The US has "absolutely not" given Israel a green light for a possible attack on Iran's nuclear facilities, US President Barack Obama said Tuesday.
Obama was qualifying comments Vice President Joe Biden had made Sunday that left the impression the US would not stand in the way of an Israeli action.
"We have said directly to the Israelis that it is important to try and resolve this in an international setting in a way that does not create major conflict in the Middle East," said Obama, currently in Russia, during a CNN interview.
Obama said it was "very important that I'm as clear as I can be, and our administration is as consistent as we can [be] on this issue."
The president said that Biden had simply been stating the "categorical fact" that "we can't dictate to other countries what their security interests are. What is also true is that it is the policy of the United States to resolve the issue of Iran's nuclear capabilities in a peaceful way through diplomatic channels," he said.
On Sunday, Biden was asked on ABC's This Week whether the US would stand in the way militarily if Israel decided to take out Iran's nuclear program.
The US "cannot dictate to another sovereign nation what they can and cannot do," he said.
"Israel can determine for itself - it's a sovereign nation - what's in their interest and what they decide to do relative to Iran and anyone else," he said.
Israel had no formal comment on either the Obama or Biden remarks.
Nevertheless, the IDF has taken into consideration the possibility that it will not receive US permission to fly over Iraq on the way to Iran, and has drawn up an operational plan for this contingency. While its preference is to coordinate with the US, defense officials have said in the past that Israel was preparing a wide range of options for such an operation.
The Washington Times reported Tuesday that Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu and his top deputies had not formally asked for US aid or permission for a possible military strike on Iran's nuclear facilities, since they feared the White House would not approve.
The report quoted two unnamed Israeli officials.
An anonymous senior Israeli official was quoted as saying that Netanyahu was determined that "it made no sense" to press the matter after the negative response former US president George W. Bush.
Bush gave the prime minister's predecessor, Ehud Olmert, a negative answer when he asked early last year for US assistance for possible military strikes on Iran.
"There was a decision not to press this because it was probably inadequate for the engagement policy and what we know about Obama's approach to Iran," the official said.(source)
U.S. Shifts Strategy on Illicit Work by Immigrants
By JULIA PRESTON
July 3, 2009
Immigration authorities had bad news this week for American Apparel, the T-shirt maker based in downtown Los Angeles: About 1,800 of its employees appeared to be illegal immigrants not authorized to work in the United States.
But in contrast to the high-profile raids that marked the enforcement approach of the Bush administration, no federal agents with criminal warrants stormed the company’s factories and rounded up employees. Instead, the federal immigration agency sent American Apparel a written notice that it faced civil fines and would have to fire any workers confirmed to be unauthorized.
The treatment of American Apparel, which has more than 5,600 factory employees in Los Angeles alone, is the most prominent demonstration of a new strategy by the Obama administration to curb the employment of illegal immigrants by focusing on employers who hire them — and doing so in a less confrontational manner than in years past.
Unlike the approach of the Bush administration, which brought criminal charges in its final two years against many illegal immigrant workers, the new effort makes broader use of fines and other civil sanctions, federal officials said Thursday…
On Wednesday, Immigration and Customs Enforcement, the federal agency known as ICE, said it had sent notices announcing audits of hiring records, like the one it conducted at American Apparel, to 652 other companies across the country. Officials said they were picking up the pace of such audits, after performing 503 of them in 2008…
The Obama administration’s new approach, unveiled in April, seems to be moving away from the raids that advocates for immigrants said had split families, disrupted businesses and traumatized communities. But the outcome will still be difficult for illegal workers, who will lose their jobs and could face deportation, the advocates said…
Executives at American Apparel were both relieved and dismayed after receiving the warning from the immigration agency of discrepancies in the hiring documents of about one-third of its Los Angeles work force. The company has 30 days to dispute the agency’s claims and give immigrant employees time to prove that they are authorized to work in the United States, immigration officials said. If they cannot, the company must fire them, probably within two months.
But no criminal charges were lodged against the company and no workers have been arrested, American Apparel executives and immigration officials said…
American Apparel and its outspoken chief executive, Dov Charney, have waged a campaign, emblazoned on T-shirts sold across the country, criticizing the immigration crackdown of recent years and calling on Congress to “Legalize L.A.” by granting legal status to illegal immigrants…
At a news conference last year, Mayor Antonio R. Villaraigosa of Los Angeles publicly lauded Mr. Charney for helping the city with its faltering economy by providing “the dream of a steady paycheck and good benefits for countless workers.”
While it has been no secret that American Apparel’s largely Latino work force probably included many illegal immigrants, Mr. Schey said the company had been careful to meet legal hiring requirements. Many illegal immigrants use convincingly forged Social Security cards or other fake documents when seeking work…
Immigration officials, who asked not to be identified because the case is continuing, said the fines to American Apparel so far were about $150,000…
Angelica Salas, the executive director of the Coalition for Humane Immigrant Rights of Los Angeles, an advocacy group, said she welcomed the end to “showboat enforcement raids.” But in the end, Ms. Salas said, “there is still enforcement of laws that are broken,” adding, “The workers will still lose their jobs.”
Mr. Obama is effectively de-criminalizing the hiring of illegal aliens.
Which, lest we forget, was the major sop to the opposition in the initial amnesty legislation, the so-called Immigration Reform and Control Act of 1986, that was passed during the Reagan administration:
Immigration Reform and Control Act of 1986
The law criminalized the act of knowingly hiring an illegal immigrant and established financial and other penalties for those employing illegal aliens under the theory that low prospects for employment would reduce illegal immigration. It introduced the I-9 form to ensure that all employees presented documentary proof of their legal eligibility to accept employment in the United States.
[Admin comments]
So what is Mr. Obama’s message here to employers?
