suspicions.
The departing chief of the agency, Mohamed ElBaradei, recently argued that the case for urgent action against Iran was “hyped,” even as he acknowledged that the country has refused, for two years, to answer his inspectors’ questions about evidence suggesting that the country has worked on weapons design.
In May 2008, the atomic agency in Vienna issued an uncharacteristically blunt demand for more information from Tehran and, even more uncharacteristically, disclosed the existence of 18 secretly obtained documents suggesting Iran’s high level of interest in atom bombs.
But the wording of the public portion of the 2007 United States National Intelligence Estimate had already frozen the effort to force Iran to reveal more. Its conclusion that weapons design work was halted in 2003 was a surprise that ended talk of sanctions.
President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has called the report an exoneration.
In fact, the classified portion of the intelligence estimate listed more than a dozen suspect locations, though officials last week would not say whether the list included the site that was revealed Friday. It is also unclear if Washington and its allies believe they have enough evidence to justify demanding access to those sites.
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| | Sujet: 1421 - 28/9/2009, 01:15 | |
| Posted on Sun, Sep. 27, 2009 The Point: What Bush got right offers clues for Obama By Mark Bowden Inquirer Currents ColumnistThere was little disagreement that the Bush administration, having toppled Saddam Hussein with relative ease, had badly bungled the aftermath. Tank units led by Gen. Tommy Franks had led U.S. forces triumphantly into Baghdad. There had been a ceremonial toppling of Hussein's statue, and the presidential "Mission Accomplished" news conference . . . and then the real war started. - Spoiler:
It was a mistake seemingly made in every war in human history; commanders enter superbly prepared to fight the last war, not the one they are in. It turned out that the war in Iraq was not about seizing territory but battling a stubborn, murderous, and determined insurgency embedded in the Iraqi population.
President Bush made a courageous decision in the summer of 2006 to reverse direction, but not the reversal sought by Congress (including then-Sens. Barack Obama and Joe Biden), the American public, the overwhelming majority of the press (including this newspaper), and even most of his own military advisers. Instead of cutting our losses and pulling out of Iraq, as we did in Vietnam, Bush doubled down. He invested more troops and, more important, embraced an entirely new strategy.
And Bush was right. What had happened beneath all of the politics was a small revolution in war-fighting philosophy, championed and implemented by an unlikely military leader, Gen. David Petraeus, a soldier/intellectual molded as much by the think tank as the battlefield. He calls the movement his "Counterinsurgency Nation," and it has rewritten the way America fights. It is not a completely new idea - there are few of those in the study of war - but its basic principles came into clearer and clearer focus as a new generation of military officers fought in Afghanistan and Iraq. Its guiding principle is simple: The prize in these countries is not territory, but people.
Now President Obama must decide whether to let this new generation of battle-tested soldiers apply what it has learned to Afghanistan. Those who argue that the methods employed in Iraq will not work in Afghanistan are right and wrong. They are right that the two conflicts are not identical. What worked in Iraq will not apply in all cases in Afghanistan. But they are wrong to assume the lessons of Iraq have no application in Afghanistan. The counterinsurgency consensus grew out of experience in both wars. America's new military leaders have been managing both conflicts simultaneously for most of this decade, and the hard-won lessons they have learned derive from both.
I am not a military expert, but I suspect that most wars that last for more than a few weeks follow a roughly similar trajectory. Established generals misjudge the war, and once the battle is joined, a generation of younger leaders discovers the truth, adapts by hard necessity, making life-and-death decisions on the battlefield, and learns, often by trial and error, how to define and fight the new war on its own terms. If the national leadership is smart enough to embrace this knowledge and experience, as Bush was, the tide turns.
There are a number of excellent studies that document this turnabout, notably Thomas Ricks' The Gamble, Linda Robinson's Tell Me How This Ends, and Kimberly Kagan's The Surge. The Iraq war is not over, of course. It remains to be seen if Iraqis can forge a nation from its various contending factions, but there is no denying the extraordinary reversal engineered by Bush, Petraeus, and the remarkable soldiers who have risked and all too often sacrificed life and limb for the last six years. They accomplished it amid a persistent chorus of critics and doomsayers - doomed was actually the word then-Sen. Biden used to describe Petraeus' chances in April 2006.
