INCAPABLE US LEADERS HAVE LED AMERICA TO THIS PIT .
THE 111TH US CONGRESS & 44THE US PRESIDENT is IN big TROUBLE. THE 111TH US CONGRESS IN TROUBLE: CORRUPTION ! INCOMPETENCE, ARROGANCE, IGNORANCE AMONG MEMBERS SUCH AS SENATORS CHRIS DODD, CARL LEVIN, CHARLES SHUMER , BERNIE FRANK ETC.... RESULTED IN THIS ? America is losing the free world By Gideon Rachman Published: January 4 2010 20:11 | Last updated: January 4 2010 20:11 Ever since 1945, the US has regarded itself as the leader of the “free world”. But the Obama administration is facing an unexpected and unwelcome development in global politics. Four of the biggest and most strategically important democracies in the developing world – Brazil, India, South Africa and Turkey – are increasingly at odds with American foreign policy. Rather than siding with the US on the big international issues, they are just as likely to line up with authoritarian powers such as China and Iran. The US has been slow to pick up on this development, perhaps because it seems so surprising and unnatural. Most Americans assume that fellow democracies will share their values and opinions on international affairs. During the last presidential election campaign, John McCain, the Republican candidate, called for the formation of a global alliance of democracies to push back against authoritarian powers. Some of President Barack Obama’s senior advisers have also written enthusiastically about an international league of democracies. But the assumption that the world’s democracies will naturally stick together is proving unfounded. The latest example came during the Copenhagen climate summit. On the last day of the talks, the Americans tried to fix up one-to-one meetings between Mr Obama and the leaders of South Africa, Brazil and India – but failed each time. The Indians even said that their prime minister, Manmohan Singh, had already left for the airport. So Mr Obama must have felt something of a chump when he arrived for a last-minute meeting with Wen Jiabao, the Chinese prime minister, only to find him already deep in negotiations with the leaders of none other than Brazil, South Africa and India. Symbolically, the leaders had to squeeze up to make space for the American president around the table. There was more than symbolism at work. In Copenhagen, Brazil, South Africa and India decided that their status as developing nations was more important than their status as democracies. Like the Chinese, they argued that it is fundamentally unjust to cap the greenhouse gas emissions of poor countries at a lower level than the emissions of the US or the European Union; all the more so since the industrialised west is responsible for the great bulk of the carbon dioxide already in the atmosphere. Revealingly, both Brazilian and Chinese leaders have made the same pointed joke – likening the US to a rich man who, after gorging himself at a banquet, then invites the neighbours in for coffee and asks them to split the bill. If climate change were an isolated example, it might be dismissed as an important but anomalous issue that is almost designed to split countries along rich-poor lines. But, in fact, if you look at Brazil, South Africa, India and Turkey – the four most important democracies in Latin America, Africa, Asia and the greater Middle East – it is clear that none of them can be counted as a reliable ally of the US, or of a broader “community of democracies”. In the past year, President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva of Brazil has cut a lucrative oil deal with China, spoken warmly of Hugo Chávez, president of Venezuela, and congratulated Mahmoud Ahmadi-Nejad on his “victory” in the Iranian presidential election, while welcoming him on a state visit to Brazil. During a two-year stint on the United Nations Security Council from 2006, the South Africans routinely joined China and Russia in blocking resolutions on human rights and protecting authoritarian regimes such as Zimbabwe, Uzbekistan and Iran. Turkey, once regarded as a crucial American ally in the cold war and then trumpeted as the only example of a secular, pro-western, Muslim democracy, is also no longer a reliable partner for the west. Ever since the US-led invasion of Iraq, opinion polls there have shown very high levels of anti-Americanism. The mildly Islamist AKP government has engaged with America’s regional enemies – including Hamas, Hizbollah and Iran – and alarmed the Americans by taking an increasingly hostile attitude to Israel. India’s leaders do seem to cherish the idea that they have a “special relationship” with the US. But even the Indians regularly line up against the Americans on a range of international issues, from climate change to the Doha round of trade negotiations and the pursuit of sanctions against Iran or Burma. So what is going on? The answer is that Brazil, South Africa, Turkey and India are all countries whose identities as democracies are now being balanced – or even trumped – by their identities as developing nations that are not part of the white, rich, western world. All four countries have ruling parties that see themselves as champions of social justice at home and a more equitable global order overseas. Brazil’s Workers’ party, India’s Congress party, Turkey’s AKP and South Africa’s African National Congress have all adapted to globalisation – but they all retain traces of the old suspicions of global capitalism and of the US. Mr Obama is seen as a huge improvement on George W. Bush – but he is still an American president. As emerging global powers and developing nations, Brazil, India, South Africa and Turkey may often feel they have more in common with a rising China than with the democratic US. [email protected] Post and read comments at Gideon Rachman’s blog Copyright The Financial Times Limited 2010. You may share using our article