The Spanish equivalent of chutzpah is "sin vergüenza." It’s a phrase that comes to mind reading the transcript of President Obama’s recent weekly address on "Getting America Back to Work."
The president once again signaled his support for pending free trade agreements (FTAs) with Colombia, Panama, and South Korea, but then proceeded to blame Congressional Republicans for ostensibly obstructing their final approval by refusing "to put country ahead of party." (Since he doesn’t specifically name Republicans, one has to infer he is not speaking about Democrats.)
The audacity is breathtaking. In fact, the charge didn’t escape notice by the Washington Post fact-checker, which admonished the President: "[w]e do think it is a highly selective recounting of…history for the president to suggest GOP lawmakers are blocking the deal because they are putting party before country."
"Moreover," it adds, "Obama leaves the distinct impression that Congress is sitting on the bills, when in fact they have not yet been officially submitted for consideration."
The reason they haven’t been submitted is that the White House knows that the deals will be approved on a straight up-and-down vote in both houses, since a significant number of Democrats support the deals as a way to stimulate production and create jobs.
But the White House’s slow-roll is due to its deference to Big Labor, which opposes the deals and happens to be a key constituency of the president’s party – and just exactly who is putting party ahead of country?
Indeed, since they were first negotiated under the Bush administration, opponents of the FTAs have shiftedthe goal posts so many times for final approval that it has been difficult to keep up.
The latest hoop the White House expects Republicans to jump through to placate Big Labor is renewing Trade Adjustment Assistance(TAA), a program designed to assist workers who are dislocated because of increased foreign trade, but which costs taxpayers $1.3 billion this year alone.
After initially balking at yet another condition – and an additional $1 billion in federal subsidies in these times of budget austerity – Senate Republicans announced in August that they had reached a deal with the Democratic leadership on "a path forward" to vote on the three trade deals along with a renewal of TAA, an agreement that was supported by House leaders as well.
Under the agreement, it likely won’t be until October when the deals will be taken up by Congress – which means anything can happen over the next several weeks. It certainly doesn’t bode well that, with the outlines of an agreement on Capitol Hill to move forward, including an extension of TAA, the president felt compelled to take a gratuitous swipe at Republicans. It isn’t clear what was it intended to accomplish other than to further inflame tensions on the Republican side.
Free trade agreements create jobs and keep the United States competitive in the dynamic and always evolving international economy. There is a strong bipartisan consensus on this on Capitol Hill. The only discordant note continues to be struck by a special interest group trying to hold the national interest hostage to its narrow agenda. It’s long past time to move beyond politics as usual on international trade, and, yes, Mr. President, that means folks — all folks — in Washington putting country before party.
The Census Bureau?s poverty report is sure to be cited in coming months as lawmakers make difficult decisions about how to balance the competing goals of cutting deficits and preserving safety nets.
The first stop in a tour of Ron Prosor‘s gallery of memories is not the portraits of his three children and wife hanging from his office wall, or the pictures of Israel’s new U.N. envoy shaking hands with ex-presidents George W. Bush, Bill Clinton and former British Prime Minister Tony Blair.
It’s a photograph that captures a moment during negotiations over the 1994 Cairo Agreement, when the late Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat, confronted by a visibly livid Egyptian president Hosni Mubarak and Israeli Foreign Minister Shimon Peres, refused to sign off on a territorial provision from Oslo Peace Process. In the end, Arafat did ultimately sign the landmark May 4 accord establishing Palestinian self-rule in the Gaza Strip and the West Bank.
But it was that moment of apparent hesitation that stuck with Prosor all these years and which, in a larger sense, has come to define the prevailing Israeli narrative about Middle East peace process — that it’s the Palestinians inability to close a deal, and make peace, that has brought the Middle East Peace process to the brink of failure.
That’s the narrative Prosor, Israel’s ambassador to the U.N. since June, is hoping will help derail, or at least weaken, Palestine’s drive to gain the United Nations’ recognition as an independent state in September. "We are seeking a moral minority of countries who would oppose this move," he told Turtle Bay in an interview in his office.
But with most U.N. delegations still inclined to doubt Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu‘s willingness to make the painful concessions required to secure a final peace deal with Palestine, it’s unclear how successful Prosor’s campaign will be.
So far, the Palestinians claim to be winning the numbers game at the United Nations. Palestinian officials insist they has secured commitments from 122 countries — just shy of the 129 required for the 2/3 majority needed for a measure to pass — to support a non-binding General Assembly resolution declaring a Palestinian state. And while General Assembly action would not be sufficient to grant Palestine the status of an independent state — only the Security Council has the authority to approve new U.N. members — it would be a strong symbol of Israel’s growing isolation at the United Nations.
On Monday, Norway’s foreign minister Jonas Gahr Stoere, following a meeting with Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas, suggested Oslo may be inclined back the Palestinian bid, saying it was "perfectly legitimate" for the Palestinians to seek a vote on statehood. Spain’s Foreign Minister, Trinidad Jimenez, followed suit, assuring Abbas in a meeting that the bid for U.N. recognition is "legitimate" and that Madrid would consider any Palestinian proposals at the United Nations "in a constructive spirit," according to the AFP.
