NewsTrust - Foreign Policy - Most Recent Stories: Opinion (Mainstream)

Do You Want the Good News First?

Sat, 19 May 2012 00:00:00 -0700

New York Times - By Thomas L. Friedman - May. 19 (Opinion) - I’ve spent the last week traveling to two of America’s greatest innovation hubs — Silicon Valley and Seattle — and the trip left me feeling a combination of exhilaration and dread. The excitement comes from not only seeing the stunning amount of innovation emerging from the ground up, but from seeing the new tools coming on stream that are, as Amazon.com’s founder, Jeff Bezos, put it to me, “eliminating all the gatekeepers” — making it easier and cheaper than ever to publish your own book, start your own company and chase your own dream. Never have individuals been more empowered, and we’re still just at the start of this trend.

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Hillary Clinton, barefaced and bespectacled, is a refreshing image in politics

Tue, 08 May 2012 00:00:00 -0700

Washington Post - By Suzi Parker - May. 08 (Opinion) - The caption read “Hillary Au Naturale,” and the photo showed the Secretary of state without makeup except lipstick, wearing black-framed glasses.

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A better understanding of Iran might save us from catastrophe

Sun, 11 Mar 2012 00:00:00 -0800

The Guardian - By Peter Beaumont - Mar. 11 (Opinion) - As Israel plays up the country's nuclear threat, the west should be seeking active dialogue with Tehran "Actions," said Samuel Johnson in his life of the English poet Abraham Cowley, "are visible." What are secret, Johnson added pointedly, are "motives". In the case of Iran's nuclear programme what we know of Tehran's actions and motives are the following. With some degree of "overall credibility" – according to the 2011 board of governors' report from the International Atomic Energy Agency – we know that Tehran, in all likelihood, made active studies of technologies associated with nuclear weapon design and payload design. By and large, the report believes, that activity ceased in 2003, coincident with the US-led invasion of Iraq. We know, too, because it has been even more visible, that Iran has come close to mastering the nuclear fuel cycle as well, including enrichment of uranium up to 20%. The problem with the present dangerous debate, as it has been framed ever-more closely ...

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Kony's Victims and the Kony 2012 Video

Sat, 10 Mar 2012 00:00:00 -0800

New York Times - By Lisa Shannon - Mar. 10 (Opinion) - The recent Kony 2012 viral video has attracted widespread controversy, as well as scrutiny of the organization Invisible Children. While it has stirred questions about the role of westerners advocating to end mass atrocities in Africa, as well as useful dialogue on non-profit fiscal management, the debate has obscured the key point. Joseph Kony’s immediate capture and delivery to the International Criminal Court (ICC) would be an unambiguous victory for humanity. It is the solution for which affected Africans have desperately, unanimously pleaded.

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Acta goes too far, says MEP

Wed, 01 Feb 2012 00:00:00 -0800

The Guardian - By Charles Arthur - Feb. 01 - Kader Arif, the lead Acta negotiator in the European Parliament, says Acta potentially cuts access to lifesaving generic drugs and restricts online freedom The French MEP who resigned his position in charge of negotiating the international Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement (Acta) has said it "goes too far" by potentially cutting access to lifesaving generic drugs and restricting internet freedom. In an exclusive interview with the Guardian, Kader Arif – a member of the European Parliament's international trade group, who was the lead negotiator over Acta – said that despite talks over the agreement having begun in 2007, "the European Parliament, which represents the rights of the people, had no access to this mandate, neither had it information of the position defended by the commission or the demands of the other parties to the agreement". Arif resigned in protest on 26 January as the EU signed the treaty, saying that he wished to "denounce in the strongest manner the process that led ...

