In other news...
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Susan A. Fani |
Former CBS News president Richard Salant (1961 - 64 and 1966 - 79) explained the major media's role: "Our job is to give people not what they want, but what we decide they ought to have." ...and to this very day most Americans haven't noticed they're being brained washed! ~ N. Hooben
Wednesday, February 3, 2010
Some reporters are ... this one is ...
Afghanistan: The Obama administration continues the awkward dance of engagement that began in 1995
Obama Repeats Mistakes in Afghanistan: Purposeless Engagement
An article today by Michael Rubin in Commentary Magazine lays out the history of our State Department's many years of purposeless "engagement" with the Taliban; "engagement" meaning diplomacy and endless, endless meetings over the years, costing certainly billions in the quest for what our Government had to, at some point between then and now, realize was folly...but apparently not.
Today, the Obama administration continues the awkward dance of engagement that began in 1995:
The story the documents tell is one of engagement for its own sake—without any consideration given to the behavior or sincerity of an unambiguously hostile interlocutor.
...another U.S. diplomat met a Taliban “insider” who told the official what he wanted to hear: the Taliban liked the United States, had no objection to elections in Afghanistan, and were suspicious of both Saudi and Pakistani intentions. This was nonsense, but it was manna for American diplomats who wanted to believe that engagement was possible.In 1997, Madeleine Albright followed in Warren Christopher's engagement policy:
Simply sitting down for tea with a diplomat fulfilled the Taliban’s major needs before bargaining ever began. Engagement ironically removed any incentive the Taliban had to cease sponsoring terror or mitigate human-rights abuses.Albright had tea with the thugs, as had all those before her. Afghan women and girls lived the most brutal lives, under the harshest circumstances of any women, anywhere - while she took tea with the Taliban.
Diplomats met Taliban representatives every few weeks....What resulted was theater: the Taliban would stonewall on terrorism but would also dangle just enough hope to keep diplomats calling and forestall punitive strategies. It was not hard for the Taliban to string diplomats along.
On January 16, 1997, Holzman suggested that the Taliban allow a U.S. team to visit the sites of terrorist camps to confirm the alleged cessation of activity therein. Wakil Ahmed, a political adviser to Taliban leader Mullah Omar, agreed at first; but over subsequent weeks, he offered a litany of excuses to delay the visit—the Ramadan fast, winter snows, and scheduling difficulties. Eventually the offer was rescinded altogether.
Once again, the State Department walked away empty-handed, while the Taliban had secured for themselves a four-month reprieve from pressure at the very moment that al-Qaeda was using its Afghanistan base to plot attacks on the U.S. embassies in Kenya and Tanzania....Rubin walks the reader through ABC's interview with bin Lade in May 1998. Then the embassy August bombings in Kenya and Tanzania, and points out:
Any notion that engagement had convinced the Taliban to cease support for terrorism should have evaporated. It didn’t....
Wakil Ahmed [Taliban foreign minister] repeated the canard that popular sentiment in his country would not allow the Taliban to expel Bin Laden, despite the carnage in Kenya and Tanzania.
Nonetheless, the State Department found promise in the discussion, even though a face-to-face meeting with Americans served only to reinforce the Taliban gang’s pretensions as a government rather than as an umbrella group for terrorists.
“Now is the time to notch up the diplomatic—-repeat—diplomatic pressure,” Milam [Ambassador to Pakistan] wrote. “A political / diplomatic solution to Bin Laden’s expulsion from Afghanistan may be a mite more possible now.”By November, "a Taliban court found bin Laden not guilty" of bombing our embassies. The dance continued.
Before long, the Taliban were again giving Bin Laden unfettered access to the media.We continued plying funds into our agricultural adventures with the Taliban, hoping to convert them from drugs to vegetables - as Rubin put it: "the Taliban garden refused to yield even a hint of a green shoot."
Now today, the Karzai government plans to bribe the Taliban with money and jobs - hoping to lure them into communities where "the people" try to live out the day without dying. President Karzai has told the BBC "the US will fund the scheme."
Obama’s willingness to accept the conventional history—we lost Afghanistan because we ignored Afghanistan—is reason for grave concern. The story of Afghanistan in the 1990s is a story of the limits of diplomacy for its own sake. And diplomacy for its own sake is a cornerstone, perhaps the cornerstone, of Obama’s foreign policy.
And specifically in Afghanistan, he is already signaling a readiness to repeat the mistakes of engagement with the very extremists whose behavior made possible the attacks of 9/11 and who have returned to torment Afghanistan.I hope you will read this excellent and insightful piece, Taking Tea with the Taliban by Michael Rubin at Commentary Magazine. We who cannot learn from history, even the most powerful in the world, are likely doomed to repeat it.
Read more about the failures of diplomacy:
Missiles and Warships to Persian Gulf: Patriot Missiles to Qatar, UAE, Bahrain, Kuwait
"Iran-phobia" ...you better believe it! Friends of Joe Biden are getting into the long range missle business. * [also, What's happening Feb 11 ?]
