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President Obama has a long track record of insulting the Poles. In 2010 he chose to play golf on the day of the funeral of the Polish President Lech Kaczynski, the Polish First Lady, and 94 senior officials who perished in the Smolensk air disaster. Eight months earlier he humiliated Warsaw by pulling out of the agreement over Third Site missile defence installations in Poland and the Czech Republic. And last night Barack Obama caused huge offence in Poland by referring to a Nazi death camp in Poland as “a Polish death camp” while awarding the Presidential Medal of Freedom...

Obama is getting a lot of praise for his recent successes in foreign policy, particularly the new and clever doctrine of "leading from behind," which, we're assured, is superior to the practice of earlier presidents such as FDR and Harry Truman. Along with the usual left-liberal suspects we've heard from John McCain, who really should know better. (The latest on record is the great Geraldo Rivera, who paused from interviewing dolphins or whatever he's been doing lately to inform us that Obama has mastered the most "efficient" foreign policy of any president -- granted that "efficiency" is not the first...

Secretary of State Hillary Clinton shared a laugh with a television news reporter moments after hearing deposed Libyan leader Muammar Qaddafi had been killed. "We came, we saw, he died," she joked when told of news reports of Qaddafi's death by an aide in between formal interviews. Clinton was in Tripoli earlier this week for talks with leaders of Libya's National Transitional Council (NTC). The reporter asked if Qaddafi's death had anything to do with her surprise visit to show support for the Libyan people. "No," she replied, before rolling her eyes and saying "I'm sure it did" with a...

Johnnie Stevens of Workers World Party gave the following talk at the July 30 meeting in New York’s Riverside Church protesting the war against Libya.Attacking Libya is attacking Africa! The war against Libya is a colonial war against all of Africa! I want to ask you all to come out on Sat., Aug. 13, to march in Harlem against the attacks on Libya and Zimbabwe and against the economic cuts of teachers and workers. Who’s all coming out for the march in Harlem, please stand up. (The audience stood up.) Our party’s first demonstration was in 1959 at Rockefeller Center...

Spoke Larry Johnson, No Quarter, to hear the scuttlebutt from Army circles around Ft. Bragg that the NATO meeting some 24 hours ago did not proceed to harmony. The NATO chief Rasmussen made remarks about some states being difficult and quickly, it is reported, the German and the French representatives left the meeting in annoyance. Soonafter, the Italian representative demand that either NATO support the coalition war-making or else the offer of the Italian airfields is withdrawn. Today, Turkey repeated this formula in its own fashion, declaring that NATO must take over the operation. Turkey also offered to mediate between...

U.S. President Barack Obama is under heavy pressure from critics to condemn Libyan strongman Muammar Qaddafi as estmates of the death toll in his massacre of opponents pass the 1,000 mark. Tens of thousands of foreigners are trying to flee the country by air, land and sea. Italian Foreign Minister Franco Frattini on Wednesday told the parliament in Rome that the it “appears to be true” that more than 1,000 civilians have been slaughtered by Qaddafi’s armed forces and hired mercenaries, who are being paid up to $2,000 a day. He also expressed concern about a rise in “Islamic radicalism”...

The American government secretly backed leading figures behind the Egyptian uprising who have been planning “regime change” for the past three years, The Daily Telegraph has learned. The American Embassy in Cairo helped a young dissident attend a US-sponsored summit for activists in New York, while working to keep his identity secret from Egyptian state police. On his return to Cairo in December 2008, the activist told US diplomats that an alliance of opposition groups had drawn up a plan to overthrow President Hosni Mubarak and install a democratic government in 2011. The secret document in full He has already...

White House Press Secretary Robert Gibbs said Monday that it is "not for me or our government to determine" whether Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak should leave office amid massive protests against his rule. Gibbs said the United States is "not picking between those on the street and those in the government." Yet Gibbs also said the U.S. was seeking an "orderly transition" in Egypt. Asked what he meant with those words, the press secretary said the United States wanted to see "a process of negotiations with a broad cross-section of the Egyptian people.