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Our leadership is dire, but we mustn't despise government | Jeffrey Sachs

Sat, 17 Dec 2011 00:00:00 -0800

The Guardian - By Jeffrey Sachs, The Guardian - Dec. 17 - Our leaderships, in thrall to big business, are failing in so many places all at the same time. But we can't give up on them The year 2011 will be remembered as the year of failed summits. Governments proved themselves time and again to be failures at addressing the growing crises engulfing the world, whether the eurozone debacle, climate change, or budget politics in the US and Europe. Next year is likely to be worse, as electoral politics will further impede decision-making in the US, France and several other countries. Why should governance be so poor in so many places at the same time? There are several factors at play. Globalisation has undermined the manufacturing base of most of the high-income economies, costing millions of jobs and leading to stagnant or falling living standards for a large part of the workforce, especially those with basic skills and modest education attainment. The US has lost around 8-9 million manufacturing jobs since the peak in that sector in 1979, just as ...

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Op-Ed Columnist: The Technocratic Nightmare

Fri, 18 Nov 2011 00:00:00 -0800

New York Times - By David Brooks, New York Times - Nov. 18 (Opinion) - The European Union is an attempt to build an economic and legal superstructure without a linguistic, cultural, historic and civic base. No wonder it’s in crisis.

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Debate Preview: More Ahmadinejad's Missiles Than Cain's

Wed, 09 Nov 2011 00:00:00 -0800

Esquire - By Charles P. Pierce - Nov. 09 (Opinion) - Tonight, in the 3245th of 9876 scheduled debates between the candidates for the Republican presidential nomination, the topic is very likely to be OMG, SCARY IRANIAN NUKES! FECKLESS! NAIVE! HIDE UNDER THE BED!!! Of course, nobody in the field except Jon Huntsman, the Incredible Vanishing Mormon, has any serious experience at dealing with foreigners. Michele Bachmann has negotiated with nobody except the voices in her head for 10 years, and Rick Perry believes there are only two countries in the world — America-Fk-Yeah! and Meskinland. Newt Gingrich's most memorable overseas experience was bitching about his seat on Air Force One, and all Ron Paul knows about people in other lands is that we shouldn't give them any money. (He feels much the same about other Americans, too, so that's a wash, I suppose.) Mitt Romney's experience in foreign affairs is limited to bobsledders, and Herman Cain's experience in foreign affairs is — please, god in Heaven, let this be so — merely limited.

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In GOP campaign, foreign policy becomes economic

Wed, 05 Oct 2011 00:00:00 -0700

Associated Press - By Bradley Klapper - Oct. 05 (Opinion) - From the rise of China to the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, the revolutions of the Arab Spring to foreign aid for Pakistan, the Republican Party's presidential hopefuls are framing their foreign policy positions against the backdrop of America's crippling debt and high unemployment.

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Transcript – Fox News-Google GOP Presidential debate

Thu, 22 Sep 2011 00:00:00 -0700

Fox News - By Bret Baier - Sep. 22 (Speech) - This is a rush transcript from the Fox News-Google GOP Presidential debate on September 22, 2011 at the Orlando Convention Center in Orlando, Fla. This copy may not be in its final form and may be updated.

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Jimmy Carter: 'We never dropped a bomb. We never fired a bullet. We never went to war'

Sun, 11 Sep 2011 00:00:00 -0700

The Guardian - By Carole Cadwalladr - Sep. 11 - He may live a modest life in a one-horse town, but Jimmy Carter, now 86, retains his global vision. And 30 years after leaving the White House, the peanut farmer turned president is still a man on mission. In Plains, Georgia, we found the 39th US president full of energy… and determined to make a difference Where does Jimmy Carter live? Well, close your eyes and imagine the kind of house an ex-president of the United States might live in. The sort of residence befitting the former leader of the most powerful nation on earth. Got it? Right, now scrub that clean from your mind and instead imagine the sort of house where a moderately successful junior accountant and his family might live. It's what in America is called a "ranch house", or, as we'd say, "a bungalow". There are no porticoes. No columns. No sweeping lawns. There's just a small brick single-storey structure that Jimmy and his wife, Rosalynn, built on Woodland Drive back in 1961 when he was a peanut farmer and she was a peanut ...