Who will not be willing to risk the piddling fines, when you can save much more money by hiring illegal aliens?
[Reader comments]
GetBackJack July 3, 2009 at 2:45 pm
I’m confused.
Labor Unions are primary backers of the Obama Syndicate.
Many of the jobs illegal aliens take are jobs formerly in the sphere of Unions.
I don’t see how it’s possible to split this fence rail into equal parts both sides will like.
Reply
bronzeprofessor July 3, 2009 at 2:52 pm
Bingo, GetBack. I was about to post something to that effect.
The key here is to understand not what the Times reports, but rather, how the NY Times is trying to spin it. Essentially there isn’t much difference between Obama and Bush on this question; Bush was NEVER hard-headed about immigration raids, and that’s why conservatives attacked him on that issue.
The NY Times is trying to
(1) reinforce the myth that Republicans hate, while Democrats love, Latinos,
(2) reinforce the myth that Democrats are markedly different from, and better than, Bush.
(3) reinforce that Bushism and Republicanism are the exact same thing, and
(4) make it seem as though the Democrats are simultaneously helping Latinos and helping labor unions, when in fact they are doing neither and breaking promises to both.
Conservatives, we must stay on top of this. Kudos to Steve Gilbert; more sites like this one are needed — every time a spin is spun such as this, immediately, conservatives have to publish point-by-point clarifications so liberals cannot camouflage who they are in a cloud of language.
I think, to our credit, we are getting better at exposing liberals, which is why the polling has moved out of the Democrats’ favor. Keep up the good work.
Robert O. Lopez
PS. I think, I should add, I have many reasons to hope that Latinos are in play for 2010 and 2012. The Right should never fall into identity politics, but at the same time, it’s a good idea to articulate what the Right’s position is on all these issues without resorting to cheap shots that sound (even if they aren’t) racist. I do believe Latinos and Republicans would be a match made in Heaven. Pretend, for a while, that there is a courtship between the two and the initial Jane-Austen-like resistance has to be melted with gentle nudges.
tranquil.night July 3, 2009 at 2:56 pm
Well the union loyalists are taken care of. They’ll get placed on union boards or invited to join ACORN, haha. The blue-collar workers who lose their jobs – well that’s just the bad economy which is Bush’s fault or it’s the fault of the greedy business for trying to hold onto it’s unjust profits. And finally of course, the number of Americans that will not get hired now because of this simply won’t be reported.
There’s quite a few irrational splits like this in Liberal ideology that one would think would logically expose their hypocrisy. Most intelligent Liberals know this and have come up with lies or spin to combat it for decades; false premises and distracting (emotional) arguments which were then carried by the media until they eventually became ‘truth.’ (Kudos to B.P.’s comments there).
It’s likely with the libs in complete control these oddities are more and more going to be noteworthy for the masses. Afterall, with little to no republican opposition to demonize the libs will just start hating eachother. They already are. And yes, as this is happening, such is the golden opportunity for conservatives to articulate the alternative to this murky sophistry and reach people of all races, nationalities, and demographics. Thank you internet.
Howard Roark July 3, 2009 at 3:30 pm
Click to Edit
Great point, GBJ.
As we follow this line of thinking, though, I think we need to apply some brakes to our race to the conclusion that we can appeal to “Latinos” on this issue of illegal immigration alone. It is all too easy to assume that “Latinos” are a monolithic voting bloc, driven to equal conclusions on the matter of deportation, illegal raids, etc.
We edge towards the point of political suicide when we sacrafice our principles for the sake of gainning a few more votes. Our message becomes too fuzzy, and eventually there won’t be a clear flag to rally behind. Worse yet, after we water-down our stance on such issues, the other side will be able to define us (already happened) because they own the MSM.
Having lived in south Florida for the last 5 years, witnessing the 85,000 Latino march in my local streets in 2006, it was refreshing and surprising to listen to my Latin co-workers who hated the illegals who formed that swell. You haven’t lived until you’ve heard the Cuban/Mexican/Honduran ex-pat here in America extol the reasons why they legally emmigrated to the USA, and further decry the many criminals from their country who arrive here illegally. We all need to pinch ourselves when we think that we can appeal to Latinos in 2010, 2012, or anytime in the future because we show them a “softer” approach to the criminals in our midst we call “illegals”.
bronzeprofessor July 3, 2009 at 6:59 pm
Howard, AMEN! Thank you very much for a wonderful and astute post.
Take it from a Latino Republican, folks: Time is on the side of conservatives! Most Latinos are deeply religious, hard working, and pro-military. It’s true — we’re “macho” in the sense that we admire strength, traditional families, and self-reliance. We hate sissies, laziness, and people who talk out of both sides of their mouth.
We also don’t care as much about school as other ethnic groups — but that’s a good thing. Fewer of us are being indoctrinated in the gauntlet of elite liberal colleges.
And most importantly, we are much more than the immigration issue. For 2006 and 2008, the Democrats’ scare tactics worked and they convinced the brown voters taht the Republicans were out to get us and we would be backing racists if we voted conservative. But like all scare tactics, that canard has a short shelf life. Eventually more substantive issues surface, and Hispanics will get irritated with the pointless condescending identity politics (Sotomayor), the bad economy (how ‘ bout those utility bills?), the cuts to defense (great — fewer slots open for those millions of gung-ho Latinos who want to be Marines), and the abortions (ever talked to a Latino Catholic or evangelical about abortion?)
My one plea to conservatives is, just be patient, stay your ground! Howard is right; many Latinos who are voters do not like unfettered illegal immigration since our neighborhoods bear the brunt of the illegal saturation. One week ago, there was a stabbing across the street from my apartment — a black gang and a Hispanic gang. Illegal immigration makes the gang violence worse, and eventually latinos will reward Republicans for speaking for those of us who follow the law, want to serve our country, and expect decency in our neighborhoods.
