I got this on the internet and couldn’t resist sharing:
Michelangelo’s David is returning to Italy . . .
After a two year visit to the United States,
Michelangelo’s David is returning to Italy . . .
His Proud Sponsors were:
It is not surprising that Israeli Jews prefer Israel’s integration with the West over the "Middle East." But what is interesting is that even a majority of Israeli Arabs (or Palestinian citizens of Israel) prioritize raprochement with the West (Europe, US) over the Mideast. click here.
Thomas Friedman contrasts US energy policy and US behavior to the way Danes live and have structured their lives to be energy-efficient, and almost energy-independent.
Russia’s authoritarian dictator-in-building Vladimir Putin has been getting high on the fumes of oil revenues that Russia is reaping from the West (US consumers are propping him and others like Iran’s Ahmadinejad and Venezuela’s Hugo Chavez up). The oil boom has helped Russia’s economy thrive for the last few years. This, plus weak leadership from the US and Western Europe, has combined with Putin’s ruthless KGB past to make him into a formidably arrogant threat to democracy and freedom.
His so-far unchecked invasion of Georgia is a threat to the world, with consequences potentially as grave as any development our globe has witnessed since the walls of the Soviet empire crumbled down.
Is the West going to rise to the challenge? Are leadership and principle going to stand? Is civil society going to mobilize? Is media going to do a better job at awakening the world to these dangerous developments?
At a minimum if Russia does not reverse its aggression, it needs to be ousted from the Group of 8. No nation that behaves the way Russia has over the last few years – like a bully – deserves such newly anointed role.
Georgia’s President Saakashvili is not blameless. But nothing Georgia has done merits Russia’s aggression. And if the world does not react forcefully, Russia’s imperialist instincts will only grow stronger and eventually catch up with those who stand by today.
The walls between old allies on either side of the Atlantic cannot stand. The walls between the countries with the most and those with the least cannot stand. The walls between races and tribes, natives and immigrants, Christian and Muslim and Jew cannot stand. These now are the walls we must tear down.
- SENATOR BARACK OBAMA, speaking in Berlin.
In OneVoice form, he also said:
This is the moment when we must defeat terror and dry up the well of extremism that supports it. This threat is real and we cannot shrink from our responsibility to combat it.
If we could create NATO to face down the Soviet Union, we can join in a new and global partnership to dismantle the networks [of terror]
If we could win a battle of ideas against the communists, we can stand with the vast majority of Muslims who reject the extremism that leads to hate instead of hope.
From an interesting article in Ha’aretz by Michalis Firillas
[T]he concept of hegemony . . . is almost comical in the era of globalization. The sheer number of real or imaginary powers vying for the limelight has made international political maneuvering so complex that real power is hard-pressed to manifest itself in historically familiar ways. Suddenly, "statesmen" are a dime a dozen, and what really matters is whether you are invited to a conference, not what you can actually achieve there.
Firillas goes on to ponder on how civil society and multilateral organizations will somewhat fill that void.
– As we gear towards the general election, a word of caution for US Presidential candidates about an important constituency that will not vote for them –
According to conventional wisdom, Presidential candidates can take campaign stances that will curry favor with particular constituencies of voters, only to be forgiven for adjusting campaign positions once they face the realities of the highest office.
The truth is that a campaign defines how the electorate will see their President – and this all the more true when shaping the President’s image in the eyes of the largest constituency that will actually not vote for them: the international community.
While domestically the President may be able to somewhat reshape his/her image through defining moments and actions, this is far less feasible internationally.
Only Americans vote for their President, but foreigners care almost as much – and sometimes more – about who will lead the most powerful nation in the world.
International impressions about a candidate are forged quite early, and they are far harder to change. Longer distances yield local media coverage that tends to be more one-dimensional and absolute, less nuanced, and more sporadic. Foreign coverage will also tend to be defined more narrowly from the prism of a particular nation’s foreign affairs agenda, as opposed to a plethora of domestic issues.
President Bush caused particular suspicion abroad during his 2000 campaign mocking Al Gore, and then again John Kerry in 2004, for their ‘multilateralism.’ He made it a pillar of his campaign to emphasize he would only pursue narrowly-defined American interests. He rejected the Kyoto protocols not only on their substance but on what they implied – that American policy would be harmonized with – or subservient to – global agendas for climate control.
