Thursday, March 6, 2014

Obama Cuts Funds for Israeli Missile Defense

Obama Cuts Funds for Israeli Missile Defense

In the same week that the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) intercepted a Gaza-bound shipment of Syrian missiles from Iran, President Barack Obama is asking Congress to reduce U.S. funding for Israel's missile defense programs by $200 million, according to the Washington Free Beacon. 

In a press statement reacting to the news, Republican Jewish Coalition executive director Matt Brooks said: "Today, the Israelis captured a ship carrying missiles from Iran destined for Gaza and earlier this week a rocket fired from Gaza fell in the Ashkelon region of Israel. The threats to Israel are real, constant, and serious. This is clearly not the time to step back from our support of Israel and her defense. Yet President Obama proposes significantly cutting U.S. funding for joint missile defense projects with Israel at this dangerous time."
In the past, the White House and the Obama re-election campaign had used funding for Israeli missile defense as a talking point to fend off criticism of his confrontational policies towards Israel, arguing that President Obama has achieved unprecedented security cooperation with the Israeli military.

American Experts on Russia Say There Are Not Enough of Them

American Experts on Russia Say There Are Not Enough of Them

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WASHINGTON — “I have to do a TV broadcast now, can I call you back in maybe an hour?” Angela Stent, the director of Georgetown University’s Russia studies department, said when she picked up the phone. An hour later she apologized again. “I’m afraid I’ll have to call you back.”
For Ms. Stent and other professional Russia watchers, the phone has been ringing off the hook since Ukraine became a geopolitical focal point. “It’s kind of a reunion,” she said. “Everyone comes out of the woodwork.”
But while the control of Crimea by President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia has brought America’s Russia experts in from the cold, the news media spotlight has also revealed important shifts in how American academics and policy makers think about Russia, not to mention the quality and quantity of the people doing the thinking. Among those experts, there is a belief that a dearth of talent in the field and ineffectual management from the White House have combined to create an unsophisticated and cartoonish view of a former superpower and potential threat.
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Ukraine Crisis in Maps

A visual survey of the ongoing dispute, including satellite images of Russian naval positions and maps showing political, cultural and economic factors in the crisis.
Michael A. McFaul, who returned from his post as the American ambassador in Moscow on Feb. 26, as the crisis unfolded, said the present and future stars in the government did not make their careers in the Russia field, which long ago was eclipsed by the Middle East and Asia as the major draws of government and intelligence agency talent.
“The expertise with the government is not as robust as it was 20 or 30 years ago, and the same in the academy,” Mr. McFaul said.
The drop-off in talent is widely acknowledged. “You have a lot of people who are very old and a lot of people who are very young,” said Anders Aslund, a senior fellow at the Peterson Institute for International Economics and a former economic adviser to Boris N. Yeltsin, a former president of Russia. Mr. Aslund said people in the prime of their careers mostly abandoned Russia in the 1990s.
“It is certainly harder for the White House, State Department and intelligence community to find up-and-coming regional experts who are truly expert on that region,” said Strobe Talbott, the president of the Brookings Institution and President Bill Clinton’s Russia point man.
Compounding the effects has been a lack of demand for Russian expertise at the very top of the foreign policy pyramid. Successive White Houses have sought to fit Russia into a new framework, both diplomatically and bureaucratically, as one of many priorities rather than the singular focus of American foreign policy. Since Mr. Clinton empowered Mr. Talbott, the portfolio has shrunk, and with it the number of aides with deep Russian experience, and real sway, in the White House.
As a result, Russia experts say, there has been less internal resistance to American presidents seeking to superimpose their notions on a large and complex nation of 140 million people led by a former K.G.B. operative with a zero-sum view of the world.
While President George W. Bush looked into Mr. Putin’s soul, former Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice spoke his language and President Obama sought a so-called reset of relations, they all found themselves discouraged that Mr. Putin, and Russia, did not behave the way they thought they should.
Some experts lamented that instead of treating Mr. Putin as a partner on issues like the global economy and energy markets, the Obama administration has taken a more transactional approach. After Mr. Putin returned to the presidency following a stint as prime minister, dismissed new American arms control ideas and gave asylum to Edward J. Snowden, Mr. Obama essentially threw up his hands and declared a “pause” in the relationship. By that point, Mr. McFaul was considered about 8,000 miles too far from the Oval Office to affect decision making.
“When the Russians talk to the Obama administration, they want someone who they know speaks on behalf of the president personally,” Andrew S. Weiss, vice president for studies at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace and a Russia expert formerly on the National Security Council staff. “Now that McFaul is gone, they are not sure they have that.”
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Michael A. McFaul, the American ambassador to Russia. Credit David Goldman/Associated Press
That deficiency is not an accident of history.
In the midst of the Cold War, leading universities had whole departments dedicated to understanding the Soviet Union. The top national security question of the day drew the top minds, many of whom became fluent in Russian language and culture and graduated into the government or the spy agencies. But the breakup of the Soviet Union broke up those departments, and the national security enthusiasts melted away. Professors found themselves out of funding and eventually jobs.
Last year, the State Department ended a grant that Mr. McFaul benefited from as a young Russia scholar and that was specifically intended for Russian and Eurasian research. “That looks shortsighted, considering what we are looking at lately,” Mr. McFaul said.
Stephen F. Cohen, professor emeritus of Russian studies and politics at New York University, said that if anyone had the power to save the program, it would have been Mr. McFaul. Mr. Cohen, who recently wrote an article titled “Distorting Russia” for The Nation, which is edited by his wife, Katrina Vanden Heuvel, has embraced his role as dissenting villain in the current Russia debates, during which he consistently argues a perspective closer to that of Mr. Putin.
“This is what I tell bookers,” Mr. Cohen said, referring to those who book him for television appearances. “I will go on with somebody who disagrees with me 100 percent, but the moment he calls me a Putin apologist, I’m going to say” something that cannot be said on the air.
He does agree with his colleagues that the field is not what it once was. It is something the Russians have noticed, too.
During his time in Russia, Mr. McFaul said, American indifference bothered the Russians. “That asymmetry, that we still loomed large for them but for us they didn’t loom large,” he said. “I felt that a lot as ambassador.”
Now the Russia experts hope that a global crisis some believe is a result of American naïveté and unsophistication about Russia may serve as the catalyst for a new generation of Russia experts. Andrew C. Kuchins, director of the Russia and Eurasia program at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, who was himself drawn to the subject as a 13-year-old watching President Richard M. Nixon’s 1972 visit to the Soviet Union, said the Ukrainian crisis was big enough “to capture your imagination.”
If not, the United States may be increasingly caught off guard.
“When we’ve all retired, 10, 20 years down the road, I don’t know how many people will be left with this area of expertise,” said Ms. Stent of Georgetown University, who just published “The Limits of Partnership: U.S.-Russian Relations in the Twenty-First Century.” “And we can’t assume that our relationship with Russia won’t suddenly command a lot of attention. Because as we can see, it does.”