Bolton Says Obama ‘Basically Doesn’t Care About’ Foreign Policy, Compares Him to Dukakis Monday, January 31, 2011 By Christopher Neefus John Bolton (CNSNews.com) - Former U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations John Bolton said Friday that President Barack Obama “basically doesn’t care about” foreign affairs, considering them ancillary to his domestic agenda. He said he thinks Obama’s view of the United States’ role in the world is comparable to that of failed presidential candidate Michael Dukakis. “I think the most significant aspect of the president’s approach to foreign and national security policy is that he basically doesn’t care about it,”...

One of the issues raised in the run-up to our last presidential election was the question "Which candidate is best qualified to handle a '3 AM moment'?" America now has a partial answer. It isn't President Obama. Last Friday was Day 4 of the ongoing protests in Egypt, where tens of thousands Egyptians took to the streets to demand the ouster of President Hosni Mubarak. As the situation reached a flash point, with a mounting death toll and Egyptian tanks in the streets of Cairo, President Obama maintained his silence. Well, not quite. He did Twitter, by proxy.

Asymmetrical warfare was supposed to benefit the insurgents. For the price of a few flying lessons a gang of jihadis brought down the World Trade Center,a terrorist with a bottle of hydrogen peroxide and powdered Tang can blow up an airplane,and a few pounds of plutonium can cripple a major city. Meet the Reverend Terry Jones, asymmetrical warrior. It appears that pinpricks can produce chain reactions in the Islamic world. The threat may be termed asymmetrical because Islam is more vulnerable to theological war than Christianity (or for that matter Judaism). As the youngest of the major religions (apart from...

If Pakistan's intelligence service continues to plot terrorist attacks with the Taliban in Afghanistan, as the mass of documents released yesterday by Wikileaks allege, who is responsible for covering this up for so many years? The answer, I argue in this morning's Asia Times Online, is everybody. This raises the question: Who covered up a scandalous arrangement known to everyone with a casual acquaintance of the situation? The answer is the same as in Agatha Christie's 1934 mystery about murder on the Orient Express, that is, everybody: former United States president George W Bush and vice president Dick Cheney, current...

The 92,000 American classified military documents released by WikiLeaks add to the evidence that Pakistan's intelligence service backs the Taliban, to the point of helping the Taliban plan assassinations of American and Afghan officials. This raises the question: Who covered up a scandalous arrangement known to everyone with a casual acquaintance of the situation? The answer is the same as in Agatha Christie's 1934 mystery about murder on the Orient Express, that is, everybody: former United States president George W Bush and vice president Dick Cheney, current US President Barack Obama and Vice President Joe Biden, India, China and Iran....

PART 1 OF ARTICLE: http://atimes.com/atimes/South_Asia/LG09Df01.html PART 2 OF ARTICLE: http://atimes.com/atimes/South_Asia/LG09Df02.html PART 3 OF ARTICLE: http://atimes.com/atimes/South_Asia/LG09Df03.html

One doesn’t get promoted at the Pentagon, or for that matter on Wall Street, by telling the boss to sacrifice this quarter’s results in order to address a looming disaster in the long term. Petraeus pulled the Bush administration’s chestnuts out of the fire, as well as the reputations of conservatives who signed on to the COIN (for “counterinsurgency”) strategy of turning the American military into a Peace Corps with guns. Afghanistan is different. Hiring the locals with bags of money is far more difficult for a number of reasons. One is that there is no clear sectarian division; the...

Memo to heads of state: beware the clever general who turns up at a tough moment, and says "Leave it to me: I can fix it for you." Two examples come to mind. The great field marshal of the Thirty Years War of 1618-1648, Albrecht von Wallenstein, taught armies to live off the land, and succeeded so well that nearly half the people of Central Europe starved to death during the conflict. General David Petraeus, who heads America's Central Command (CENTCOM), taught the land to live off him. Petraeus' putative success in the Iraq "surge" of 2007-2008 is one of...