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Foreign policy: intervention after Libya

Wed, 24 Aug 2011 00:00:00 -0700

The Guardian - Aug. 24 (Opinion) - It can be said that in narrow military terms the west's action over Libya has worked, and that politically there was justification It is too early to claim that the Nato intervention in Libya has been a success in the full meaning of that word. It will be weeks before we have a sense of where Libya is heading, months before there is any certainty about its future, and years before we can properly assess the impact of the decision to use force to aid the rebels. But it can now reasonably be said that in narrow military terms it worked, and that politically there was some retrospective justification for its advocates as the crowds poured into the streets of Tripoli to welcome the rebel convoys earlier this week. The argument that we had foolishly gone in on one side in a civil war must be weakened by such scenes, which suggest that the picture of a majority wishing to see the back of Gaddafi is closer to the truth than the alternative picture of a people more or less evenly divided between ...

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In Somalia, a failure in 1992 has led to a famine today

Wed, 03 Aug 2011 00:00:00 -0700

Washington Post - By Nuruddin Farah - Aug. 03 (Opinion) - After the United States left Somalia, the rest of the world stood by, leaving the warlords to profit from their criminality. Al-Qaeda strengthened its presence in the country. Foreign vessels entered Somali waters and engaged in illegal fishing, which caused piracy to balloon into an ugly reality. Somalia lived on mortgaged time, leased out to criminals of one sort or another, an ideal world for terrorists to flourish.

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Monetary union, always unworkable, has set in train a European disaster | Simon Jenkins

Fri, 22 Jul 2011 00:00:00 -0700

The Guardian - By Simon Jenkins - Jul. 22 (Opinion) - The eurozone is edging closer to doomed fiscal union. But sceptics shouldn't celebrate, as the chaos will reach Britain too At last, a real crisis. The Franco-German salvage operation for the eurozone was inevitable for the simple reason that Armageddon never happens. Nicolas Sarkozy and Angela Merkel patched together yet another "temporary" bail-out for the Greeks, and will do so for the Portuguese and Irish if need be. German taxpayers will pay the Greeks' bills and aid Europe's banks as they continue to profit from 20% interest on their sovereign loans. Power always wins, so long as it can get someone else to pay. A more intriguing crisis erupts in Britain. The chancellor, George Osborne, showed impressive cynicism in abandoning his opposition to a "two-speed" Europe and demanding that the eurozone move swiftly to fiscal union – with Britain firmly outside. Only such a union, he said, would discipline the debtor nations and thus avoid bank anarchy that would spill over into the British ...

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Obama’s communications gap

Sat, 16 Jul 2011 00:00:00 -0700

Washington Post - By David Ignatius - Jul. 16 (Opinion) - A prominent Bush administration official was talking privately about Barack Obama last week: He’s probably going to win in 2012, this Republican said. He deserves credit for “going big” in the budget talks and capturing the center of the debate. But why isn’t he projecting his goals and philosophy more clearly to the country? Why does he so often seem to react rather than lead?

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Who deserves an ICC arrest warrant more than himQaddafi - By David Rothkopf | David Rothkopf

Tue, 28 Jun 2011 00:00:00 -0700

Foreign Policy - By David Rothkopf - Jun. 28 (Opinion) - "What about George W.T.F. Bush?" he must be asking aloud while daubing shoe polish on his moustache and wondering silently who does Tom Selleck's? "He and Cheney violated every international law on the books, invaded a country, hundreds of thousands of innocent people died, and what do they get? Presidential libraries! Book contracts! State of the art pacemakers!"

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TV review: Keith Olbermann comes out swinging on Current's new ‘Countdown'

Tue, 21 Jun 2011 00:00:00 -0700

Los Angeles Times - By Mary McNamara - Jun. 21 (Review) - "In the briefest of special comments ... this is a newscast of contextualization, it is to be presented with a viewpoint, that the weakest citizen of this country is more important than the strongest corporation, that the nation is losing its independence through the malfeasance of one political party and the timidity of another and that even though you and I should not have to be the last line of defense, apparently we are so we damn well better start being it."

