Look at these faces. While the rest of the world wrings its hands and waits helplessly on the sidelines, Burma’s government says it will accept aid, but that it doesn’t want the help of foreigners in getting it to the people. (BBC News) The UN is pretty sure the government’s own unaided efforts won’t be enough.
The UN says that up to 1.5 million people may have been affected by Cyclone Nargis, which devastated the Irrawaddy Delta region on Saturday. Burmese state media say 22,980 people were killed, but there are fears the figure could rise to 100,000.
Hundreds of thousands of people have no food, water or shelter. Officials say people could die because no help is getting to them.
In a statement, UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon urged the junta to prioritise the aid effort over tomorrow’s nation-wide referendum on a widely-criticised new constitution.
It would be "prudent to focus instead on mobilising all available resources and capacity for the emergency response efforts", he said. (BBC News)
The world’s second most populous nation is up-in-arms over remarks recently made by President Bush, as he attempted to explain rising food and energy prices to an audience in Maryland.
The president said the following:
“There are 350 million people in India who are classified as middle class. That’s bigger than America. Their middle class is larger than our entire population,” said Bush. “And when you start getting wealth, you start demanding better nutrition and better food. And so demand is high, and that causes the price to go up.”
Minister of State for Commerce, Jairam Ramesh: “George Bush has never been known for his knowledge of economics. And he has just proved once again how comprehensively wrong he is.”
West Bengal’s Chief Minister Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee: “It is preposterous for anyone to say that global food crisis, including the crisis in America, is because Indians are eating more. It is needless to say what the Indians get to eat or what they (Americans) eat. This only shows how he has lost his senses” … he added that Bush’s remark was nothing more than a “cruel joke.”
But striking a conciliatory note, Surojit Chatterjee writes for the Business Times: “Being well-informed or choosing words carefully are not his specialty. … Let’s be forgiving to the U.S. President. … Let us stop pointing fingers at one another and receive Bush’s remark with a pinch of salt and a hearty laugh.” Read the rest of this entry »
When Nicolas Sarkozy was elected president one year ago today, the US media was full of praise for him and expected a big improvement in transatlantic relations.
Sarkozy’s pro-American rhetoric was very much appreciated, because it was a big contrast to Gerhard Schroeder’s US critical election campaigns. With Schroeder replaced by Angela Merkel and Chirac now replaced by Sarkozy, many Americans were looking forward to a new era in transatlantic relations led by a younger generation of pro-American leaders in Europe.
In the last few months, however, President Sarkozy announced some policy changes that indicate more support for US interests, so perhaps I should reconsider my position on Sarko. Gaelle Fisher has written a very balanced analysis on the question “Has Sarkozy truly improved the state of transatlantic relations and earned his reputation as the most pro-American president France has ever had?” She presents three arguments in favor and three against in a pro & con feature on Atlantic Community: Sarkozy l’ Américain? Here is a snippet:
Sarkozy has agreed to increase France’s contribution to the war effort in Afghanistan by adding 1500 to 1700 to the existing French contingent of 1600, sending combat troops to the East, and providing military arsenal. Yet the main new element of French military cooperation with the United States is Sarkozy’s commitment to reintegrating France into NATO’s military wing.
On Sarko’s first anniversary in power, the French are very critical of his domestic policies (and his style), but I wonder what Americans think of his foreign policy. Has he met your expectations? Has he repaired the damage in transatlantic relations as expected by many in the US media?
While at WORLDMEETS.US, we have seen a good deal of support for John McCain in the Portuguese-speaking countries ofBrazil and Portugal, chiefly due to McCain’s promise to include Brazil in the G8 and his relatively liberal trade policies, this op-ed from Portugal’s Jornal de Negicios is decidedly concerned about what might happen under a McCain presidency.
