President Barack Obama placated one wing of his liberal base, environmentalists, with his decision to kill the Keystone Pipeline, but he’s angered another — labor unions. Some of them, anyway. Terry O’Sullivan, head of the Laborers’ International Union of North America ( LIUNA ), has called Obama’s action “politics at its worst,” saying that “once again the President has sided with environmentalists instead of blue collar construction workers.” O’Sullivan angrily vowed that “workers across the U.S. will not forget this.” The Keystone project has long pitted the two key Obama constituencies against one another. Green groups agitated against the pipeline over worries of water contamination and other (largely baseless) environmental fears, while many building and trade unions lusted after the thousands of construction jobs the pipeline would create in the United States. Mark H. Ayers, president of the Building and Construction Trades Department, AFL-CIO has publicly hammered the jobs issue. In a January 18th press release, Ayers voiced the frustration of many union workers, saying “…with a national unemployment rate in construction at 16 percent nationally, it is beyond disappointing that President Obama placed a higher priority on politics rather than our nation’s number one challenge: jobs.” James T. Callahan, president of the International Union of Operating Engineers, agrees, complaining to the Washington Post
All being the key word. RAMALLAH, West Bank (The Blaze/AP) — Israel must halt settlement building and present detailed proposals for a border with a future Palestinian state, visiting U.N. chief Ban Ki-moon said Wednesday, as he tried to persuade the Palestinians to continue low-level meetings with Israel that the international community hopes will evolve
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UN Chief: “All Israeli Settlements Are Against International Law And Prejudice”…
Recall that in late December, Egyptian authorities raided the offices of numerous nongovernmental organizations, including the International Republican Institute and the National Democratic Institute, which are funded mostly by US taxpayers through the National Endowment for Democracy. At the time, I wrote that allowing this to stand without tangible consequences for military aid to Egypt would be asking for trouble, and when Egyptian authorities had not fulfilled promises to return material seized in the raids a week later, I (along with some more prominent commentators) called for aid to be cut. That didn’t happen, and, having asked for trouble, the Obama administration has indeed gotten trouble. Eric Trager of the Washington Institute for Near East Policy notes that the mistreatment of democracy-promotion groups has continued and gotten worse, with American citizens’ targeted and banned from traveling: The Egyptian government’s recent travel ban on American democracy workers is the latest — and most grievous — attack on U.S.-funded NGOs operating in the country. Six employees are not allowed to travel, including Sam LaHood, the son of U.S. Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood. Four other non-U.S. citizens are also affected. All ten are employed by either the International Republican Institute (IRI) or the National Democratic Institute (NDI)… The travel ban represents an escalation in the Egyptian military’s crackdown on civil society. Since assuming control last February, the Supreme Council of the Armed Forces (SCAF) has used state-run media to foster a hostile political environment for pro-democracy NGOs, accusing them of catalyzing instability and portraying as traitors the Egyptian citizens who work for them. Trager adds that the government still hasn’t backed off from the December raids; the organizations’ Egyptian employees remain under investigation, and their offices remain closed. The administration just keeps asking nicely, to no effect: Indeed, the Obama administration’s current approach toward the SCAF — dealing with bad behavior through communication rather than consequences — is failing. For example, the president spoke with Defense Minister Muhammad Hussein Tantawi on Friday night and, according to the White House, “underscored that nongovernmental organizations should be able to operate freely.” Yet on Saturday, Sam LaHood, IRI’s director in Egypt, was prevented from leaving the country. It’s worth pausing to reflect on this: The President of the United States asks the defense minister of a client state to do something perfectly reasonable, and the next day the regime does the exact opposite. How can we keep sending massive piles of no-strings-attached cash to these people? Trager points out that aid money has proven useful in the past for changing the Egyptian military regime’s behavior: Previous experience suggests that a stronger U.S. response, such as threatening to withhold at least part of the $1.3 billion in annual military aid to Egypt, could convince the SCAF to lift the ban. This is precisely what the Bush administration did in 2002, when it successfully pressured the Mubarak regime to release Egyptian American democracy activist Saad Eddin Ibrahim from prison by threatening to withhold $130 million. Given the SCAF’s recent escalation against NGOs, it is time once again to enact this strategy. Trager concludes that that admininstration has been hesitant to withhold aid because “policymakers view such aid as vital to maintaining U.S. leverage, given the longstanding relationship between the American and Egyptian militaries, not to mention the recent election of an Islamist-dominated parliament that will be hostile to American interests.” This is an all-too-easy trap for an American administration to fall into: The military presents itself as a check on the Islamists, while meanwhile following the Mubarak playbook of suppressing the development of any non-Islamist opposition — and plays Washington like fiddle. Letting them get away with it is unacceptable. As Trager puts it, “maintaining leverage requires demonstrating a willingness to use it.” It’s past time to demonstrate such willingness.
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More Reason to Cut Aid to Egypt
Netanyahu has never hidden his disdain for the NY Times. (JTA) — Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said Israel’s two greatest enemies areThe New York Times and Haaretz, the editor of The Jerusalem Post said in a speech. Steve Linde, addressing a conference in Tel Aviv of the Women’s International Zionist Organization, said Wednesday that
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Awesome: Netanyahu Tells Journalist The New York Times Is One of Israel’s “Main Enemies”…
Egyptian government officials promised the US ambassador in Cairo that material seized in last week’s raids on non-governmental organizations, including US democracy-building groups, would be returned. That hasn’t happened : Egyptian officials still have not returned property or cash seized in a December 29 police raid on the Cairo offices of U.S. non-governmental organizations, according to two U.S.-based NGOs. The actions by the Egyptian police contradict assurances the State Department says were given to the U.S. ambassador by Egyptian authorities. “We had been assured by leaders in the Egyptian government that this issue would be resolved, that harassment would end, that NGOs would be allowed to go back to business as usual and that their property would be returned. It is, frankly, unacceptable to us that that situation has not been returned to normal,” State Department spokeswoman Victoria Nuland told reporters in her daily press briefing Tuesday. Leslie Campbell, director of the National Democratic Institute’s programs in the Middle East and North Africa, told CNN there has been “no change at all – nothing returned.” Campbell says there have been “mixed signals” from the Egyptian government about whether the group’s offices can be used, “but we are being cautious until there is a definitive statement from the government.” Another U.S. NGO targeted in the raids, the International Republican Institute, told CNN that promises to the U.S. ambassador that the offices would be re-opened and possessions returned have not been kept. Speaking by phone from Cairo, IRI President Lorne Craner said his group was promised on Friday that their material would be returned, but that hasn’t happened. “The agreement that we understood to have been made last Friday has not been undertaken and, in fact, we’re being told there will be an investigation of us,” he said. “Today (Wednesday) we had an Egyptian citizen and a U.S. citizen from our staff called in by the police, by the prosecutors, for questioning.” As I argued Thursday, it’s asking for trouble to allow this to stand without some tangible affect on the $1.3 billion in military aid the US sends to Egypt annually. Elliot Abrams puts it more starkly: “[W]e must let the army know that if it is their policy to crush democracy activists, there is a price they will pay. It’s $1.3 billion a year.” Virginia Republican Congressman Frank Wolf, who sits on the Appropriations Subcommittee on State, Foreign Operations, and Related Programs, is pressing the administration of this issue.
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Time to Cut Aid to Egypt
