Impractical Proposals: foreign affairs

Showing posts with label foreign affairs. Show all posts

Sen. Sanders foreign policy experience

The author, a former Asst. Secretary of Defense (under Reagan!), who advised Reagan, Kerry, George HW and Obama, is the guy who was publicly surprised when Sanders cited him as someone he listens to re. foreign policy, as they had only met once during the campaign. Sanders was mocked for this, but the author actually believes Sanders is strong and experienced in the foreign policy realm. -- Andrew J. Lederer

Bernie Sanders Is More Serious on Foreign Policy Than You Think by Lawrence Korb (Politico)

Punditry

Here's a handy list of blogs edited by The Economist:

Decline of The Empire: Wikileaks hounded?

Here's a statement on the vilification of Wikileaks from Reporters Without Borders that one might have liked to have seen -- might once upon a time reasonably have expected to see -- on the editorial page of the New York Times or in a statement from the news networks:

Reporters Without Borders condemns the blocking, cyber-attacks and political pressure being directed at cablegate.wikileaks.org, the website dedicated to the US diplomatic cables. The organization is also concerned by some of the extreme comments made by American authorities concerning WikiLeaks and its founder Julian Assange.

Earlier this week, after the publishing several hundred of the 250.000 cables it says it has in its possession, WikiLeaks had to move its site from its servers in Sweden to servers in the United States controlled by online retailer Amazon. Amazon quickly came under pressure to stop hosting WikiLeaks from the Senate Committee on Homeland Security and its chairman, Sen. Joe Lieberman, in particular.

After being ousted from Amazon, WikiLeaks found a refuge for part of its content with the French Internet company OVH. But French digital economy minister Eric Besson today said the French government was looking at ways to ban hosting of the site. WikiLeaks was also recently dropped by its domain name provider EveryDNS. Meanwhile, several countries well known for for their disregard of freedom of expression and information, including Thailand and China, have blocked access to cablegate.wikileaks.org.

This is the first time we have seen an attempt at the international community level to censor a website dedicated to the principle of transparency. We are shocked to find countries such as France and the United States suddenly bringing their policies on freedom of expression into line with those of China. We point out that in France and the United States, it is up to the courts, not politicians, to decide whether or not a website should be closed.

Meanwhile, two Republican senators, John Ensign and Scott Brown, and an independent Lieberman, have introduced a bill that would make it illegal to publish the names of U.S. military and intelligence agency informants. This could facilitate future prosecutions against WikiLeaks and its founder. But a criminal investigation is already under way and many U.S. politicians are calling vociferously for Assange’s arrest.

Reporters Without Borders can only condemn this determination to hound Assange and reiterates its conviction that WikiLeaks has a right under the U.S. Constitution’s First Amendment to publish these documents and is even playing a useful role by making them available to journalists and the greater public.

We stress that any restriction on the freedom to disseminate this body of documents will affect the entire press, which has given detailed coverage to the information made available by WikiLeaks, with five leading international newspapers actively cooperating in preparing it for publication.

Reporters Without Borders would also like to stress that it has always defended online freedom and the principle of “Net neutrality,” according to which Internet Service Providers and hosting companies should play no role in choosing the content that is placed online.

For other aspects of the Wikileaks story:
Full coverage of The US embassy cables on the guardian.co.uk site;
BBC News' Wikileaks revelations;
WikiLeaked: Inside the State Department's Secret Cables Credit MacLeod Cartoons http://macleodcartoons.blogspot.com/

Credit MacLeod Cartoons http://macleodcartoons.blogspot.com/

at Foreign Policy's blog;
Wiki Leaks on Democracy Now!;
One Analyst, So Many Documents: How could Bradley Manning alone have leaked so much classified material? by Marc Ambinder;
US embassy cables: The job of the media is not to protect the powerful from embarrassment by Simon Jenkins;
The Shameful Attacks on Julian Assange by David Samuels;
Wikileaks Evolves by Raffi Khatchadourian;
WikiLeaks reveals more than just government secrets, The moral standards of WikiLeaks critics and other Salon posts by Glenn Greenwald;
WikiLeaks vs. The Empire by Tom Hayden;
Hillary Clinton Gets Wiki-Served by Robert Scheer;
The (Not So) Secret (Anymore) US War in Pakistan by Jeremy Scahill;
Greg Mitchell's Blogging the Wikileaks;
WL Central: An unofficial WikiLeaks information resource.