The most important thing is simply to strive always to articulate the anti-illegal-immigration position in a clear way that the Democrats cannot caricature as racist. It’s sad we have to be so self-conscious, but a dose of self-consciousness and careful choice of words will pay off in 2010 and 2012. I have high hopes.
proreason July 3, 2009 at 7:07 pm
“Most Latinos are deeply religious, hard working, and pro-military.”
You said it Professor.
Libwits are working hard to turn Latinos into a dependent class, just like they did with African Americans.
You know, we all are angry about illegal immigration…..but the reason you don’t hear me railing about it as much as other things is because the vast majority come here and work their asses off. Maybe they get some free benefits, but they sure are working hard when I see them.
Hispanics and conservatives share a lot of values. I hope they realize what a con man the Moron is.
Howard Roark July 4, 2009 at 12:15 am
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Hispanics and conservatives share a lot of values. I hope they realize what a con man the Moron is.
Right on, PR. We all are waiting patiently for not only those unconvinced Latinos to see the Conservative in their mirrors, but all of the union men and women who vote Dem every cycle, as well.
If I’ve read your musings accurately, PR, I believe that you are a lawyer. I can understand your feelings about illegal immigration, if that is so. I’m not sure how many adult years you may have spent doing something other than law, and I certainly don’t want to assume where your heart is concerning such…but I come to the issue of illegal immigration as a man who has had to swing a hammer for a living a few times in my life, along with washing dishes, painting cars, and such.
Perhaps I am sensitive to the issue because I realize that the wages for those jobs (which I still occasionally find myself needing, despite 2 college degrees) don’t keep up with the cost of living, come with no benefits, and are unfairly depressed yearly because of the loose immigration policies of this country I went to war for almost 20 years ago.
Let’s just say that it is sadly ironic that returning vets aren’t greeted with better jobs and security in America, where an illegal and his family can be treated to better health care, better wages than what he knew in his home country, and less stress and worry over paying the bills that comes from playing by the rules (paying car insurance, a lifetime of taxes/medicare/medicaid/ss/health insurance/etc).
So many of the bills that must be paid by an honest American who makes 10 dollars an hour siding houses with no benefits are forgiven for the illegal who also makes 10 dollars an hour siding houses.
Again, I’m not saying that you aren’t sensitive to this reality, PR. I’m just expressing why I feel the way I do about illegal immigration, as long as we’re bearing our souls about this issue. When you’ve spent a lifetime groping for that better pay, while still remaining an honest man who doesn’t drive without car insurance, or start a family without the means to pay for it, or abuse the emergency room system for health care, you begin to understand the Civil War a little better.
The plantation owners who used slave labor operated from a system that they inherited, to be sure. We all focus on only one aspect of it: the racist angle. What is forgotten is the other evil of it: the depressed wages and lack of jobs for the rest of us who need those jobs. Indeed, the biggest arguments of the 19th century in American Congress were over whether the new territories/states would be slaveholding states or not. Labor was the crux of it, not the racist aspect of it, mostly. The war between the states went a long way to fixing it, then. Sometimes I wonder if that’s the only way we’ll fix it now.
And through it all, you don’t hear ONE time me say that it is a Mexican/S American problem, and focus this on them. Neither do any of the redneck, tobacco-spittin’ blue collar workers I grew up with and encounter now. This unfair fear that we Conservatives all have a racist tendency towards illegals and that we need to be extra careful isn’t born from any reality I’ve encountered, and it is going to be the death of us.
What instead needs to be articulated is to name names when you encounter some racist behavior, and quit taking the isolated incident out on the whole class. I dare say that when you hear the language of bigotry towards Latinos, 9 times out of 10 it is an uneducated dolt who never shows up on this forum or even understands what Conservatism means.
But, unfortunately, the myth that Southerners are all racist Archie Bunkers is still practiced by professors and other elitists on both coasts and in between. I’m tired of it, and I’ve seen 40 years of our coffin being nailed shut because of it. We have nothing to apologize for, and we need to stand up for ourselves before our epitaph is written.
bronzeprofessor July 4, 2009 at 12:31 am
Howard, Just to back you up, most–in fact, nearly all–of the racism I have encountered as a 1/2 Latino and 1/2 Asian male, has come from white Democrats, AFrican Americans, or assimilated Latinos who think like white liberals and view recent Latino immigrants as embarrassingly sexist relics.
I still look at the relationship between Latinos and conservatives as a courtship. Latinos identify as “conservative” at about the same rate as the general population. But only about 30% of Latinos are Republican. So in a sense, conservatives and Latinos would be wedded much more strongly, if their shared values were clearer. The challenge, however, is that conservatives are inherently against identity politics, so they do not like the idea of approaching Latinos as a group [Rush said very eloquently at CPAC that conservatives do not naturally speak to people as groups, but as people.] I think conservatives should be authentic, and stick to their values, and eventually the ice will melt with Latinos and the old stereotype of RIght=racist will melt away.
I say, think of it as a courtship. When a man and a women who would make a great match are first getting to know each other, just a little bit of heightened consideration goes a long way into making each other comfortable. On the first or second date you won’t joke about a woman’s weight, or tell her hairspray smells too strong. Once you’re comfortable you go deeper.
Same thing as conservative whites and Latinos get to know each other better. Talk about religion, the military, taxes, our mutual struggles. Don’t feel that you need to bring up immigration when you’re talking to a Latino, just because he’s Latino; if the topic comes up, don’t feel like you have to avoid it just because he’s Latino. But focus the bulk of the conversation on shared interests and keep discussion of immigration to a minimum, since it’s a sore issue for lots of Hispanics, like talking about dieting with a woman on the first date.