Counterinsurgency doctrine is as warm and fuzzy as war can get. It embraces distinctly liberal, humanistic values like protecting civilians, cultural sensitivity, and rigid adherence to ethical standards and the law. It is geared toward partnership, not dominance, and always seeks to minimize violence. In Iraq it rapidly (in months) isolated the murderous extremists who were trying to provoke civil war. The new effort set up a sharp contrast between their methods and goals and America's. As one Marine officer, Col. Julian Dale Alford, said at a conference in Washington last week: "We gave the people of Iraq a better choice."
But counterinsurgency is not like the "Get out of jail free" card in Monopoly. It demands risk. It means getting soldiers out of the relative safety of large, well-defended bases and impregnable vehicles, and ordering them to live with the people they are tasked to defend. It makes them more vulnerable - the initial impact of the surge in Iraq caused a sharp increase in U.S. casualties - in order to build long-term security. It is a dreadful bargain, courting greater risk in order to lower the violence. It is also counterintuitive. But it works.
Counterinsurgency wars are also long wars. They require a commitment of troops, time, and money over not just months, but years, because success depends on convincing the Afghan or Iraqi people that America is serious about protecting them and will not abandon them. As Gen. Stanley McChrystal's leaked assessment of Afghanistan makes clear, pursuing the war against the resurgent Taliban will require more of everything.
The new strategy also pointedly rejects the approach reportedly championed by Biden, which is to forgo efforts to protect and win the population and concentrate instead on finding and killing extremists, using drones and special forces. Ironically, this was the very approach tried and abandoned by Bush in Iraq. It turns out that an insurgency can be killed only by poisoning the sea in which it swims. You need the people.
Obama's war-fighting promise was to scale down Iraq and ramp up Afghanistan, which he argued was the necessary war. He has the strategy and the men to do just that, thanks in large part to the man who is least likely to be given credit, George W. Bush.
Mark Bowden is a journalist and author, most recently of "The Best Game Ever." E-mail him
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| | Sujet: 1422 - 28/9/2009, 01:29 | |
| J.C. WATTS: Put away the race card Polls and voting data don't support Carter's remarks  J.C. WATTS
That comment comes from former President Jimmy Carter, which is fascinating considering Carter once ran for governor of Georgia proclaiming himself to be a "Lester Maddox Democrat." (Maddox, a former Georgia governor, was an avowed segregationist who opposed integration under the Civil Rights Act.)
- Spoiler:
In fairness to President Carter, I do believe in redemption, and that people can change. But more and more people are inclined to say anyone who disagrees with Barack Obama must be racist.
It hurts me when the left and the right use race for political gain, and it depresses me further that it's so awkward for us to talk about honestly and objectively about race. However, the implication that disagreeing with the president is racist also saddens and perplexes me.
Donna Brazile, campaign manager for Al Gore in 2000 and now a CNN analyst, nailed it when she said, "No one wins in touching race in such a shallow way. It raises defenses and creates backlash."
The race issue blew up two weeks ago when Rep. Joe Wilson, R-S.C., called Obama a liar on the floor of the House during the president's address to a joint session of Congress. Although Democrats booed President Bush in that same chamber during a State of the Union a few years ago, it was still wrong for Wilson to do this.
He called the president's chief of staff and apologized. I would have preferred he do it on the floor of the House, which is where the incident occurred.
There has always been a certain decorum in the people's House. Boos and yelling "You lie!" are not part of that decorum.
Some try to defend one yelling "You lie!" because others boo, but two wrongs don't make a right.
Of course, we see this logic in politics from Democrats and Republicans both.
Be that as it may, was Wilson's outburst racist? The congressman said it was not, so I take him at his word, and the opposition we've seen to the president's agenda would not equate to racism based on the data released in the last year.
-- President Obama did not get the majority of the white vote in 2008. Is that evidence of racism? No. This has been the case with Democrat candidates for years, including President Carter.
-- President Obama did slightly better with the white vote in 2008 than John Kerry did in 2004.
-- Before President Obama proposed a government takeover of the health care system, his approval rating with white voters was 57 percent.
-- Between Election Day and the launch of Democrats' health insurance reform efforts, President Obama did well with independent voters. But he has lost about 18 points with this demographic in the past two months. Most of these independent voters are white.
The data simply do not support President Carter's claim.
Are there some people who didn't vote for Obama because he's black? Certainly. Just as there were some who opposed John McCain because he is white.