After examining some of the specifics of McCain’s foreign policy plans, including his plans to create a “League of Democracies,” “expand NATO to include all democratic states,” exclude Russia from the G-8 and include Brazil and India, João Carlos Barradas writes for Jornal de Negocios:
“McCain’s plans are frightening in their incoherence, total lack of realism and underestimation of economic and financial constraints. … Even before Beijing or Moscow put the heat on the eventual Republican president, the apprehension of allies in Berlin, Tokyo and Riyadh would be such that either McCain will have to change course or he will condemn the United States to a proactive interventionism capable of bringing even greater misfortune.
There is angst on North Africa - otherwise known as the Maghreb - over the second-class treatment meted out to the region by the Bush Administration.
And since this is where the Pentagon intends to headquarter its new African Command - and since it hosts a blossoming al-Qaeda presence - this is not an inconsequential matter.
In the latest in a series of articles WORLDMEETS.US has translated that one might call “we can’t get no repect,” Read the rest of this entry »
Could the Northern Alliance - America’s allies who helped bring down the Taliban Government in 2001 and bring Hamid Karzai to power - be behind the brazen attempt on his life during a military parade last week?
“Who was behind the April 27 attempt on the life of the President of the Islamic Republic of Afghanistan, Hamid Karzai, and what did they have to gain? Read the rest of this entry »
In highlighting the ongoing legal prosecutions at Siemens - the German mega-giant now mired in what some have called the greatest bribery scandal of all time, Klocks writes:
“What German courts were unable to achieve and even the Pope would have failed to accomplish, has now been done by the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission. … The capitalists themselves insist that the train of greed remain on the tracks - its tracks.”
Kocks then goes on to describe how the Pietists created the first capital markets - which leads him to what created the business powerhouse known as the United States of America: Read the rest of this entry »
As Frederick Kagan spins Neo-Con daydreams of “turning a corner,” McClatchy reporters on the ground are telling a different story:
“One of the most powerful men in Iraq isn’t an Iraqi government official, a militia leader, a senior cleric or a top U.S. military commander or diplomat. He’s an Iranian general, and at times he’s more influential than all of them.”
Gen. Qassem Suleimani, commander of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps’ Quds Force, as “Tehran’s point man on Iraq,” is manipulating election of pro-Iranian politicians, meeting often with Iraqi leaders and backing Shiite elements in Iraqi security forces in the torturing and killing of Sunni Muslims.
According to American and Iraqi officials, Suleimani is Iran’s Petraeus who has succeeded, among other things, in slipping into Baghdad’s Green Zone in 2006 to orchestrate the choice of a new Iraqi prime minister and building intelligence networks in Iran’s embassy while providing Shiite Muslim militias with generalship, cash and arms, including mortars and rockets fired at the US Embassy and advanced roadside bombs that have killed hundreds of Americans and Iraqis.
How do Iraqis feel about Muqtada al-Sadr’s Mahdi Army, and the fact that for the past three years, it has been permitted to operate as a de-facto part of the Iraqi state - in the process driving away a good portion of Baghdad’s non-Shiite population? Now that Baghdad seems serious about putting a stop to the Mahdi Army, Fateh Abdusalam asks in Iraq’s Azzaman newspaper:
“One of the many questions that are forbidden or that can only be asked with great difficulty - like something that’s so hard to swallow, one needs a drink afterwards - is this one: Why was the Mahdi Army permitted to operate day and night for three years … Why was the Mahdi Army allowed to parade in front of the public and guard areas of central Baghdad, flouting what passes for democracy, the rule of law and the fiction of a “just constitution?” … Why is a person who was above the law three years ago, now wanted by the law? What has changed: the person or the law or the ones in charge of overseeing that law?
By Fateh Abdusalam
Translated By Nicolas Dagher
April 24, 2008
Iraq - Azzaman - Original Article (Arabic)
There’s a king of perverse equality in Iraq, which is that no one has a right to ask questions. Or everyone has a right to ask questions, according to Democratic theory, but not everyone who asks a question has a right to an answer.
The same can be said about questions on political matters. There are those who excuse this situation and exempt the Iraqi government from any responsibility on the grounds that, ‘the eye cannot overcome the will” … or the American administration of Iraq, where the file of outstanding problems remains suspended in the Pentagon.