Howard Roark July 4, 2009 at 1:39 am
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Thanks, BP, for buttressing my emotions on the subject.
I understand your desire for a “courtship” between Conservatives and Latinos. I caught that when you originally said that the initial Jane-Austen-like resistance has to be melted with gentle nudges. I just don’t go for the reasoning that the target which needs to learn that lesson is Conservatives. (of course there are exceptions to every rule, but I’m speaking generally, here.)
I mean, if you’ve lived a life like I have, you’ve encountered average Conservatives meet, mix, and love people from other ethnicities/cultures all of your life. When I was in S Korea I served with uneducated, inarticulate, simple men who were definitely Conservative in their value system/worldview who ended up meeting, dating, then marrying S Korean women who came from POLAR OPPOSITE origins than them.
I saw average Conservatives volunteer for hardship military tours just so their foreign wives could be closer to their kin for another year. I saw average Conservative men give up their day’s rations for the native children who ran up to them in foreign villages. I saw average Conservative men risk their lives for the Mexican with them.
These aspects of average, rural, redneck people who call themselves Conservative aren’t surprising to my kind of people. When you go to churches that are nothing more than clapboard shanties in the mountains, you see the kindness towards blacks, Latinos, and others pour forth in very humbling ways. The mountain folk who have never been outside their state eagerly reach into their pockets to give to those who don’t look like them at all.
I just don’t know why you think we need to be taught your lesson of “courtship” more than any other group. I mean, it’s a nice thought, but in my life, I’ve seen that the most alarming prejudice and lack of understanding comes from the pompous, self-assured elite (the Left) concerning those of us they consider “in need of education.”
bronzeprofessor July 4, 2009 at 1:54 am
Howard, I think you might be focusing a little too much on the “professor” part of my name. (I caught your remark about professors being elitists). I’d change the screen name to something less obnoxious, maybe that will help.
I’m not teaching you a lesson, and no, I don’t think conservatives need to hear that lesson more than anyone else. I’m just reflecting on the issues you raised and sharing some strategies, take it or leave it. I apologize if it comes across as condescending, but there were some real historical events that made me feel like posting a small paragraph at the end of my first post in this thread. The fact remains that in 2008, Obama won a national election and now I am bound to serve him as Commander in Chief, because of several swing groups that did not react well to a conservative message. One swing group was Latinos, who went from voting 44% for Bush to voting 31% for McCain. If a different strategy might in the future help me avoid having to serve under a CIC with whom I disagree, then I would be happy to promote such a strategy.
The original article was from the NY Times, and if you read what I first wrote, I said it’s important that conservatives react to liberal spin and that’s where this whole discussion came from. You have a lifetime of experience and I like hearing about it. I also come from a lifetime of experience, which includes working in factories and signing up for the military and struggling and being born again as a Christian and all that fun stuff. I’ve worked with hammers too! And I’ve packed boxes and moved stuff, and soon I’ll be in boot camp, if it makes my statements any more authoritative.
Included in my experience are observations of the way political discussion unfolds. Liberals often distort what conservatives say. As you point out, conservatives are often less racist than liberals, but liberals are shrewd at twisting everything around. I wish Latinos weren’t susceptible to liberal distortions, but many of them are.
Just so you know, I often challenge liberals on the way they discuss race, and I am much harsher toward them because I disagree with their actual philosophy about race (I don’t disagree with conservatives.) I often complain about liberals when I post on this site. But liberals don’t read this site, so when I post on here, I am usually not giving them “lessons.”
I hope that clears up any misunderstanding. To be honest, I really don’t care enough about race to feel all that strongly about these issues. BUt if I were to go back and erase my original posts, then a lot of this discussion thread wouldn’t make sense. So take my current stance as a white flag — I surrender. :)
Howard Roark July 4, 2009 at 3:08 am
Click to Edit
I appreciate this exchange, BP, but at the risk of beating a dead horse, I will quote one of my favorite thinkers, Dennis Prager: I prefer clarity to agreement. And just to clarify:
I’m not focused on your moniker, “professor”. Having spent many hours in debate/discussion with my own professors in my college career, I am not enamored, impressed, or distracted by someone who names himself “bronzeprofessor” on the internet. Whether you believe it or not, I can focus on your words instead of your name or race. You’re not talking to one of your students, here.
My mentioning of “professors and elitists” wasn’t directed at you at all. After all, you’ve repeatedly identified yourself as a Conservative (plus I am familiar with your orientation from when you were Latinos4JohnnyMac on the old site, Get Drunk And Vote 4 McCain.) So please don’t think I’m indirectly speaking to you when I mention professors in the context I did.
And as far as “sharing some strategies”, I didn’t know that I (or the fine contributors to this site) was in need of them. I, too, appreciate your experiences, but my post on this thread wasn’t one of “what do we do about this?” Your response was full of ways that we Conservatives need to conduct ourselves, and I’m thinking that you may have rushed to an answer that didn’t have a question. Some of us have learned about race relations in our everyday travels, and that is all I was trying to relay.
After all, since we’re the ones who forged a warm, tolerant, charitable place for Latinos to escape their origins to, isn’t it possible that after all of the examples of Conservative principles we’ve shown and politely discussed, it isn’t US that need to further explain ourselves, but THEM who need to listen?
And don’t worry about emploring us to ply your strategies of talking about common struggles and shared experiences to Latinos. We already have been, and that’s what I was trying to tell you. You can’t read statistics on Latino voting turnout from year to year and conclude that it is us who need to change. When we do that, we end up being played by people who are used to voting for he who promises the biggest goodies at election time. Most Latinos I know understand that.
bronzeprofessor July 4, 2009 at 3:54 am
Howard, happy July 4th. This is getting very personal and there isn’t more to be said. (source)
TEGUCIGALPA, Honduras (AFP) - - Ousted President Manuel Zelaya headed back to crisis-gripped Honduras on Sunday, one week after he was kicked out of power and as interim leaders' threats to block his arrival sparked bloodshed.