See also story at bottom of this page: 'Iran will deliver telling blow to global powers on Feb. 11'
The Washington Post
Iran: research rocket successfully sent into space
By Thomas Erdbrink
Washington Post Foreign Service
Wednesday, February 3, 2010; 10:55 AM
TEHRAN -- Iran said it successfully fired a new, domestically produced research rocket into space Wednesday, with several live animals aboard -- a feat that President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad said illustrated his country's technological prowess.
State television broadcast images of the launch of the Kavoshgar (Explorer)-3, and showed officials putting a mouse, two turtles and about a dozen creatures that looked like worms inside a capsule that was placed in the rocket before it blasted off.
The launch, part of Iran's ambitious space program, could boost Western concerns over Iran's missile program, since some space rockets can be equipped with warheads and used as intercontinental missiles.
On Tuesday, Iranian officials reacted angrily to moves by the United States to expand land- and sea-based missile defense systems in and around the Persian Gulf to deter possible Iranian missile attacks. They called the rationale "an excuse" to widen U.S. influence in the region, saying the U.S. wanted to create ""Iran-phobia" in the region and emphasized Iran's good relations with neighboring countries.
At the same time, Ahmadinejad appeared Tuesday to back a deal to remove most of Iran's enriched uranium from the country, a proposal Tehran had rejected several weeks ago.
Ahmadinejad on Wednesday also unveiled three more domestically made satellites; a booster rocket that can carry a satellite; and a study center for satellite data, local media reported. Iran sent its first satellite into orbit in 2009, marking a festive period surrounding the 30th anniversary of the Islamic revolution.
"If last year was our first presence in the space, this year is our living creatures' first presence in the space," Ahmadinejad said in a speech that was broadcast live to mark Space Technology Day. "This is a sign of bigger achievements to come," he said.
Iran's supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, on Tuesday urged scientists to "make extra efforts for Iran to reach the heights of world science."
The capsule, which the Kavoshgar-3 rocket carried into space, landed safely later Wednesday, the semi-official Fars news agency reported. Studies on the live animals that were inside are underway.
The news agency, which is close to the government, also said that the rocket launch was a joint project between the defense and science ministries and the aerospace research center.
The Kavoshhgar-3 is a multi-stage rocket. Wednesday's test was the third in a series that seem to have been successful. In 2008 an older version of the rocket made it into space for 40 minutes; its capsule returned to Earth on a parachute.
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'Iran will deliver telling blow to global powers on Feb. 11'
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Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad |
"The Islamic Revolution opened a window to liberty for the human race, which was trapped in the dead ends of materialism," Ahmadinejad said during a cabinet meeting on Sunday.
"If the Islamic Revolution had not occurred, liberalism and Marxism would have crushed all human dignity in their power-seeking and money-grubbing claws. Nothing would have remained of human and spiritual principles," he added.
Ahmadinejad said that in the three decades of its history, the Islamic Revolution had inspired some great developments in the world.
The Iranian president made the remarks as the 31st anniversary of the Islamic Revolution approaches.
Iranians are expected to pour into the streets on February 11 to celebrate the occasion in public rallies across the country, as they have done annually over the past three decades.
MJ/HGL
Tuesday, February 2, 2010
Socialism In Ohio Schools ...naaah, not in Ohio, they would never do that... Would they?
FOX 8 Cleveland's Own
Local High School Accused of Promoting Socialism
PERRY TOWNSHIP, Ohio - Complaints from across the United States have been directed at one northeast Ohio high school because internship application forms for a Democratic group were distributed to students, but no Republican equivalent was offered.
Fox 8's Dave Nethers reports that a government teacher at Perry High in Massillon did, in fact, hand out Organizing for America application forms. OFA was during the most recent presidential campaign known as Obama for America, a grassroots group that worked at local levels to rally support for then-nominee Barack Obama. OFA now does the same thing in support of the Democratic Party.
Because no Republican Party equivalent internship application was made available to students, someone took to the right-wing blog Atlas Shrugs to express his/her displeasure. That's when the nationwide uproar started. Many readers were outraged, directing their venom at Perry administrators.
CLICK HERE TO VIEW THE BLOG (WHICH INCLUDES COPIES OF THE FORMS IN QUESTION)
The blogger suggests that President Obama himself was attempting to use the public school system for the goal of recruiting young people to buy into his alleged agenda of national socialism.
"This is no accident," the blogger writes. "Obama is poisoning our public school system. He acts as if it's his own private breeding farm."
In an article published by The (Massillon) Independent, Perry Local Superintendent Dr. John Richard said the entire controversy is simply "a misunderstanding," and he reminded his staff to district policy that prevents the distribution of political materials.
Richard tells Fox 8 News that every student took home a letter explaining exactly what happened, and that the situation is now settled as far as he is concerned. Still, the superintendent says he is getting nasty e-mails from all across the country demanding his resignation.
Don't forget to read the comments at the original site...there are some good ones...you might even find some from me... bet ya can't find the one about the Pope ~ Norm
7 in 2, 16 in 7... Do I here more? Hey, Obama isn't lying, that's just the way he talks. His accent always had a left slant.
Here it is...