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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.
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.
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.”
Photo
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.”
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)
Crimea parliament votes unanimously to join Russia
March 6, 2014 9:15 AM EST
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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.
Jeremy Scahill (L) and Glenn Greenwald (R), two of the new venture's editorial leaders.
Reuters/Pilar Olivares
Media's new business model:
+
Find a really rich guy who's into the news.— Dave Pell (@davepell) October 16, 2013
+
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.
+
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.
+
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.
+
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.”
+
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.
+
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.
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