Visit MacLeod Cartoons.

Talking Turkey

"...take population out of the equation -- an admittedly big variable -- and Turkey promptly becomes a likely candidate for future superpower. It possesses the 17th top economy in the world and, according to Goldman Sachs, has a good shot at breaking into the top 10 by 2050. Its economic muscle is also well defended: after decades of NATO assistance, the Turkish military is now a regional powerhouse. Perhaps most importantly, Turkey occupies a vital crossroads between Europe, the Middle East, and Central Asia. A predominantly Muslim democracy atop the ruins of Byzantium, it bridges the Islamic and Judeo-Christian traditions, even as it sits perched at the nexus of energy politics. All roads once led to Rome; today all pipelines seem to lead to Turkey. If superpower status followed the rules of real estate -- location, location, location -- then Turkey would already be near the top of the heap." -- Stealth Superpower: How Turkey Is Chasing China to Become the Next Big Thing by John Feffer (Guernica 2010-06-14).

Change Watch: Do we support democracy or not?

As I said during the campaign, on the foreign policy side, it would make no difference who won. Obama, Clinton, McCain...we would remain in Iraq, expand the An image of our designs on Africa?

war in Afghanistan and Pakistan, continue to pursue a program of aggressive militarism (vide, Africom, our scheme to bring peace to Africa by militarizing it), and so on. What was the choice of Biden as veep but a wink and a nod to the military, the intelligence community and the foreign policy establishment that Obama was reliable? The Democrats could be counted on to put a more palatable spin on our activities overseas, but in no way to alter the fundamentals. So it was no surprise that we didn't act aggressively last month to restore the democratically elected president of Honduras, Manuel Zelaya, after he was driven into exile by a military coup.

...is the Obama administration simply trying to change the appearance of the USA internationally or are they attempting to shift US policy? The response to the Honduran coup seems to indicate the former. They do not want the appearance of the demonic Bush administration, but they are not prepared to support a Honduran administration which is allied with the likes of Venezuelan President Chavez and Bolivian President Evo Morales. Instead this starts to appear to be a Clintonian solution, i.e., a repetition of President Bill Clinton's approach to the coup people in Haiti in 1994. He-Clinton-was prepared to restore democratically elected President Jean Bertrand Aristide, however he would do so only under certain conditions (one being giving up on his populist economic program and the second being that he was only to serve out the remainder of his term despite the fact that years had been robbed from him). In the Honduran case, a "compromise" might be offered that simply restores President Zelaya but essentially neuters him.

So much for Honduran sovereignty; so much for a different US approach to foreign affairs....

-- The Honduran Coup, the Media and Obama by Bill Fletcher, Jr on Black Commentator

See also, No Justification for Coup by Bertha Oliva (Miami Herald 2009-07-15)

Documentary: The War on Democracy

The War on Democracy is John Pilger's first film for theatrical release - in a career that has produced more than 55 television documentaries. Set in Latin America and the US, it explores the historic and current relationship of Washington with such countries as Venezuela, Bolivia and Chile. "The film tells a universal story," says Pilger, "analysing and revealing, through vivid testimony, the story of great power behind its venerable myths. It allows us to understand the true nature of the so-called war on terror." Indeed it does. <http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/>

Action: The Earth Charter Initiative

"The Earth Charter is an authoritative synthesis of values, principles, and aspirations that are widely shared by growing numbers of men and women in all regions of the world.

"The principles of the Earth Charter reflect extensive international consultations conducted over a period of many years. These principles are also based upon contemporary science, international law, and the insights of philosophy and religion. Successive drafts of the Earth Charter were circulated around the world for comments and debate by nongovernmental organizations, community groups, professional societies, and international experts in many fields." -- from the website. <http://www.earthcharter.org/>

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