The decision by Zelaya -- ousted by the military one week ago -- to return brought the political dispute over his plans to change the constitution to a dramatic climax.
Fears of bloodshed were confirmed as police said two people had been killed and two injured in clashes with soldiers who sought to break up tens of thousands of Zelaya supporters trying to enter Tegucigalpa's main airport.
After Zelaya set off from Washington with a UN official, Honduran aviation officials said they had ordered his plane to divert to neighboring El Salvador.
Zelaya ordered Honduran armed forces to open the capital's airport, he told Venezuela's Telesur television.
In Washington, senior US officials said they had urged Zelaya not to return to his home country.
"A variety of countries spoke out in quite forceful fashion... against the wisdom of president Zelaya's effort to return to Honduras," an official said, commenting on a meeting of American nations that included the United States.
The officials, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said Zelaya would travel to El Salvador and return to Washington if his arrival was blocked.
Meanwhile, interim leader Roberto Micheletti ramped up tensions by claiming that Nicaraguan troops were moving toward the countries' joint border, a claim Nicaraguan military immediately denied.
"We have been informed that in the sector of Nicaragua, some troops are moving toward the border," Micheletti said in a televised news conference.
In Managua, Nicaraguan general Adolfo Zepeda shot back that the information was "totally false."
A defiant Zelaya left Washington in a Venezuelan plane accompanied by UN General Assembly President Miguel d'Escoto Brockmann, said Venezuelan Foreign Minister Nicolas Maduro.
The plane was due to land in Tegucigalpa at around 2300 GMT, Maduro said.
At the same time, another plane traveled to El Salvador carrying Miguel Insulza, the secretary general of the Organization of American States (OAS), which suspended Honduras in an emergency session late Saturday.
The presidents of Argentina, Ecuador and Paraguay were traveling with the OAS chief.
Interim leaders said they had put forward an offer for dialogue in "good faith" with the OAS, after they previously said they were pulling out of the body ahead of the suspension.
The interim government has proposed to the OAS "the start of a dialogue in good faith," interim deputy foreign minister Martha Lorena Alvarado said.
Micheletti also said that no one would pressure him, and still insisted he had taken power in a "constitutional succession."
The OAS suspended Honduras late Saturday for failing to reinstate Zelaya, in the first such move since the exclusion of Cuba in 1962.
Members of the pan-American body slammed the leaders of the coup which saw the army remove Zelaya in his pajamas a week ago at the height of a dispute with the courts, politicians and the army over his plans to change the constitution.
Night time curfews -- which suspend some freedoms guaranteed by the constitution -- and media blackouts have increased tension in one of Latin America's poorest countries.
A freezing of millions of dollars of international aid, regional trade blockades and recalls of foreign ambassadors have hit the country in the past week.
Chavez, Zelaya's main backer, has said that Venezuela would suspend key shipments of oil to Honduras, which he said would drive up gasoline prices.(source)
The EU decided today to summon all Iranian ambassadors in capitals across Europe in a co-ordinated protest over the detention of UK embassy staff. The move came after a senior cleric said some of the staff accused of inciting protests following last month's disputed presidential election would be put on trial.
The head of Iran's guardian council, Ayatollah Ahmad Jannati, said the detained staff members had "made confessions" in connection with the unrest.
The surprise move by the council, Iran's top legislative body, will cause relations between London and Tehran to deteriorate further after tit-for-tat diplomatic expulsions last week.
Sweden, which holds the rotating EU presidency, said in a statement: "It's not acceptable to file charges against the ones released or to the ones still in custody."
Jannati, a hardliner who is close to Iran's supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, said during a Friday prayer sermon: "Following the election, the enemy couldn't bear to see the people's happiness and tried to pour poison down their throats.
"They had plotted the velvet revolution prior to the election, and even on the British foreign ministry website in March it was announced that Iran's election might be accompanied by some unrest and that British citizens were warned to be careful.
"What is the meaning of these predictions?"
His comments are not an official announcement from Tehran – Jannati does not hold a position in the government or judiciary.
But his status as the head of the guardian council, a powerful body of clerics that stands above the elected government, gives him a degree of authority.
Jannati did not say how many embassy staff members would be tried, or on what charges.
The threat of a trial came as the 27 EU countries examined potential steps to protest against Iran's crackdown on dissent. Future measures could include visa bans on Iranian officials, diplomats said.
Earlier, Iranian officials said all but one of the nine embassy personnel arrested on 27 June had been released, but EU officials said they believed more than one was still being held.
Downing Street said it was seeking urgent clarification from the Iranian government as the Foreign Office again rejected Iranian accusations against its staff.
"All we can say is that two of our staff remain in detention," a Foreign Office spokeswoman said.
"I would reiterate what we said earlier this week, that the accusations against them are without foundation."
Iran arrested the embassy workers in a co-ordinated operation last weekend.The matter seemed to be winding down after most were released in the face of a strong response from the EU.
The brutal response by Iranian security forces against demonstrators who claimed the election had been rigged in favour of the incumbent president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, drew western condemnation. At least 20 people were killed.
Iran said the vote was fair and has made Britain the target of some of its fiercest rhetoric.
Iranian hardliners continue to harbour resentment at Britain for its role in toppling the democratically elected government of Mohammed Mossadeq in 1953. (source)
For seven months, The New York Times managed to keep out of the news the fact that one of its reporters, David Rohde, had been kidnapped by the Taliban.