Donald Trump: “We’re Becoming A Third-World Country”

Donald Trump: “We’re Becoming A Third-World Country”

"We have so much potential," he said. "We need to use it."


Donald Trump SC
During his address to the 2014 Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) Thursday, Donald Trump pulled no punches in his portrayal of America’s current state of affairs. The Western Center for Journalism is covering the three-day gathering in Washington, D.C. and is reporting the analysis by Trump and many other prominent speakers.
Real unemployment, the famed entrepreneur and former Republican presidential candidate estimated, is as high as 22 percent. Dishonest calculations, however, suppress the real results of Barack Obama’s disastrous economic policies.
“When you give up looking for a job,” he explained, “it’s like they consider you employed.”
Americans are waking up to the truth, however, as Obama’s approval ratings hit all-time lows.
“I’d love to see him do a great job … but we all know it’s not going to happen,” Trump said, concluding that “we’re getting into Jimmy Carter territory.”
America does have incredible untapped potential, he insisted; but it will take a concerted effort among patriotic Americans to secure a bright  future for this nation.
“Somebody said, ‘Who is your audience?’ These are people that love the country, that want to see it be great again. It’s that simple,” he said.
As a pivotal midterm election approaches, Trump expressed confidence that the Republican Party will win back the U.S. Senate. He is also optimistic about the 2016 presidential election; however, he said the years following that cycle will be very trying for the country.
“If you look and study it like I do,” he said, “all of the problems are being deferred to the year 2016 after the election. I don’t know how the Republican leadership is allowing that to happen.”
He shared a common concern among economists that the years of 2017 and 2018 could usher in an “economic catastrophe” as the policies of the Obama administration are fully implemented.
“Whoever’s president, good luck,” he said. “You’re going to have to be smart.”
America currently has a surplus of problems, he said, and a dearth of leadership. He pivoted to Obama’s abysmal foreign policy, touching on the upheaval in Ukraine. Just as Russian President Vladimir Putin targeted the economic center of the Crimean peninsula, he said attacks on American economy are threatening this country.
Instead of “rebuilding and rebuilding” schools and roads in Afghanistan, he concluded the money would be much better spent on similar projects in the U.S.
“We’re becoming a third-world country,” he said.
Trump mentioned several issues that must be addressed immediately, including America’s porous borders and lax immigration policy.
“We either have borders or we don’t,” he said.
While he conceded that “ObamaCare has to be changed,” he criticized some Republicans who want to strip Social Security benefits — as well as those who are targeting Medicaid and Medicare.
“I want to make this country so strong and so rich and so powerful,” he continued, that those programs remain solvent for those who need them most. Polling suggests, he said, that even the most conservative Americans want to maintain these programs, even as some GOP leaders are campaigning on a platform to radically decrease their funding.
“How the hell do you get elected when you want to do that?” he asked.
He insisted that addressing and preventing fraud within those programs, however, should be a priority.
In the end, he said America’s future is in the hands of its leaders, urging voters to support those who will fight for our constitutional values.
“We have so much potential,” he said. “We need to use it.”
Photo credit: Gage Skidmore (Creative Commons)
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Crimea parliament votes unanimously to join Russia