Perhaps this stance helped him win over nativist constituencies. And he had little to fear about alienating foreigners who by definition could not vote. But global karma caught up with him and has as much to do with his Administration’s ultimate ineffectiveness as any other factor.
Foreign Heads of State in rare uniform fashion viewed him apprehensively, and large swaths of people reviled him across the globe. They could not vote him out. But they could vote with their policies and their currencies. Not only did Bush struggle to build his coalition in Iraq, but the ‘America’ brand was tarnished, American goods disfavored, and the dollar weakened.
America’s perceived weakness today is directly connected to displeasure with Bush’s unilateralist policies, whose perceptions were cemented during his campaign pronouncements even more than through his Administration’s work.
Even when Bush did positive international work, his image (and that of his Administration) had been unalterably shaped. He funded the fight against AIDS and pressed against poverty through far greater foreign aid than his predecessors. But he got no credit for it. Once international personas are shaped, it is close to impossible to alter them.
The same is true with foreign leaders from other nations – Putin vs. Gorbachev, Chirac vs. Sarkozy, Sharon vs. Peres – they are a brand unto themselves and will be hard-pressed to change it abroad no matter what different policies they may enact.
Starting with this general election, future candidates for the US presidency will hopefully bear in mind that the world is watching, and their statements will not be forgotten after the dust settles.
Both Obama and McCain seem to be more in tune to the foreign-policy-shaping impact of their campaign statements than President Bush was. Their visions for foreign policy could not be in greater contrast. McCain projects unwavering strength against militant absolutism and nihilism. Obama urges soft power and diplomatic engagement in tandem with military might. Neither perspective can be dismissed as unfounded or demagogic. Not even history will help us judge such a poignant question to such complex and dire circumstances.
But both will do well to remember that their campaign pronouncements will shape their international personas and will thus have almost as much impact on their ability to advance American (and possibly global) interests as the policies they enact thereafter if elected.
Full Transcript here. Some excerpts:
Q151 Hugh Bayley: I agree, from my visits to the region, that a majority on both sides want peace, and the only prospect for that is to have a two-state solution, but the majority who want peace are marginalised time and again by acts of violence, whether it is a missile being fired over the border into Israel or the use of violence by the Israeli security forces. You can take the parallels with Northern Ireland too far, but it was undoubtedly the case in Northern Ireland that community groups on both sides – the Falls Road and the Shankhill – started saying, "We want peace", and they reduced the political space within which the terrorists operated. You have talked about a series of high-level talks you are involved with, but I think there is a need to nurture and strengthen community organisations of moderate Palestinians and moderate Israelis to try and nurture that space for discussing a future of co-existence. To what extent would you like to see DFID and other donors working in this area and what should they be doing?
Mr Blair: I think it is a very worthwhile exercise for them to work on. If you take an organisation, for example, like One Voice, which is for the young people, who are lovely young people, if that is the future on both sides it would be bright. I think it is very important to encourage a sort of civil society exchange at the same time, and I think that those are things that are easy to do and very worthwhile.
With regards to the Hezbollah-Lebanon-Doha debacle, and the article by Barry Rubin that I blogged about here, I received some interesting comments from Ami Isseroff, who runs MideastWeb and who I consider one of the most thoughtful and thought-provoking analysts on the Middle East:
There is no use comparing everything bad that happens to Munich. This was more like Abbyssinia – including the toothless sanctions. Iran can only be stopped in Iran. Nothing could be done in Lebanon. As for us [in Israel], we have Iran in the north and Iran in the south. There cannot be peace as long as Hamas exists. Your Gaza correspondents are right, and the Palestinian public opinion surveys confirm that Hamas have little support. But in elections, it doesn’t matter what people think. It matters who has the most guns and counts the votes. Read the book Point of No Return about Iran/Hezbollah by Ronen Bergman . …Iran cannot be negotiated with. They will not give up until they are confronted with overwhelming and decisive force. A blockade by sea and air at least,
I saw this at a cash register in a local deli…