Since his early days in office, Barak Obama has sought to influence public thought by manipulating language. As matters of policy, acts of “terrorism” became known as “man-caused disasters,” and terrorists captured in the field were no longer considered “unlawful enemy combatants.” Now, he has purged the terms “Jihad” and “Islamic extremism” from a national security strategy document to show that the U.S. “does not view Muslim nations through the lens of terror.” Thus, Obama seeks to define out of existence the essential nature of today’s terrorist threat in order to placate those who justify or condone terrorism. He also...

A decade ago I argued that radical Islam might horrify the West into submission through the mass sacrifice of Muslim lives. During the past two weeks Iran has virtually invited a nuclear exchange with the West, in a series of statements that blend a deranged sort of bluster with malevolent calculation. Iran's Kayhan press service warned last week, "If the US strikes Iran with nuclear weapons, there are elements which will respond with nuclear blasts in the centers of America's main cities." Meanwhile, Behzad Soltani, the number two man at Iran's Atomic Commission, proclaimed last week, "Iran will join the...

<p>Indian diplomats close to Singh say the lackluster results show how far the relationship has fallen since Bill Clinton and the two Bushes transformed a strained Cold War rivalry into a close strategic partnership between the world's largest democracies. Obama's predecessors built a relationship around trade negotiations, joint military exercises, and ad hoc coalitions for humanitarian assistance in the aftermath of the Indonesia tsunami. Despite his reputation for uniquely pushy diplomacy, it was George W. Bush who concluded the landmark deal that recognized India as a legitimate nuclear power and opened the door to the sale of civilian nuclear technology to India. No single American move has done more to demonstrate Washington's respect for New Delhi as a rising and equal power. Now Obama, who came to office promising to respect U.S. allies, is backpedaling on that deal, to the growing chagrin of the Indians.</p>

U.S. President Barack Obama's demands during his meeting with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu last Tuesday point to an intention to impose a permanent settlement on Israel and the Palestinians in less than two years, political sources in Jerusalem say. Israeli officials view the demands that Obama made at the White House as the tip of the iceberg under which lies a dramatic change in U.S. policy toward Israel. Of 10 demands posed by Obama, four deal with Jerusalem: opening a Palestinian commercial interests office in East Jerusalem, an end to the razing of structures in Palestinian neighborhoods in the capital,...

The UK government needs to be "less deferential" towards the US and more willing to say no to Washington, a group of MPs have said. The Commons Foreign Affairs committee also said it was wrong to speak of "the special relationship" with the US, as it was fostering other alliances. However, the MPs did agree that the link between the countries was "profound and valuable". The Foreign Office said the two nations share a "unique" bond. The committee said the phrase "the special relationship" did not reflect the "modern" Anglo-American relationship. It was originally coined more than 60 years ago...

Jews have been accused of harming and murdering non-Jews since the twelfth century in England, when Jewish convert to Catholicism Theobald of Cambridge perjuriously proclaimed that European Jews ritually slaughtered Christian children each year and drank their blood during Passover season. That medieval blood libel, largely abandoned in the contemporary West, does, however, still appear as part of the Arab world's vilification of Jews -- now transmogrified into a slander against Israel, the Jew of nations. But in the regular chorus of defamation against Israel by a world infected with Palestinianism, a new, more odious trend has begun to show...

Secretary of State Clinton delivered a speech yesterday that threw down a gauntlet at the feet of Israel. She perfectly outlined the administrations position on the Middle East, which is everything is Israels fault. Ignoring Netanyahu’s support for a two-state solution, his easing of West Bank freedom of access and his facilitation of major projects to improve the West Bank economy her claim is, a willing Palestinian leadership’s desire for viable peace terms through the expansion of Jewish neighborhoods in Judea, Samaria and east Jerusalem. She also forgot to mention that before the Administration began to harp on the the...

US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton has said the Obama administration will seek to block a controversial bill describing as genocide the World War I killing of Armenians by Turks. A congressional panel on Thursday approved the resolution, paving the way for a possible vote by the House.

ANKARA, Turkey (AP) - Turkey's foreign minister is warning of a breakdown in ties with the U.S. after a congressional committee approved a resolution branding the World War I-era killing of Armenians genocide. Ahmet Davutoglu said Friday the Obama administration had not sufficiently put its weight behind efforts to block the vote. He called on the administration to prevent the measure from coming to the full House.