But that was pretty straightforward compared with keeping it off Wikipedia.
Times executives believed that publicity would raise Mr. Rohde’s value to his captors as a bargaining chip and reduce his chance of survival. Persuading another publication or a broadcaster not to report the kidnapping usually meant just a phone call from one editor to another, said Bill Keller, executive editor of The Times.
But Wikipedia, which operates under the philosophy that anyone can be an editor, and that all information should be public, is a vastly different world.
A dozen times, user-editors posted word of the kidnapping on Wikipedia’s page on Mr. Rohde, only to have it erased. Several times the page was frozen, preventing further editing — a convoluted game of cat-and-mouse that clearly angered the people who were trying to spread the information of the kidnapping.
Even so, details of his capture cropped up time and again, however briefly, showing how difficult it is to keep anything off the Internet — even a sentence or two about a person who is not especially famous.
The sanitizing was a team effort, led by Jimmy Wales, co-founder of Wikipedia, along with Wikipedia administrators and people at The Times. In an interview, Mr. Wales said that Wikipedia’s cooperation was not a given.
“We were really helped by the fact that it hadn’t appeared in a place we would regard as a reliable source,” he said. “I would have had a really hard time with it if it had.”
Mr. Rohde was kidnapped in Afghanistan on Nov. 10, along with his interpreter and their driver. Two days after the kidnapping, a Wikipedia user altered the entry on Mr. Rohde to emphasize his work that could be seen as sympathetic to Muslims, like his reporting on Guantánamo, and his coverage of the Srebrenica massacre of Bosnian Muslims. Mr. Rohde won a Pulitzer Prize for his Bosnia coverage in 1996, when he worked for The Christian Science Monitor.
The Wikipedia editor in that case was Michael Moss, an investigative reporter at The Times and friend of Mr. Rohde who has written extensively about groups like Al Qaeda and the Taliban. Like many Wikipedia editors, he adopted a user name that hid his true identity.
“I knew from my jihad reporting that the captors would be very quick to get online and assess who he was and what he’d done, what his value to them might be,” he said. “I’d never edited a Wikipedia page before.”
With his editors’ blessing, Mr. Moss had already made similar changes to Mr. Rohde’s “topic page” on The Times’s Web site, and in both cases he omitted the name of Mr. Rohde’s former employer, because it contained the word Christian.
The Wikipedia page history shows that the next day, Nov. 13, someone without a user name edited the entry on Mr. Rohde for the first time to include the kidnapping. Mr. Moss deleted the addition, and the same unidentified user promptly restored it, adding a note protesting the removal. The unnamed editor cited an Afghan news agency report. In the first few days, at least two small news agencies and a handful of blogs reported the kidnapping.
Around that time, Catherine J. Mathis, the chief spokeswoman for the New York Times Company, called Mr. Wales and asked for his help. Knowing that his own actions on Wikipedia draw attention, Mr. Wales turned to an administrator, one of several who would eventually become involved in monitoring and controlling the page.
On Nov. 13, news of the kidnapping was posted and deleted four times within four hours, before an administrator blocked any more changes for three days. On Nov. 16, it was blocked again, for two weeks.
“We didn’t want it to look unusual in some fashion that would draw speculation, so we would protect it for three days, or up to a month, which is pretty normal,” Mr. Wales said. He added, “Weeks would go by before there was a problem.”
On Feb. 10 and 11, two users added the kidnapping information several times to Mr. Rohde’s page, only to see it removed each time, and they attached some heated notes to their additions. “We can do this months,” one said.
An administrator put a rare indefinite block on the page, then changed that to a temporary freeze. One of the would-be editors posted a note saying: “Not gonna work boy genius. Should have stuck to indefinite.”
Most of the attempts to add the information, including the first and the last, came from three similar Internet protocol addresses that correspond to an Internet service provider in Florida, and Wikipedia administrators guessed that they were all the same user.
“We had no idea who it was,” said Mr. Wales, who said there was no indication the person had ill intent. “There was no way to reach out quietly and say ‘Dude, stop and think about this.’ ”
Last Saturday, after Mr. Rohde and the translator, Tahir Ludin, escaped from a Taliban compound in Pakistan, Ms. Mathis e-mailed Mr. Wales before making a public announcement, and Mr. Wales, himself, unfroze the page.
When the news broke Saturday, the user from Florida reposted the information, with a note to administrators that said: “Is that enough proof for you [expletives]? I was right. You were WRONG.”
Joseph M. Reagle, an adjunct professor of communications at New York University who studies Wikipedia, said he was not sure whether its role in suppressing news about Mr. Rohde would prompt an outcry among longtime editors, because in the Rohde case, lives were at stake.
“Wikipedia has, over time, instituted gradually more control because of some embarrassing incidents, particularly involving potentially libelous material, and some people get histrionic about it, proclaiming the death of Wikipedia,” he said. “But the idea of a pure openness, a pure democracy, is a naïve one.” (source)
U.S. Soldier Captured in Afghanistan
Filed at 11:38 a.m. ET
KABUL (AP) -- An American soldier, who disappeared after walking off his base in eastern Afghanistan with three Afghan counterparts, is believed captured, officials said Thursday.
Spokeswoman Capt. Elizabeth Mathias said the soldier disappeared Tuesday.
''We understand him to be have been captured by militant forces. We have all available resources out there looking for him and hopefully providing for his safe return,'' Mathias said.
Mathias did not provide details on the soldier, the location where he was captured or the circumstances.
The news broke as thousands of U.S. Marines launched a major anti-Taliban offensive in southern Afghanistan. The missing soldier was not part of that operation.
''We are not providing further details to protect the soldier's well-being,'' she said.