One of the many questions that are forbidden or that can only be asked with great difficulty - like something that’s so hard to swallow, one needs a drink afterwards - is this one: Why was the Mahdi Army permitted to operate day and night for three years - and especially the last two years - since the eruption of sectarian strife [since the bombing of the Golden Mosque] and the failure of the notorious government of al-Jaafari, which showed leniency toward all parties involved and failed to control the strife, all of which only served to pour oil on the fire?
Why was the Mahdi Army allowed to parade in front of the public and guard areas of central Baghdad, flouting what passes for democracy, the rule of law and the fiction of a “just constitution?” The public airwaves reported on these “authorities” as though they comprised part of the new Iraqi state - until three-quarters of Baghdad’s original population comprised of various sects and groups were forced to flee because they weren’t “loyal” to those who prevailed in the street … or to those who prevailed in the secret/or open headquarters of public authorities or armed parties.
Why does the Mahdi Army remain silent about the “renegades and infiltrators” who used its name and address for years, through the consent of alliances and friendships. … until a crisis of “existence” and “authority” broke out with a party that was smarter and better equipped logistically [the Badr Brigades of al-Hakim?] and which caused all parties to expose the dirty laundry of their opponents.
READ ON AT WORLDMEETS.US, along with continuing translated coverage of the Iraqi side of the war.
Why is it that Iraq’s wealthy Arab neighbors refuse to forgive its debts or restore full relations with in the country, while Western and Asian countries have forgiven billions and long ago reopened their Baghdad Embassies?
“One can understand their reasons. The damage done to many of them during the years of the Saddam Hussein regime was simply too great, despite the fact that today, Iraq is ruled by a different regime. … one would have though that this page would have been turned long ago. … However, Iran stated in the conference’s final communique that relations with Iraq during the dark past would not prevent it from developing new relations with Baghdad. And it is here that we see the true cause of Arab reluctance. It is Iran’s influence on the new Iraqi Government, which largely represents the Shiite community, that is making the Sunni-led governments of Iraq’s Arab neighbors so reluctant to develop new ties and cancel its debts.”
By political commentator Maria Appakova
Translated By Igor Medvedev
April 23, 2008
Russia - Novosti - Original Article (Russian)
MOSCOW: For some reason, the outcome of the Third Expanded Ministerial Conference of the Neighboring Countries of Iraq, in Kuwait City on April 22, which was designed to combine the efforts of countries interested in stabilizing Iraq, has instead created a sense of unease.
The opening speech by Iraqi Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki and the final communiqué released by the conference raises the question of who needs Iraq more - its neighbors or the West (and Russia, for that matter).
The Kuwait conference was already the third event of its kind in the past year. The first meeting of Iraq’s neighbors, with the participation of other concerned nations, was held in May 2007 in Egypt; the second, in November in Turkey. And in that intervening year, very little of the underlying intrigue in regard to the U.S.-Iran standoff has changed, nor has the agenda of these meetings - discussing the possibility of writing off Iraq’s debts to other Arab countries and the reopening of their embassies in Baghdad.
In his speech, Nouri al-Maliki appealed to creditor countries to forgive Baghdad’s debts - a legacy of the government of Saddam Hussein. And he asked Arab countries to re-open their embassies in Baghdad.
According to Maliki, it’s difficult to understand why they have yet to restore diplomatic relations with Iraq, while many other countries have reopened embassies in Baghdad despite ongoing difficulties in the security sphere. With regard to Arab countries, they seem to be biding their time - Saudi Arabia promised to reopen its embassy a year ago, but still hasn’t implemented its intentions. Now Kuwait and Bahrain are making vague promises, careful not to mention specific dates.
On the one hand, one can understand these Arab countries. The first attempts some of them made to reopen embassies in Baghdad ended tragically - in August 2003, during a terrorist attack mounted against Jordan’s diplomatic mission, 17 people were killed. In 2005, several Algerian and Egyptian diplomats were abducted and killed. And then, for example, there was the murder of Russian Embassy staff in 2006, although this was not used as a pretext to close the mission.