tools. Please don't cut articles from FT.com and redistribute by email or post to the web. PRESIDENT REAGAN'S FOREIGN POLICY WAS ANTI COMMUNISTS AND FREEDOM FOR AMERICA. On April 28, 1984, Deng Xiaoping, Chairman of the Advisory Committee of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of China, meets U.S. President Ronald Reagan in the Great Hall of the People in Beijing. (Photo: fmprc.gov.cn) THE FOREIGN POLICY OF THE 44TH US PRESIDENT IS THE OPPOSITE OF PRESIDENT REAGAN. Spy chiefs turn on President Obama after seven CIA agents are slaughtered in Afghanistan By David Gardner Last updated at 8:40 AM on 02nd January 2010 Barack Obama was accused of double standards yesterday in his treatment of the CIA. The President paid tribute to secret agents after seven of them were killed by a suicide bomber in Afghanistan. In a statement, he said the CIA had been ‘tested as never before’ and that agents had ‘served on the front lines in directly confronting the dangers of the 21st century’. He lauded the victims as ‘part of a long line of patriots who have made great sacrifices for their fellow citizens and for our way of life’. Yet the previous day he had blasted ‘systemic failures’ in the CIA and other U.S. intelligence agencies for failing to prevent the Christmas Day syringe bomb attack. Backlash: Agency officials are angry at the president's about face ‘One day the President is pointing the finger and blaming the intelligence services, saying there is a systemic failure,’ said one agency official. ‘Now we are heroes. The fact is that we are doing everything humanly possible to stay on top of the security situation. The deaths of our operatives shows just how involved we are on the ground.’ But CIA bosses claim they were unfairly blamed at a time the covert government agency has been stretched further than ever before in Afghanistan and Pakistan. They point to the murder of seven operatives at a remote mountain base in Afghanistan’s Khost Province as an example of how agents are putting their lives on the line at the vanguard of America’s far-flung wars. More... U.S. judge throws out case against Blackwater guards charged with killing 17 Iraqis Surfin' USA: Obama's daughters hit the waves in Hawaii as their dad hits the links The agents – including the chief of the base, a mother-of-three - were collecting information about militants when the suicide bomber struck on Wednesday. The attack was the deadliest single day for the agency since eight CIA officers were killed in the 1983 bombing of the US Embassy in Beirut. Deadliest: In April 1983 terrorists targeted the US Embassy in Beirut with the loss of eight CIA officers The base targetted by Wednesday’s suicide bomber was a control centre for a covert programme overseeing strikes by remote-controlled aircraft along Afghanistan’s border with Pakistan. ‘Those who fell were far from home and close to the enemy, doing the hard work that must be done to protect our country from terrorism. We owe them our deepest gratitude,’ CIA Director Leon Panetta said. Some CIA officials are angry at being criticised by the White House after Abdulmutallab, 23, was allowed to slip through the security net and board a US-bound flight in Amsterdam despite evidence he was a terror threat. The president complained that a warning from the former London engineering student’s father and information about an al Qaeda bomb plot involving a Nigerian were not handled properly by the intelligence networks. But CIA officials say the data was sent to the US National Counterterrorism Centre in Washington, which was set up after the 9/11 attacks as a clearing house where raw data should be analysed. Agents claim that is where the dots should have been connected to help identify Abdulmutallab as a threat. Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/worldnews/article-1239941/Spy-chiefs-turn-President-Obama-seven-CIA-agents-slaughtered-Afghanistan.html#ixzz0bUjc1MMW THE 111TH US CONGRESS IN TROUBLE: CORRUPTION ! INCOMPETENCE, ARROGANCE, IGNORANCE AMONG MEMBERS SUCH AS SENATORS CHRIS DODD, CARL LEVIN, CHARLES SHUMER , BERNIE FRANK ETC.... RESULTED IN THIS ? FROM AMERICA WITH LOVE. VIETNAM INVASION & OCCUPATION OF CAMBODIA continues 1979-2009. US PRESIDENT RONALD REAGAN INSISTS ON CAMBODIA INDPENDENCE. 1988 "Prime Minister Pham Van Dong called on me and, in the presence of Premier Chou En-lai, swore in the name of the Democratic Republic of Vietnam that the latter would always respect the land frontiers as well as all islands belonging to the "Kingdom of Cambodia" March 1970 by Sihanouk . Wilfred Burchett book "The China Cambodia Vietnam triangle " P-176-177 UN Passes Strong Resolution on Cambodia Human Rights Abuses Feb. 27, 1982 : UN Commission on Human Rights meeting in Geneva adopted a resolution condemning Vietnam’s occupation of Cambodia as a violation of Cambodian human rights. The vote was 28 in favor, 8 against, and 5 abstentions. 5. Oct. 21, 1986 The UN General Assembly adopted a resolution A/RES/41/6, by vote of 116-21 with 13 abstentions, calling for a withdrawal of Vietnamese forces from Cambodia. As of today,Cambodia is still occupied by the Vietnamese troops despite the call from the US president to Vietnam to cease her occupation of Cambodia since 1988. Cambodia needs Independence from Vietnam and the Vietnamese invaders. Vietnam must cease her occupation of Cambodia at once. BURY _________________________________________________________________ Hotmail: Trusted email with powerful SPAM protection. http://clk.atdmt.com/GBL/go/177141665/direct/01/ -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Cambodia Discussion (CAMDISC) - www.cambodia.org" group. This is an unmoderated forum. Please refrain from using foul language. Thank you for your understanding. Peace among us and in Cambodia. 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