Afghan Police Gen. Nabi Mullakheil said the soldier went missing in the Mullakheil area of eastern Paktika province, where there is an American base.
The soldier was noticed missing during a routine check of the unit on Tuesday and was first listed as ''duty status whereabouts unknown,'' a U.S. defense official said on condition of anonymity.
It wasn't until Thursday that officials said publicly that he was missing and described him as ''believed captured.'' Details of such incidents are routinely held very tightly by the military as it works to retrieve a missing or captured soldier without giving away any information to captors.
Initial reports indicated that the soldier was off duty at the time he went missing, having just completed a shift, the official said on condition of anonymity because details are still sketchy.
The missing man is an enlisted soldier, and his family has been notified.
Two U.S. defense sources said the soldier ''just walked off'' post with three Afghan counterparts after he finished working. They said they had no explanation for why he left the base. He was assigned to a combat outpost, one of a number of smaller bases set up by foreign forces in Afghanistan, the officials said.
Zabiullah Mujaheed, a spokesman for the Taliban, could not confirm that the soldier was with any of their forces. A myriad of insurgent groups operate in eastern Afghanistan, and the Taliban is only one of them.
The most important insurgent group operating in that area is known as Haqqani network and is led by Siraj Haqqani, whom the U.S. has accused of masterminding beheadings and suicide bombings. (source)
President Barack Obama has repeatedly claimed that his budget would cut the deficit by half by the end of his term. But as Heritage analyst Brian Riedl has pointed out, given that Obama has already helped quadruple the deficit with his stimulus package, pledging to halve it by 2013 is hardly ambitious.
The Washington Post has a great graphic which helps put President Obama’s budget deficits in context of President Bush’s.
What’s driving Obama’s unprecedented massive deficits? Spending. Riedl details:
President Bush expanded the federal budget by a historic $700 billion through 2008. President Obama would add another $1 trillion.
President Bush began a string of expensive financial bailouts. President Obama is accelerating that course.
President Bush created a Medicare drug entitlement that will cost an estimated $800 billion in its first decade. President Obama has proposed a $634 billion down payment on a new government health care fund.
President Bush increased federal education spending 58 percent faster than inflation. President Obama would double it.
President Bush became the first President to spend 3 percent of GDP on federal antipoverty programs. President Obama has already increased this spending by 20 percent.
President Bush tilted the income tax burden more toward upper-income taxpayers. President Obama would continue that trend.
President Bush presided over a $2.5 trillion increase in the public debt through 2008. Setting aside 2009 (for which Presidents Bush and Obama share responsibility for an additional $2.6 trillion in public debt), President Obama’s budget would add $4.9 trillion in public debt from the beginning of 2010 through 2016.
UPDATE: Many Obama defenders in the comments are claiming that the numbers above do not include spending on Iraq and Afghanistan during the Bush years. They most certainly do. While Bush did fund the wars through emergency supplementals (not the regular budget process), that spending did not simply vanish. It is included in the numbers above. Also, some Obama defenders are claiming the graphic above represents biased Heritage Foundation numbers.
While we stand behind the numbers we put out 100%, the numbers, and the graphic itself, above are from the Washington Post. We originally left out the link to WaPo. It has been now been added.
CLARIFICATION: Of course, this Washington Post graphic does not perfectly delineate budget surpluses and deficits by administration. President Bush took office in January 2001, and therefore played a lead role in crafting the FY 2002-2008 budgets. Presidents Bush and Obama share responsibility for the FY 2009 budget deficit that overlaps their administrations, before President Obama assumes full budgetary responsibility beginning in FY 2010. Overall, President Obama’s budget would add twice as much debt as President Bush over the same number of years. (source)
TEGUCIGALPA, Honduras (AP) - Honduras' interim leader warned that the only way his predecessor will return to office is through a foreign invasion - though a potential showdown with the ousted president was delayed due to action Wednesday by the Organization of American States.
A defiant Roberto Micheletti said in an interview with The Associated Press late Tuesday that "no one can make me resign," defying the United Nations, the OAS, the Obama administration and other leaders that have condemned the military coup that overthrew President Manuel Zelaya.
The U.N. General Assembly voted by acclamation Tuesday to demand Zelaya's immediate restoration, and the Organization of American States said Wednesday that coup leaders have three days to restore Zelaya to power before Honduras risks being suspended from the group.
That period for negotiation prompted Zelaya to announce he was putting off his plans to return home on Thursday until the weekend.
Micheletti vowed Zelaya would be arrested if he returns, even though the presidents of Argentina and Ecuador have signed on to accompany him along with the heads of the Organization of American States and the U.N. General Assembly.
Zelaya "has already committed crimes against the constitution and the law," said Micheletti, a member of Zelaya's Liberal Party who was named interim leader by Congress following the coup. "He can no longer return to the presidency of the republic unless a president from another Latin American country comes and imposes him using guns."
Soldiers stormed Zelaya's residence and flew him into exile early Sunday after he insisted on trying to hold a referendum asking Hondurans if they wanted to reform the constitution. The Supreme Court, Congress and the military all deemed his planned ballot illegal.
Zelaya, who is an ally of leftist Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez, backed down from the referendum Tuesday, saying at the United Nations that he would no longer push for the constitutional changes he wanted.
One of several clauses that cannot be legally altered in the Honduran constitution limits presidents to a single, 4-year term. Congress claims Zelaya, whose term ends in January, modified the ballot question at the last minute to help him eventually try to seek re-election. Chavez has used referendums in Venezuela to win the right to run repeatedly.
"I'm not going to hold a constitutional assembly," Zelaya said. "And if I'm offered the chance to stay in power, I won't. I'm going to serve my four years."