Still, there’s no guarantee that the Palestinian resolution will succeed. U.S. President Barack Obama has said that Israel can count on the diplomatic backing of the United States (whose veto power in the Security Council will come in handy if a vote for Palestinian sovereignty is ever held there.) Israeli officials are also confident they can split the European Union vote in the General Assembly, leveraging their close relations with Germany. Indeed, the Palestinians have struggled to secure firm commitments from key European powers, including France and Britain, who have expressed sympathy with the Palestinian position but have been reluctant to risk a rift with Israel.
But Israel will also have to contend with the fact that the creation of a Palestinian state has been a principal objective of the United Nations since its birth. In 1947, the U.N. General Assembly adopted Resolution 181 calling for the partition of Palestine into Jewish and Arab States. The measure was never implemented and Israel declared independence the following year, setting the stage for a military attack against the new Jewish state by five Arab countries. But more than sixty years of armed struggle, war and negotiations has still not delivered the Palestinians their own state.
The latest diplomatic standoff comes nearly one year after President Barack Obama announced his hopes before the U.N. General Assembly that the Palestinians and Israelis would negotiate a peace agreement between themselves by September 2011, paving the way for the Palestinians to join the U.N. as an independent nation. With peace talks now stalled the Palestinians have vowed to seek U.N. recognition on their own terms.
"We will seek to go to the U.N. next September in order to obtain membership for the state of Palestine," President Abbas said Monday. "Our way is to go to the Security Council. If we fail we will go to the General Assembly."
The Obama administration has urged the Palestinians to avoid a confrontation at the United Nations over statehood, saying it would do little to advance their aspirations for independence. Direct negotiations with the Israelis, they say, offers the only hope of a viable independent Palestinian state.
"The goal is not a Security Council resolution per se," Jeffrey Feltman, Assistant Secretary for Near Eastern Affairs, told Washington Post reporter William Wan in an interview last month in Istanbul, Turkey. "The goal is to get a state that looks like a state, acts like a state, that has the flexibility of statehood, that provides jobs for Palestinians, that gives Palestinian youth a future in which they can invest themselves. That’s the sort of statehood we want, not just something that’s created or not created through [a] resolution."
Prosor said his government is actively pursuing a resumption of direct talks with the Palestinians through unnamed "intermediaries." But he noted that any "unilateral actions" by the Palestinians to declare independence would be a breach of the Oslo accords. "I hope we will be able to move forward," he said. "But we need two to tango."
The Palestinian’s U.N. ambassador, Ryad Mansour, maintains that Israel is the one blocking peace talks by pursuing the construction of new Israeli settlements on Palestinian lands. He said that the there is an international consensus that the settlements are an illegal obstacle to peace and that any future talks with Israel must be based on a set of six elements, or parameters, including an acknowledgment by the Israelis that direct talks would be negotiated on the basis of the 1967 borders, with agreed land swaps, and that the fate of Palestinian refugees will be resolved.
"We agree that that unilateral actions are destroying the possibility of the revival of the peace process," Mansour told reporters last month. "The biggest unilateral action that we’ve been seeing for a long time is the illegal settlement campaign by Israel against our people."
Prosor denied that the settlement policy is a hurdle in the peace process, noting that Israel Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu imposed a nine-month freeze on settlements without securing a Palestinian commitment to enter into direct negotiations. The real obstacle for peace, he said, is the Palestinian demand for the right of return of refugees. "There is not going to be a right of return because it is a euphemism for the destruction of Israel in numbers," Prosor said.
Despite the stalemate, Prosor said that one of his chief goals as Israel’s new U.N. envoy is to present Israel before the world as a normal country, free of the baggage that comes from its ongoing regional struggles.
He cited Israel’s efforts to promote good works in the developing world, including solar energy programs irrigation initiatives it is carrying out in Africa. He also highlighted his country’s ceremonial role in June as chair of the U.N.’s main western voting block — the Western and Others Group (or WEOG) — during the reelection of U.N. Secretary General Ban Ki Moon for a second term and the election of a Qatari diplomat as the new General Assembly President.
But with the troubles with Palestine tending to attract more attention than Israel’s other good deeds, Prosor will have his work cut out for him in the months ahead.
While most hotels are equipped with hotel room controls, they can better cater to the needs and preferences of guests by integrating a back-office software solution. This enables staff to monitor and control specific room functions from a remote location, granting enhanced efficiency.
I’m still on self-imposed vacation from blogging in order to finish my book manuscript, so my comments on Kyrgyzstan will have to be very brief. Food for thought:
First, for obvious geopolitical reasons, pundits are paying much less attention to protests in Kyrgyzstan than they did to protests in Iran and Burma (or even Thailand). If there were no U.S. military bases in Kyrgyzstan, I doubt that this story would ever have made the front page of the New York Times. But social media couldn care less about geopolitics and military bases. Predictably, we see no significant buzz on Twitter; unlike Justin Bieber, the Kyrgyz revolution is not "trending" as a popular topic there.