There are people of all colors who believe it is wrong for the government to take over our health care system.
There are people of all colors who believe we will have no choice but to ration health care when we put between 35 million and 40 million more people in the system but yet have the same number of doctors.
There are people of all colors who believe we already ration care through Medicare and Medicaid.
There are people of every color who believe it is bad economic policy to raise taxes, especially in a weak economy.
I would remind you that in the last two years of the Bush administration, conservatives were taking shots at President Bush for all his profligate spending, and it was never framed in terms other than "Republicans are mad at Bush for all the spending."
How inconsistent that the media loved disgruntled conservatives being disenchanted with Bush, but abhor criticism of President Obama.
There are people of all colors who believe we are literally mortgaging our children's futures with this spending spree. These people would have felt the same with if it were President Hillary Clinton, Kerry, Bill Richardson or any other president proposing the nationalization of 16 percent of our economy and spending like there's no tomorrow.
Ironically, I wonder how President Carter would view things if it were President Clarence Thomas proposing tax relief, protection for the unborn, raising the troop levels in Afghanistan or exploring for oil right here in the United States.
As Arsenio Hall used to say, "It's something that makes you say 'Hmmm.' "
J.C. Watts (JCWatts01@jcwatts.com) is chairman of J.C. Watts Companies, a business consulting group. He is former chairman of the Republican Conference of the U.S. House, where he served as an Oklahoma representative from 1995 to 2002. He writes for the Review-Journal twice monthly.
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| | Sujet: 1423 - 28/9/2009, 01:41 | |
| The limit of charismaHoward FinemanMr. President, please stay off TV.Published Sep 26, 2009 From the magazine issue dated Oct 5, 2009If ubiquity were the measure of a presidency, Barack Obama would already be grinning at us from Mount Rushmore. But of course it is not. Despite his many words and television appearances, our elegant and eloquent president remains more an emblem of change than an agent of it. He's a man with an endless, worthy to-do list—health care, climate change, bank reform, global capital regulation, AfPak, the Middle East, you name it—but, as yet, no boxes checked "done." This is a problem that style will not fix. Unless Obama learns to rely less on charm, rhetoric, and good intentions and more on picking his spots and winning in political combat, he's not going to be reelected, let alone enshrined in South Dakota.- Spoiler:
The president's problem isn't that he is too visible; it's the lack of content in what he says when he keeps showing up on the tube. Obama can seem a mite too impressed with his own aura, as if his presence on the stage is the Answer. There is, at times, a self-referential (even self-reverential) tone in his big speeches. They are heavily salted with the words "I" and "my." (He used the former 11 times in the first few paragraphs of his address to the U.N. last week.) Obama is a historic figure, but that is the beginning, not the end, of the story.There is only so much political mileage that can still be had by his reminding the world that he is not George W. Bush. It was the winning theme of the 2008 campaign, but that race ended nearly a year ago. The ex-president is now more ex than ever, yet the current president, who vowed to look forward, is still reaching back to Bush as bogeyman.He did it again in that U.N. speech. The delegates wanted to know what the president was going to do about Israel and the Palestinian territories. He answered by telling them what his predecessor had failed to do. This was effective for his first month or two. Now it is starting to sound more like an excuse than an explanation.Members of Obama's own party know who Obama is not; they still sometimes wonder who he really is. In Washington, the appearance of uncertainty is taken as weakness—especially on Capitol Hill, where a president is only as revered as he is feared. Being the cool, convivial late-night-guest in chief won't cut it with Congress, an institution impervious to charm (especially the charm of a president with wavering poll numbers). Members of both parties are taking Obama's measure with their defiant and sometimes hostile response to his desires on health care. Never much of a legislator (and not long a -senator), Obama underestimated the complexity of enacting a major "reform" bill. Letting Congress try to write it on its own was an awful idea. As a balkanized land of microfiefdoms, each loyal to its own lobbyists and consultants, Congress is incapable of being led by its "leadership." It's not like Chicago, where you call a guy who calls a guy who calls Daley, who makes the call. The president himself must make his wishes clear—along with the consequences for those who fail to grant them.The model is a man whose political effectiveness Obama repeatedly says he admires: Ronald Reagan. There was never doubt about what he wanted. The Gipper made his simple, dramatic tax cuts the centerpiece not only of his campaign but also of the entire first