The US's inability to back threats with tangible actions in response to Iran's nuclear trickery has cost America a key non-proliferation tool and suggested the waning of a global power. There is a glimmer of hope for President Barack Obama, but success over Iran's nuclear programme will require quieter, closed-door diplomacy, both with Tehran and international partners. Obama ascended to the presidency vowing to engage Iran in dialogue about its nuclear weapons programme. As president, he has also talked tough about his determination to work multilaterally to prevent further nuclear weapons proliferation. "Rules must be binding. Violations must be punished...

Why has there been no progress in the Mideast peace process? The time has come to recognize that there has always been an unspoken issue that might be described as the “elephant” in the room: that Arab countries have never recognized Israel’s right to exist as a Jewish state. Israel has always made it clear that any peace agreement must include a clear recognition and acceptance of Israel’s right to exist as a sovereign state in the region. Prime Minister Netanyahu has even presented that issue as a precondition. He has also made it clear that his government joins previous...

BARACK Obama will make his first official visit to Australia as president next month as part of a planned trip to Indonesia and the Pacific island of Guam. White House press secretary Robert Gibbs confirmed the trip today, saying the President's visit was an important part of his efforts to broaden and strengthen partnerships necessary to advance US security and prosperity. Mr Gibbs said that while in Australia, Mr Obama would commemorate the 70th anniversary of formal diplomatic relations between the US and Australia. The President also looked forward to holding discussions with Kevin Rudd on issues including the economic...

I try not to overdose on the fear factor, but the shocking intelligence failure in the Christmas airline plot isn't the only national security night mare facing America. While we were all absorbed with the underwear bomber, the Iranian nuke mess took another big turn for the worse. President Obama's end-of-the-year deadline for the mad mullahs to make a deal on uranium enrichment came and went, but not without incident. There were three, none good. Most troubling, the White House proved it still doesn't have a Plan B, even though its unBush diplomacy has proven to be a total dud....

Barack Obama's administration supports Egypt's vision for a Middle East peace plan that would include a complete halt of construction in West Bank settlements as well as the release of senior Palestinian officials from Israeli prisons, the Qatar-based news network Al-Jazeera reported on Sunday. The U.S. administration is making efforts to convince Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas to agree to the resumption of peace talks through a series of goodwill gestures on the part of Israel - including the release of prisoners and the transfer of territory under Israel's security control (Area B) to Palestinian security control (Area A). These proposals,...

How much puzzling did President Barack Obama and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton do when Mahmoud Ahmadinejad of Iran rebuffed them? Remember how liberal Democrats claimed the world hated the US because of President Bush and then tossed up the canard that 911 was the result of Bush’s power projection? Barely eight months in office President Bush hadn’t even visited Israel yet by September 2001 let alone stirred the hornet’s nest in the Middle East. He didn’t visit Israel until 2008; in fact prior to his election in 2000 there were questions whether he would be pro-Israel at all. Iran...

No despot fears the president, and no demonstrator in Tehran expects him to ride to the rescue. With year one drawing to a close, the truth of the Obama presidency is laid bare: retrenchment abroad, and redistribution and the intrusive regulatory state at home. This is the genuine calling of Barack Obama, and of the "progressives" holding him to account. The false dichotomy has taken hold—either we care for our own, or we go abroad in search of monsters to destroy or of broken nations to build. The decision to withdraw missile defense for Poland and the Czech Republic was...

The story of the United States and Iran regarding sanctions and pressures reminds me of Woody Allen's joke in the film "Sleeper" after he awakes following 2000 years asleep: My analyst was a strict Freudian and if I'd been going four times a week all this time I'd be cured by now. The proposal to send Senator John Kerry to Iran is one more signal that the Obama Administration seemingly will do anything to avoid, or at least postpone, increasing sanctions on Iran because of that country's nuclear weapons' drive. Such a move can only be taken by Tehran as...