Granted, security is a sensitive issue. But what prevents Arab countries - and these countries are not poor - from easing Baghdad’s debt burden?
Over the past three years, $66.5 billion of Iraq’s $120 billion debt burden has been forgiven. Along with Russia’s $12 billion in debt relief, the Paris Club waived a total of $42.3 billion, while non-Paris Club members cancelled another $8.2 billion under the same conditions as the Club. Commercial creditors relieved Iraq of $16 billion. Of the remaining amount - between $56.6 and $79.9 billion - about half is owed to the nations of the Arab Gulf, which seem in no hurry to help.
READ ON AT WORLDMEETS.US, along with continuing translated foreign press coverage of the War in Iraq.
As the craze for Obama spreads across the French countryside, the concern of Democrats Abroad is growing, as fear that Hillary could be doing irreparable harm to the Party’s likely standard-bearer in November starts to take hold.
“She’s playing the Bush card and the politics of fear. It’s because of her that we have the shameful racial bias that has been introduced into the country! It makes me crazy!”
“This election concerns the entire planet … it’s important to us … we are attentive to the emergence of this candidate bearing hope and who is open to the world.” Read the rest of this entry »
“The old adage that “the first casualty of war is truth” is one to which the Pentagon has stuck to with unheard of will, strength, and consistency. Thanks to the Benedictine work a journalist from The New York Times - and there is no better word to describe it- we now know that the U.S. executive has applied itself to building a propaganda machine so powerful, that it highlights the disdain that Bush and company feed on with respect Read the rest of this entry »
Republicans might be interested to know that there are some people in the world, in this case in Brazil, who already assume that John McCain will beat either of his Democratic challengers.
“Bush sees the world in terms of good and evil, and he considers that only a united front encompassing all 2.2 billion Judeo-Christians will be able to resist Islam. Recent decades have seen increasing religious tension and the spread of theocracies, which now encompass almost all Arab countries.” Read the rest of this entry »
Credulous, likely-senile Jimmy Carter had tea with the terrorist group Hamas and now, according to MSNBC, Hamas is asking for a 10-year “truce” while refusing to recognize the State of Israel on the condition that said State of Israel return to the nearly-indefensible 1967 (read 1949) borders.
This is nothing new from Hamas, which would love to import offensive weaponry for the next 10 years while ruling both the West Bank and the Gaza Strip. Hamas’ terrorist attacks will simply be farmed out to (or conveniently blamed upon) Islamic Jihad, Hezbollah, Al-Qaeda, Al-Aksa Martyrs’ Brigades etc…while Hamas claims to be at peace and that Israeli self-defense violates this ‘hudna’ (an Islamic temporary truce until victory can be attained over an unwary enemy).
Hamas had its chance to give up violence and become a constructive political organization when it won that so-called election. Hamas could have suppressed violence and dismantled the other terrorist groups (see above list) while working with Israel and the world community to ease the plight of its subjects. Did Hamas choose to grow up? No way! Hamas chose to blow its big chance and continue to bring misery to the Palestinian Arabs.
Only an ignorant, politically-correct, self-righteous moralizing fool would buy-into this nonsense.
The presidential election was held in Zimbabwe more than three weeks ago. While it’s widely rumored that strongman Robert Mugabe was ousted by voters, we don’t know for sure. That’s because his government has refused to reveal the results.
Mugabe apparently intends to cling to power, continuing to exercise his reign of terror (and error), thuggishly intimidating opposition, and killing off the Zimbabwean economy, while claiming that all the bad stuff in his country is Britain’s fault.
How is Mugabe holding on?
He has help, first from the South African government which, in spite of pious protestations to the contrary, has been Mugabe’s most stalwart backer.
Next, he gets help from the government in China.
A few days ago, dockworkers in South Africa refused to allow a shipment of arms they feared, rightly I think, will be used on Zimbabwean dissidents. (Read: Ordinary citizens who want their country to be a functioning democracy.) The shipment comes from China, whose government will do anything to feed the economic engine of their country, all designed to placate the Chinese populace while maintaining its own iron fisted hegemony on power.