year of his presidency.Obama seems to think he'll get credit for the breathtaking scope of his ambition. But unless he sees results, it will have the opposite effect—diluting his clout, exhausting his allies, and emboldening his enemies.That may be starting to happen. Health-care legislation is still weeks, if not months, from passage, and the bill as it stands could well be a windfall for the very insurance and drug companies it was supposed to rein in. Climate-change legislation (a.k.a. cap-and-trade) is almost certainly dead for this year, which means that American negotiators will go empty-handed to the Copenhagen summit in December —pushing the goal of limiting carbon emissions even farther into the distance. In the spring Obama privately told the big banks that he was going to change the way they do business. It was going to be his way or the highway. But the complex legislation he wants to submit to Congress has little chance of passage this year. Doing Letterman again won't help. It may boost the host's ratings, Mr. President, but probably not your own. 2009
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| | Sujet: 1424 - 28/9/2009, 01:52 | |
| September 26, 2009 How To Lose FriendsBy David HarsanyiThe United States does not negotiate with terrorists - but we insist Israel do without preconditions.We will not get entangled in the distasteful internal politics of Iran - but we define Israel's borders. We will remove missile defense systems in Eastern Europe so we do not needlessly provoke our good friends in Russia - but we have no compunction nudging Israel to hand over territory with nothing in return. - Spoiler:
This week, President Barack Obama spoke to the United Nations' General Assembly and insisted that Israel and the Palestinians negotiate "without preconditions." (Well, excluding the effective precondition that Israeli settlements are "illegitimate," according to the administration - so no pre-conditions means feel free to rocket Israel while you talk.)
This tact, Obama hopes, will lead to "two states living side by side in peace and security - a Jewish state of Israel, with true security for all Israelis; and a viable, independent Palestinian state with contiguous territory that ends the occupation that began in 1967, and realizes the potential of the Palestinian people."
Hate to break the news to you, but there already exists a Jewish state of Israel with true security for all Israelis. This security is attained through a perpetual war against terrorism and Arab aggression.
And the last time Israel withdrew from disputed lands without pre-conditions to allow the potential of the Palestinian people to shine through was in Gaza. The Arabs, hungering for the light of freedom, used the gift to elect Hamas - now an Iranian proxy and always a terror organization - to rain rockets down on the civilians that voted to allow the first democratic Arab entity in history.
If Obama expects Israel to end the "occupation" that began in 1967 he is also demanding Israel abandon parts of Jerusalem. If he really anticipates a Palestinian state will be "contiguous territory," what he expects is that Israel can't be contiguous.
And when he uses the word "occupation" he is negotiating for the Palestinians. None of the lands up for discussion are "occupied" territory. The president, a highly educated man, knows well that there has never been an ultimate agreement on borders, nor has there ever, in history, been a Palestinian state to occupy.
There is an ethical question that the president might want to answer, as well. Why would the United States support an arrangement that scrubs the West Bank of all its Jews? Why is it so unconscionable to imagine that Jews could live among Muslims in the same way millions of Arabs live within Israel proper? Not many international agreements feature ethnic cleansing clauses.
Isn't this, after all, about peace?
Of course, we all know the answer to this question: Jews would be slaughtered, bombed from their homes, rocketed from their schools.
This indisputable fact reveals the fundamental reality of these negotiations.
Instead of reaffirming the importance of our relationship with Israel, Obama has renewed our membership in the United Nations Human Rights Council, presided over by exemplars of self-determination and human dignity like Libya, Syria and Angola. The hobbyhorse of this organization is accusing Israel of war crimes, which isn't surprising.
Noted intellectual George Gilder argues in his recent book, "The Israel Test," that where you stand on Israel - not always, but in general - is an indication about how you feel about the ideals of liberty and capitalism. The debate over Israel, he claims, is the manifestation of a deeper moral and ideological war around the globe.
"The real issue," writes Gilder, "is between the rule of law and the rule of leveler egalitarianism, between creative excellence and covetous 'fairness,' between admiration of achievement versus envy and resentment."
This nation has no inherent duty to wage endless wars to secure freedom for the world's masses - often against their will. But shouldn't it stand with those nations that already value the basics tenets of a free and peaceful society?
Or, are all people now equally deserving of our friendship simply because they exist?
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