OAS Secretary-General Jose Miguel Insulza delivered what he called "an ultimatum" during a marathon session in Washington. "We need to show clearly that military coups will not be accepted. We thought we were in an era when military coups were no longer possible in this hemisphere," he said.
Spain's Foreign Ministry announced Wednesday that it is recalling its ambassador from Honduras as part of international efforts to reinstate Zelaya.
Micheletti said he would not resign no matter how intense the international pressure becomes. He insisted Honduras would be ready to defend itself against any invasion.
He did not name any specific countries, but Chavez has vowed to "overthrow" Micheletti and said earlier Tuesday that any aggression against Zelaya by Micheletti's government should prompt military intervention by the United Nations.
"No one can make me resign if I do not violate the laws of the country," Micheletti said. "If there is any invasion against our country, 7.5 million Hondurans will be ready to defend our territory and our laws and our homeland and our government."
Micheletti said it was too late for Zelaya to avoid arrest.
His foreign minister, Enrique Ortez, threw a wild card onto the table, telling CNN en Espanol that Zelaya had been letting drug traffickers ship U.S.-bound cocaine from Venezuela through Honduras. Ortez said the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration was aware of Zelaya's ties to organized crime.
DEA spokesman Rusty Payne could neither confirm nor deny a DEA investigation.
The U.S. government stood firmly by Zelaya, however. State Department spokesman Ian Kelly said Washington saw no acceptable solution other than Zelaya's return to power. He said the United States was considering cutting off aid to Honduras, which includes $215 million over four years from the U.S.-funded Millennium Challenge Corporation.
Micheletti said he had no contact with any U.S. official since assuming the presidency.
The interim leader, who now occupies the same office in the colonial-style presidential palace that Zelaya did, insisted he was getting on with the business of governing.
He and his newly appointed Cabinet ministers were settling in, even as soldiers wandered the ornate hallways and manned barricades outside to keep Zelaya's supporters away.
Micheletti, who promised he would step down in January and had no plans to ever run for president, said a key goal of his short term in office would be fixing the nation's finances. Zelaya never submitted the budget to Congress that was due last September, raising questions about what he was spending state money on.
Zelaya's popularity has sagged at home in recent years and his fiery brand of populism is similar to the kind that often irks Washington. Still, some of his policies, including raising the minimum wage, have earned him the loyalty of many poor Hondurans, and thousands have rallied to demand his return.
Asked if Zelaya could one day return to power stronger than ever, Micheletti said that "it's not about sympathy, it's not about being a martyr, but simply that we are following the letter of the law which he did not respect." (source)
More Americans See Democratic Party as “Too Liberal”
PRINCETON, NJ -- A Gallup Poll finds a statistically significant increase since last year in the percentage of Americans who describe the Democratic Party's views as being "too liberal," from 39% to 46%. This is the largest percentage saying so since November 1994, after the party's losses in that year's midterm elections.
Most major demographic and attitudinal subgroups show at least a slight uptick since 2008 in perceptions that the Democratic Party is too liberal. The increasing perception of the Democrats as too far left comes as President Obama and the Democrats in Congress have expanded the government's role in the economy to address the economic problems facing the country. Additionally, the government is working toward major healthcare reform legislation and strengthening environmental regulations.
Notably, there has been no change over the past year in the percentage of Americans who say the Republican Party is "too conservative," though the 43% who say the party leans too far to the right matches the historical high mark set last year.
As a result, now slightly more Americans perceive the Democratic Party as being too liberal (46%) than view the GOP as being too conservative (43%).
But the Democratic Party still compares favorably to the Republican Party from the standpoint that more Americans say the Democrats' ideology is "about right" (42%) than say this about the Republicans' ideology (34%).
In fact, the 34% who say the GOP is about right is a new low since the question was first asked in 1992, and a far cry from November 1994 and November 2002, when majorities thought the Republicans' views were appropriately balanced.
Independents' Views of the Parties
Political independents' perceptions of the two major parties' ideological orientation are important since both parties need to appeal to the political center in order to win elections. (The vast majority of partisan identifiers predictably view their chosen party's views as being about right and the other party's as being too extreme.)
Currently, independents are more likely to view both parties as being too extreme in either direction than to believe they are about right. But more independents say the Democratic Party (38%) than the Republican Party (25%) is about right.
Independents are a little more likely to say the Republican Party is too conservative than to say the Democratic Party is too liberal, in a slight departure from the results among all Americans.
Since last year, there have been declining perceptions among independents that each party is about right in its ideological orientation -- from 31% to 25% for the Republican Party and from 43% to 38% for the Democratic Party. Most of the decline in regard to the Democratic Party has been associated with in an increase in seeing the party as "too liberal."
Implications
The Democratic Party continues to hold the upper hand over the Republican Party in the current U.S. political environment by a variety of measures, including party identification and party favorable ratings. However, compared to last year, Americans are significantly more likely to see the Democratic Party as too liberal, and as a result, they are somewhat more likely to view the party as being too far left than to perceive the Republican Party as too far right. That may expose a bit of a vulnerability for the Democratic Party, and if perceptions of the Democratic Party as being too liberal continue to grow, the GOP may be able to win back some of the support it has lost in recent years. But that may be possible only if the Republicans are at the same time able to convince the public that they are not too far to the political right.
Survey Methods
Results are based on telephone interviews with 1,011 national adults, aged 18 and older, conducted June 14-17, 2009. For results based on the total sample of national adults, one can say with 95% confidence that the maximum margin of sampling error is ±3 percentage points.
Interviews are conducted with respondents on land-line telephones (for respondents with a land-line telephone) and cellular phones (for respondents who are cell-phone only).
In addition to sampling error, question wording and practical difficulties in conducting surveys can introduce error or bias into the findings of public opinion polls. (source)