The growing world food crisis looks like a montage in a disaster movie–crowd scenes of hungry rioters in Haiti, Egypt and Africa’s Ivory Coast; close-ups of emaciated mothers holding out starving children to anyone who will feed them; well-fed gray men in paneled rooms clucking impotently.
Before the World Bank meeting last weekend, president Robert Zoellick talked about the growing emergency caused by doubling wheat and rice prices in the past year. “While many are worrying about filling their gas tanks, many others around the world are struggling to fill their stomachs and it’s getting more and more difficult everyday,” he said.
But at the meeting, nothing was done. An official of the International Monetary Fund observed that “the best sort of response is to allow market forces to operate, to allow prices to rise so that there can be a supply response.”
Has the CIA infiltrated the Ecuadorian intelligence services - and is Ecuadorian intelligence feeding information to the Colombian government? These charges have been leveled by Ecuador’s President Correa against his own intelligence services - and there are some in Ecuador who are demanding he provide evidence.
Carlos Freile writes for Ecuador’s La Hora, “We Ecuadorians also have the right to demand, respectfully but with vigor, that President Correa clarify his accusations that our own intelligence services have been working at the behest of the CIA.”
“If he does not provide evidence of this elephantine accusation, Ecuadorians will have every justification to think that it was an impetuous charge made without sufficient proof, demonstrating either a lack of prudence and moderation, or that the tale of a link was invented to provoke turmoil in the military high command. In both cases, his conduct and honor will have been badly compromised.”
By Carlos Freile
Translated By Miguel Guttierez
April 19, 2008
Ecuador - La Hora - Home Page (Spanish)
We have every reason to ask President [Rafael Correa] to demand that Colombia provide evidence of the alleged links between our national government and the FARC. We Ecuadorians await that evidence, although critics have aired some well-founded doubts: Why such eagerness to impede the investigation into the alleged financing of the FARC by the PAIS Alliance? [The ruling party]. What were the most recent statements by [Hugo] Chavez on this subject? Why not meticulously question the Mexican student [Andrea Lucía Morret] about his contacts in Ecuador and how he got to the [FARC] guerrilla camp - and other critical issues?
[Editor’s Note: President Correa on April 5, accused the CIA of controlling many of his country’s spy agencies and said it had shared Ecuadorian intelligence with Colombia during last month’s regional crisis . On March 1, there was a Colombian bombing raid of a FARC camp in Ecuadorian territory. The raid killed 25 people including FARC commander Raul Reyes and the four Mexican students . One of them, Andrea Lucía Morret, survived. The author would like to know why Morret isn’t being questioned about Colombian allegations of a link between Ecuador and the FARC. The FARC, shorthand for the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia-People’s Army, is a left-wing guerilla group that now controls about 40 percent of Colombian territory [see map on right].
We Ecuadorians also have the right to demand, respectfully but with vigor, that President Correa clarify his accusations that our own intelligence services have been working at the behest of the CIA. As he made this accusation in public, it is his moral obligation to provide us with details about this tremendous charge that, if shown to be true, would demonstrate ruinous conduct, to say the least.
If he does not provide evidence of this elephantine accusation, Ecuadorians will have every justification to think that it was an impetuous charge made without sufficient proof, demonstrating either a lack of prudence and moderation, or that the tale of a link was invented to provoke turmoil in the military high command. In both cases, his conduct and honor will have been badly compromised.
READ ON AT WORLDMEETS.US, along with continuing translated foreign press coverage of U.S. toes to Latin America.
From everything we can gather so far, there are few fans of a John McCain presidency in the Russian press - and the same can be said of President Bush. Asking what’s wrong with Bush’s Iraq strategy is the same as asking what the danger of a John McCain Administration would be. Galina Zeveleva of Russia’s Novosti News Service writes, “Bush continues to rely on force, thereby multiplying the army of terrorists more quickly than he can suppress them, while strengthening the conviction in Iran that possession of nuclear weapons is the only guarantee of its security.” Read the rest of this entry »
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