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How the US can win friends and influence people in Pakistan

Sun, 19 Jun 2011 00:00:00 -0700

The Guardian - By Bilal Baloch - Jun. 19 (Opinion) - In the post-Bin Laden milieu, many musings have been posted and printed about continuing US aid to, or more broadly, a relationship with, Pakistan. It is difficult to convince the populace on either side that this relationship is both vital to US nationa

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Libya and the War Powers Act

Fri, 17 Jun 2011 00:00:00 -0700

New York Times - Jun. 17 (Editorial) - It would be hugely costly — for this country’s credibility, for the future of NATO and for the people of Libya — if Congress were to force President Obama to abandon military operations over Libya. However, Mr. Obama cannot evade his responsibility, under the War Powers Act, to seek Congressional approval to continue the operation.

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From a Saudi prince, tough talk on America’s favoritism toward Israel

Tue, 14 Jun 2011 00:00:00 -0700

Washington Post - By Richard Cohen - Jun. 14 (Opinion) - He [Saudi Prince Turki al-Faisal} is also angry as hell, and he lets America have it. He starts by citing what he calls President Obama’s “controversial speech last month, admonishing Arab governments to embrace democracy and provide freedom to their populations.” Saudi Arabia, he wrote, heard what Obama said and took it “seriously,” and he noted, of course, that Obama had not demanded the same rights for Palestinians under Israeli occupation. Point taken.

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Together we remember — and forget

Mon, 30 May 2011 00:00:00 -0700

Boston Globe - By James Carroll - May. 30 (Opinion) - On Memorial Day, we remember how easy it is to forget. Today’s observance began as the honoring of war dead, then became a larger calling to mind of lost loved ones. On Decoration Day, the holiday’s old name, graves are marked with flags — but also with flowers.

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Unsafe Pakistan: Wishful thinking

Sun, 29 May 2011 00:00:00 -0700

Economist - May. 29 (Opinion) - 6-hour terrorist assault on a naval base in the middle of Karachi, which ended on Monday May 23rd, was brazen even by the recent standards of the Pakistani Taliban and its associates. As ever, official confusion, or obfuscation, initially reigned about what actually happened. The interior minister, Rehman Malik, said that no more than six attackers were involved (including two who escaped). He also said that the 11 Chinese and six American technicians working at the base were never taken hostage. But the initial report the navy lodged with the Karachi police said up to 15 raided the base. And suggestions circulated that Chinese had been taken hostage, before the Chinese foreign ministry denied them. The raid by the Pakistani Taliban on Mehran base was the most troubling terrorist attack on the country’s armed forces in two years. The attackers killed at least ten Pakistani guards in gun battles, turning the site into a war zone. Once again, terrorists made Pakistan’s armed forces look sadly amateur.

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Do the China-Pakistan pipeline shuffle

Fri, 27 May 2011 00:00:00 -0700

Aljazeera - By Pepe Escobar - May. 27 (Opinion) - China is adamant that the West "must respect" Pakistan's sovereignty. The message was delivered during Pakistani Prime Minister Yousuf Gilani's recent four-day visit to Beijing, The Times of India reconstructed the message as a stark warning that: "any attack on Pakistan would be construed as an attack on China."

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Mr. Ambassador, Meet President Zuckerberg

Fri, 27 May 2011 00:00:00 -0700

Slate - By Cyrus Farivar - May. 27 (Opinion) - Facebook is sending diplomats to foreign countries. Now foreign countries should send diplomats to Facebook.

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Henry Kissinger on China. Or Not.

Sat, 21 May 2011 00:00:00 -0700

Wall Street Journal - By BRET STEPHENS, Henry Kissinger - May. 21 (Interview) - The statesman takes a cautious view of Beijing's reaction to the Arab Spring, and U.S. relations with the world's rising power.

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