President Obama has written a personal letter to North Korean leader Kim Jong Il that was delivered by the administration's special envoy for North Korea during a visit to Pyongyang last week. The existence of the letter has been closely held, with the administration insisting to its partners in disarmament talks with North Korea that it not be publicly discussed. State Department and White House officials confirmed this week that envoy Stephen W. Bosworth delivered a letter from Obama for Kim, but they declined to describe its contents. "We do not comment on private diplomatic correspondence," said White House National...

The President of leisure has a pretty slow day Monday, highlighting the point that no pressing business kept him from celebrating the fall of communism 20 years after the Berlin Wall fell. Jim Gerraghty of The Campaign Spot on National Review goes over the official schedule for our leader yesterday: Just look at the man's schedule: He had a 10 a.m. daily briefing from the intelligence community, a 10:30 a.m. economic daily briefing, an 11 a.m. meeting with senior advisers . . . and then, right after that, at 6:45 in the evening, he had to sign an executive...

November 08, 2009 Obama Draws Criticism for Sitting Out Berlin Wall Anniversary The president does not plan to travel to Germany to attend the 20th anniversary celebration Monday of the fall of the Berlin Wall, drawing heated criticism from those who say he's ignoring a shining triumph of American-inspired democracy. President Obama squeezed in a trip to Copenhagen last month to lobby, unsuccessfully, for Chicago to host the 2016 Summer Olympics. He plans to travel to Oslo next month to accept the Nobel Peace Prize, an award that even Obama has said he does not deserve. And this coming week,...

The president does not plan to travel to Germany to attend the 20th anniversary celebration Monday of the fall of the Berlin Wall, drawing heated criticism from those who say he's ignoring a shining triumph of American-inspired democracy. In this July 24, 2008, photo, then-Sen. Barack Obama is seen greeting the crowd in Berlin. (AP Photo) President Obama squeezed in a trip to Copenhagen last month to lobby, unsuccessfully, for Chicago to host the 2016 Summer Olympics. He plans to travel to Oslo next month to accept the Nobel Peace Prize, an award that even Obama has said he does...

Communism is alive and well. ....Far from being dead and buried, communism remains a potent force - one that is still a threat to Western nations that value freedom and capitalism. This is because the ideological roots of communism have not been defeated. Rather than being polar opposites, fascism and Marxism are evil twins. They are both socialist ideologies that espouse one-party rule, economic collectivism and social regimentation. They are implacably opposed to capitalism, the sovereignty of the family and Judeo-Christian civilization. They are aggressively imperialist, seeking world domination. The major difference between them is that while Marxism champions the...

JERUSALEM – Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton is planning to press Israel over the weekend to cease Jewish construction in the eastern sections of Jerusalem, informed senior diplomatic officials told WND. Clinton is scheduled to arrive in Jerusalem Sunday in her first official trip to Israel since Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu took office in March. According to the informed diplomatic officials, who spoke on condition of anonymity, the Obama administration has been disappointed by a lack of progress on Israeli-Palestinian issues brokered by George Mitchell, the White House's envoy to the Mideast. Clinton is being sent by the White...

WASHINGTON (AP) - President Barack Obama on Thursday signed into law a $7.5 billion aid package for Pakistan that the U.S.-ally's military criticized as American meddling in its internal affairs. The measure provides $1.5 billion annually over five years for economic and social programs and comes as Pakistan faces a string of violent militant attacks and bombings as its military orchestrates an offensive into the Taliban heartland.

The right is calling Obama weak, but his wily foreign policy is paying off The spluttering of the American right — and some European conservatives — over Barack Obama’s foreign policy reached a new level of vituperation last week. “Is Obama naive?” pondered Michael Ledeen at National Review. “I don’t think so. I think that he rather likes tyrants and dislikes America.” Nile Gardiner of the Heritage Foundation wrote in The Daily Telegraph: “[Obama’s] appeasement of Iran, his bullying of Israel, his surrender to Moscow, his call for a nuclear-free world ... have all won him plaudits in the large...