Unsurprisingly, we don’t see much eulogizing about the Internet’s "revolutionary power" in the Western media either. But this does not mean we have suddenly become more reflective or less cyber-utopian; it only means that "Kyrgyzstan" is much harder to pronounce than Iran and most people couldn’t care less about it; there is no critical tweetering mass that could fuel the kind of collective fantasy that was fueled by "#iranelection" on Twitter. Consequently, there is no pressure on the Western media to dream up non-existent (Twitter-powered!) angles to news stories: getting their viewers/listeners/readers up to speed on what/where Kyrgyzstan is would eat up the whole story anyway. In short: why is there no Twitter revolution in Kyrgyzstan? Becuase there is no one to hype it up.
Second, those who are in the know about Central Asia and could push this story much harder to the fore of public attention are also predictably cautious: Kyrgyzstan’s earlier revolution — the Tulip one — was not exactly a paragon of democratization. So whatever role social media is playing in today’s revolution is poised to be accompanied by much more cautious and much less celebratory rhetoric, for no one could really be sure that the vector of change we are observing in Kyrgyzstan is "towards democracy" (that said, I do think that it’s hard to outperform Bakiev’s regime when it comes to incompetence and lack of respect for human rights).
Iran, too, wasn’t really such an obvious case — after all, Moussavi, a former Iranian prime minister with quite a few dark spots on his resume, made for a very poor "martyr for democracy" — but at least Ahmadinejad’s evil was fully transparent and was thus very easy to hate (go ask anyone in any small American town what they think about Ahmadinejad and Iran; then try the same trick by asking them about Bakiev/Kyrgyzstan).
Third, based on what I’ve seen on Twitter — and I must say I haven’t been looking very hard and it’s not a scientific sample — there are quite a few people in the country who are tweeting about what’s going on, in Russian/Kyrgyz/English but no one is using Twitter to organize anything (given that the entire revolution was kind of disorganized and spontaneous, it’s hard to make an argument that someone organized anything over Twitter).
Besides, all the tweeting/facebooking/blogging that came out of Kyrgyzstan was possible because the previous government was caught by surprise and did not have enough time to cut off all communications. The whole revolution, apparently, appears to be little else but an afterthought: even the opposition was not expecting it to succeed. Obviously, what matters in most revolutionary circumstances is how fast one can disconnect all communications, and, well, the Kyrgyz government has obviously not given much thought to the issue.
Expect that "turn-it-all-off-with-one-click" systems would get really popular with authoritarian rulers (hey, this could be the new "red button"!). At the same time, we’ll probably continue seeing the Kyrgyz opposition — which now technically is no longer in opposition — rely on Twitter to push their messages to Central Asia watchers/media folks in the West. That’s, of course, perfectly rational and I would even say smart. But it’s not the kind of spontaneous grassroots-based organizing the pundits were extolling during the events in Iran.
Finally, some pundits have observed that the availability of footage/tweets from Kyrgyzstan would certainly make other dictators rethink their own vulnerability and heed the right lessons. I agree. This is a variation on the "demonstration effect" argument, which, because of the pervasive liberal bias, we usually believe to work only in one direction (example: "Oh, now that the Uzbek activists have seen what’s possible in Kyrgyzstan, they too would rise up"; this, of course, can be countered with a completely opposite point: "Oh, now that the Uzbek/Turkmen/Kazakh dictators have seen what’s possible in Kyrgyzstan, they too would take preemptive measures"). By this logic, the folks who really learned the most from the Orange Revolution in 2004 were not the anti-government activists in Minsk, but Kremlin operatives in Moscow.
Bottom line: new media played no visible role in organizing the protesters and some role in broadcasting what was happening to the rest of the world (it’s not clear though whether this broadcasting had any real impact on the police’s ability to control the unruly protesters). That’s a preliminary judgement: I have no clue how well the Kyrgyz opposition was organized in reality; based on media reports, it seems like they were not.
Obviously, I’ve also omitted any discussion about the regional dimensions to this revolution, for the example, the split between Kyrgyzstan’s North and South and how both regions were communicating with the capital, and how what happened in each reinforced/undermined developments elsewhere. I’m well aware of that. But this would get us into a much-longer historical conversation about the role of communications (I’d venture that even faxes/telegraphs would do this kind of job — no need for Internet media or anything of the kind).
For all the hype about "digital revolutions", "analog revolutions" are still the norm, not the exception.
It is far from clear what will come of the Palestinians? bid to have the United Nations recognize their territory as a state. But the effort is engaging a deeply cynical public.
Imagine 10 years of being my own boss, of learning to market my business better, of disciplining myself to spend time on the tasks that matter most, and of helping clients live their dreams – priceless. And although there were a few times I wondered if I should go back to get a “real” job, I realize that my work is the most real and truest work I’ll ever get to using my skills and bringing me joy – I am truly blessed to be a successful Coach and business owner.