Crimea parliament votes unanimously to join Russia

Crimea parliament votes unanimously to join Russia

The Crimean parliament has voted for the region to join Russia, not Ukraine

By Staff Writer
(INTELLIHUB) — The Crimean parliament has decided that joining Russia was the lesser of two evils, with a western backed revolution taking over Ukraine.
The speaker of the Crimean parliament, Vladimir Konstantinov, said that the parliament’s decision to join Russia still needs to be approved by a referendum, which has been scheduled for March 16.
We are not in a rush, but that’s what the current situation demands,” Konstantinov told Itar-Tass. ‘We are trying to address the sentiments currently shared by the population. Those are uncertainty and fear. We must give them confidence and offer a clear political way out of the crisis.
There will be two questions on the Crimean referendum ballots.
The first one: Are you in favor of Crimea becoming a constituent territory of the Russian Federation. The second one: Are you in favor of restoring Crimea’s 1992 constitution,” the region’s First Deputy-Premier Rustam Temirgaliev said.
The new Ukrainian government has declared the referendum illegal and opened a criminal investigation against Crimean Prime Minister Sergei Askyonov.
“If there weren’t constant threats from the current illegal Ukrainian authorities, maybe we would have taken a different path,” deputy parliament speaker Sergei Tsekov told reporters outside the parliament building in Crimea’s main city of Simferopol.
“I think there was an annexation of Crimea by Ukraine, if we are going to call things by their name. Because of this mood and feeling we took the decision to join Russia. I think we will feel much more comfortable there,” he added.
Pierre Omidyar, the founder of eBay, has become the latest billionaire to get into the news business. But while parallels will inevitably be drawn with other recently minted media barons like Amazon founder Jeff Bezos (the Washington Post), Chris Hughes (the New Republic), John Henry (the Boston Globe), and Alexander and Evgeny Lebedev (Britain’s Independent and Evening Standard), those could be misleading. Omidyar is not buying a venerable institution with a legacy, audience and print edition to protect, but starting up a new venture—and if done right, it has the potential to challenge the UK’s Guardian for a left-leaning global audience.
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The motives of rich men (so far, of late, no women) who buy established media outlets are often questioned. It can’t possibly be profit, goes the thinking, so is it ego, or political power? Bezos has told his new vassals that “[t]he values of The Post do not need changing,” but some suspect him of buying it to either push a libertarian agenda or give Amazon political backing. Facebook co-founder Chris Hughes wrote that the New Republic will champion serious reporting and “ask pressing questions of our leaders,” but Hughes has taken heat for seemingly letting his coziness with president Barack Obama (whose first election campaign he helped run) influence editorial decisions. The Lebedevs faced similar questions, and have clashed this year with their journalists over proposed cuts.
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One might, it is true, suspect Omidyar—as some suspect Bezos—of wanting to promote the pro-technology, low-regulation culture in which companies like eBay thrive. But if so, that’s probably only a small part of his agenda. The as-yet-unnamed venture’s editorial brains will be three Americans known for their leftist leanings and fierce criticism of the establishment: the Guardian’s Glenn Greenwald, the Nation’s Jeremy Scahill and documentary film-maker Laura Poitras. Omidyar has been a public admirer of the work of Greenwald in particular, whose publication of documents leaked by the US whistleblower Edward Snowden have rocked intelligence services and set off a bitter debate about the role of journalists.
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Moreover, this isn’t Omidyar’s first dabble in civic activism. He founded Honolulu Civil Beat, a investigative-journalism outlet for Hawaii, where he lives, and has two philanthropic investment funds. NYU journalism professor Jay Rosen, whom Omidyar consulted about it, writes that he wants to create a home for ”independent, ferocious, investigative journalism” that “creates a check on power.”
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But this won’t be a philanthropically-funded shop like ProPublica or Inside Climate News, both of which have carved out Pulitzer-winning paths by focusing narrowly on investigative reporting. It will be “a company not a charity,” Rosen writes, and “will cover general interest news, with a core mission around supporting and empowering independent journalists across many sectors and beats,” writes Omidyar.
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That, along with the pedigrees of its editorial chiefs, suggests that we could (eventually, of course, not at once) see something more like the UK’s Guardian—but unencumbered by a declining print newspaper, and with deeper pockets. Omidyar, according to Forbes, is worth a mere $8.5 billion to Bezos’ $27.2 billion, but that’s still enough to start up a very nice little news business.

how do you all like not getting my news

next time instaed of reporting me for spam you should be nice have new bloggs wonder are you sorry for ratting on me
in jail you know what they do to rats
beat the crap out of them so in joy not reading my post guess you will have to find were i am now next time be nicxe