Republican Scott Brown beat Democrat Martha Coakley by five points in the senatorial contest to succeed Ted Kennedy in Massachusetts. But, in William Delahunt’s congressional district, Brown beat the lady by 20 points. This was not good news for Delahunt, not good news at all.
There are many factors which have determined and over-determined the miserable history of Haiti, to which almost everybody had become accustomed. The recent plague, however, provoked a moment of pity ... and also of self-pity, which manifested itself by Haitian anger against the aid providers who did not act fast enough or did not bring the right equipment or did not bring sufficient aid-workers. Or imported clothing when they should have brought water or food.
When President Obama launched a massive humanitarian-aid response to Haiti's earthquake last month, not everyone took his magnanimity at face value. Hugo Chavez, for example, accused him of "occupying Haiti undercover" and then upped the ante by saying the earthquake had been caused by an American "tectonic weapon." A minister from France, Haiti's former colonial ruler, complained that the U.S. response should be "about helping Haiti, not about occupying Haiti."
Jorge Castañeda’s lament ("Adios, Monroe Doctrine," December 28, 2009) about U.S. indifference towards Latin America sounds a familiar theme. His claim that “the United States doesn’t seem to care much what happens in Latin America” has been a constant refrain that has dominated analyses of U.S. regional policy since the mid-1970s. The “new passivity” is not, after all, terribly new.
When Manuel Zelaya was deposed as president of Honduras with the support of the Supreme Court, the National Congress, the attorney general and most of his own party, much of Latin America went into conniptions about safeguarding the constitution. Of course, that was precisely the issue. Zelaya was about to traduce the constitution, which forbade extension of the chief executive's term, precisely his intention. This is common in the lower part of the Western Hemisphere, and it is the opus operandi of Hugo Chavez in Venezuela.
Last August, when the White House urged the public to share examples of hysterical health care rumors so the administration could help correct them before they spread too widely, Fox News pundit Charles Krauthammer compared it to "Chicago thug politics," Big Brother, and Hugo Chavez.
Mahmoud Ahmadinejad was back in New York this week, making his fifth annual pilgrimage to the UN General Assembly. In the past, Ahmadinejad's carefully calibrated theatrics before or during his trips--comparable only to his new soul-mate Hugo Chavez, or the equally delusional, self-declared messiah, Moammar Qaddafi--focused all attention on the regime's nuclear adventurism, or his own shameless denial of the Holocaust and repeated demands for Israel's "oblivion from the map." His glib sound bites were broadcast with astonishing repetition. Journalists, with occasional exceptions, eschewed more probing questions about the failing economy in Iran and the plight of political prisoners and minorities.
The New York Times gave about six inches to Bibi Netanyahu's speech at the General Assembly, and this in an article he shared with Hugo Chavez who spoke for four times the duration allowed by the rules. This is a habit among tyrants, and Chavez is no exception.
The same Times page carried a 24-inch piece about Gadhafi, not on his filibuster at the U.N. (which it covered more than amply on Thursday), but dealing with the dictator's appearance at the Council on Foreign Relations. The reporter, Mark Landler, was at the event and dubbed it a "seminar." I don't know what seminars are like at Georgetown. But at the two places I went to school, Gadhafi’s answer to a question about his successor would have been laughed out of court. Here's the description: "He said the question of who would succeed him was irrelevant because, according to the philosophy in his Green Book, the Libyan masses are in charge." "Seminar," indeed.
The ruling class that attends the high-dues CFR is easy to pacify these days.
'He was remarkably reasonable,' said a prominent financier.
But the financier had the grace of shame.
(he) did not want to voice his sentiments on the record.
(Last year when A'jad spoke at the Council, many of the attendees thought of themselves as heroes for defending his civil liberties.)
The FT yesterday used President Obama's own metaphor from Washington's relations with Moscow. He has, that is, resolved to press "the reset button" with Vladimir Putin's Russia But, of course, he can do so only from our side. Putin has sent him a big mazal tov but no reciprocal gift.
Quite to the contrary. As the Financial Times points out, Russia has embarked on an aggressive foreign policy in Latin America, partnering with Hugo Chavez, the wild man of the region. Russia is also now doing military exercises with Belarus. It is consolidating its gains from Georgia, ill-gotten gains, if ever there are those. Perhaps worst of all, it has already told the world that it will block further sanctions on Iran just at the time information has leaked from the International Atomic Energy Agency informing everyone that Tehran is actually on the brink of nuclear weapons. On the brink...not a few years down the line.
And what has Obama done? He has resolved to leave Poland and the Czech Republic without missile defenses.
Speculation as to who will succeed Ted Kennedy is proceeding apace, with his nephew, former Congressman Joseph Kennedy II, the likely frontrunner in the January 19 special election. The eldest son of Robert Kennedy, Joe held the House seat once occupied by his uncle John and House Speaker Tip O’Neill, representing Boston from 1987 until 1999.
Less than two months ago, key members of Argentine president Cristina Fernández de Kirchner’s cabinet boasted that the global financial crisis would not affect Argentina. At the Waldorf Astoria in New York on September 25, the president herself reacted bitterly to an American executive who asked about her plans to cope with the looming downturn: “It is you [the US and Europe] who need a Plan B.”