When Barack Obama strode on stage to scold Iran for its failure to disclose the existence of a second uranium-enrichment facility in the country, his message was timid and at times almost apologetic. When the tough language came, it was because French president Nicolas Sarkozy had taken the podium. Sarkozy excoriated the Iranians for their deception, saying that the revelations have caused "a very severe confidence crisis" and issued a time-specific warning about oft-threatened (but never implemented) sanctions. "We cannot let the Iranian leaders gain time while the centrifuges are spinning," he declared. "If by December there is not an...

For President Obama, the handshakes and hugs during his first visit to the United Nations last week masked a cold reality: nine months into his presidency, he is being forced to retool his most important foreign policy initiatives, from the war in Afghanistan to peace in the Middle East and his diplomatic overture to Iran. Mr. Obama’s efforts to reach out to adversaries and break political deadlocks are running up against old enmities, insoluble differences and foreign leaders who simply do not see eye to eye with the president. The administration can point to successes: it has marshaled worldwide support...

President Obama appreciates "teachable moments," so let's all discuss this week's lesson in arms control theory and practice. The President brought his soaring sermon about "a world without [nuclear] weapons" before the U.N. General Assembly. He called for a new arms control treaty and won Security Council support for a vague resolution on proliferation. On cue yesterday, Iran showed the world what determined rogues think about such treaties. On the evidence of his Presidency so far, Mr. Obama will not let that reality interfere with his disarmament dreams. The disclosure that Iran has a second facility to make bomb-grade fuel,...

Several U.S. senators have blasted President Barack Obama's decision to change U.S. missile defense policy in Europe, accusing the president of "abandoning" U.S. allies there. Senior Pentagon officials and some other senators defended the new strategy at an Armed Services Committee hearing Thursday, saying the new plan is the best way to deal directly with the nuclear threat from Iran. President Obama surprised the world last Thursday when he announced plans to cancel a missile defense system in Europe proposed by the Bush administration. The Bush-era program would have placed ground-based interceptors in Poland and a radar station in the...

The Administration has used the financial collapse that government brought us very well: It gave Congress a “Stimulus” bill that provided more pork than Congress itself might have had the nerve to include while effectively repealing the Clinton/Gingrich reform of federal welfare; it budgeted spending in numbers only computers can handle and it took command of the major banks, a huge chunk of insurance and the U.S. auto industry; to that, it is preparing to add a takeover of the student loan business and wage control of banking and possibly others. Not bad for less than a year’s work! But...

For the Czech prime minister Jan Fischer, the news came in a call hastily placed by President Barack Obama, shortly after midnight on Thursday in Prague. In Warsaw, his Polish counterpart Donald Tusk initially declined to answer the phone from the White House - as he guessed the purpose, from the unusual timing, and wanted to prepare a response. Mr Obama last week unveiled the most dramatic national security reversal of his presidency by scrapping his predecessor George W Bush's planned anti-ballistic missile shield in eastern Europe. With this volte face, the Obama administration has brought the curtain firmly down...

The very worst foreign-policy move an American president can make is to reveal a willingness to back down to an aggressive tyrant. The second-worst move is to back the wrong horse during an internal dispute in a foreign county — or, for that matter, to back any horse without gathering all of the pertinent information. A third wrong move is to disregard the legitimate sensibilities of foreign peoples. President Obama has managed to commit all three blunders in three short months, and the world is a less safe place for it. As has been well documented, Mr. Obama performed his...

The shameful siege of Honduras continues. In the past few weeks, the United States has cut more than $30 million in non-humanitarian aid, suspended most visa services and sided with Venezuela, Cuba and other of Latin America's worst dictatorships in undermining democracy. Meanwhile, the people of Honduras are desperately trying to maintain their freedom and prevent the return of a regime that Washington is committed to forcing down their throats.

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – The U.S. State Department said on Friday it was prepared to hold direct talks with North Korea to try to coax it back into multilateral negotiations on ending its nuclear programs. Previously, U.S. officials had sent mixed signals about direct meetings, at times saying Pyongyang must first commit to resume multilateral discussions and at others saying bilateral talks could only occur "in the context" of the multilateral discussions. The department denied changing its policy on direct talks, saying any bilateral meeting would be to bring Pyongyang back to multilateral talks. "We are prepared to enter into a...