Palestinians back away from peace deal

Are there still many among us who are surprised to hear that the Palestinian Authority is backing away from reaching any kind of peace deal with Israel? Word from Ramallah today that the PA would refuse to make any kind of deal with Israel that allowed the expansion of settlements in the West Bank is yet another indication of how far from seriousness the talks have strayed. Top Palestinian negotiator Saeb Erekat told Voice of Palestine radio on Sunday that "there are no middle-ground solutions for the settlement issue" and that all settlement activity must stop, according to the Reuters international news service. Erekat said Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas told U.S. President Barack Obama the same thing in a letter yesterday, Reuters reported. But readers of this blog understand by now that the settlement issue actually is a non-issue designed to enrage the populace and delay any comprehensive peace between Israel and the PA. If the PA is planning to establish a free state that protects its citizens' rights, the only way settlement can be an obstacle to peace is if peace is not really being contemplated and the proposed two-state solution is not being seriously considered. Two countries at peace would allow the free movement of citizens between their borders -- it would not matter where the homes were located. If Israel wants to continue to build and expand settlements in territory promised to the Palestinians, it should go ahead -- but with the assumption that it is not guaranteed sovereignty over them in a final peace deal. Sovereignty is, after all, the only issue that can only be resolved with direct negotiations between the aggrieved parties. But reaching such a deal necessarily means that the Palestinian people give up their preposterous 'right of return' claims and the pretense of shared sovereignty over Jerusalem and its holy sites. It also means that the Palestinians must stop teaching their children to hate Jewish people. The Palestinian leadership is afraid to do this because it is afraid of angering radicals in its community who have shown no hesitation to resort to violence. But peace is a long-range proposition that can only be accomplished with a long-term commitment to pluralism. That will involve suppressing violent groups and changing the community dialogue from hatred to hopefulness, from demonization to democracy. Sadly, nobody who pays attention to the Middle East can image the PA being ready to commit to that.

What did we expect from the Bush administration?

Saturday's revelation that the CIA deliberately withheld information about a secret counterterrorism program from the members of Congress who were supposed to oversee it certainly helps explain, at least in part, the initial reluctance of the new Obama administration to investigate the previous government's illegal activities. This is going to be big -- the Bush administration's excesses violated a lot of laws and principles, and put the future of the country at risk -- and a lot of former officials probably are going to end up in prison or have to fight furiously to stay out. No doubt, President Barack Obama did not want to be distracted from his sweeping domestic agenda at the start of his term. But Congress should have no such reluctance because its authority was compromised -- unless, of course, it is that such an investigation will reveal the failure of elected representatives to properly live up to their oversight responsibilities. Hopefully, the new Democratic Party majority in both houses of Congress will recognize the damage done to the government traditions under the U.S. Constitution and work to see that it never happens again. Assuming reports are true, and there are no indications so far that they are not, new CIA director Leon Panetta told the House and Senate intelligence committees that former Vice President Dick Cheney ordered the agency not to reveal to Congress the existence of a still-secret counterterrorism program, according to the New York Times. Panetta said he ended the program when he took office. The issue of whether the Bush administration was candid with Congress has been roiling Capitol Hill since May, when Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi (D-San Francisco) said she had not been told that the agency had waterboarded a terror suspect in 2002. The National Security Act of 1947 requires the president to ensure that the Congress intelligence committees are "kept fully and currently informed of the intelligence activities of the United States," the Times said. A CIA spokesman declined to comment on Cheney's purported role in the concealment from Congress. "It's not agency practice to discuss what may or not have been said in a classified briefing," the spokesman, Paul Gimigliano, told the Times. “When a C.I.A. unit brought this matter to Director Panetta’s attention, it was with the recommendation that it be shared appropriately with Congress. That was also his view, and he took swift, decisive action to put it into effect.” Intelligence and Congressional officials told the Times that the unidentified program did not involve interrogation or domestic intelligence activities, but was started following Sept. 11, 2001, attacks on New York and Washington.

OAS suspends Honduras

Maybe the decision by the Organization of American States to suspend Honduras after its military overthrew elected leftist president Manuel Zelaya will bring enough pressure to force the junta to step aside, but it's hard to see at this point how that will be accomplished. The OAS voted 33-0 on Saturday to bar Honduras from participation in the organization, shortly after its secretary-general, Jose Miguel Insulza, returned from Washington, D.C., following an unsuccessful effort to broker a deal to return Zelaya to office, according to the Miami Herald newspaper. The resolution passed by the OAS called the military coup an "unconstitutional altertation of the democratic order" and bars Honduras from receiving loans or other aid while still requiring the nation to adhere to the diplomatic union's human rights rules. A spokeswoman for the new military government in Tagucigalpa, the Honduran capital, dismissed Insulza's effort as insincere and said her country had withdrawn from the OAS before the meeting. "We saw that our good faith was taken advantage of and we were not listened to," Honduras Deputy Foreign Minister Martha Lorena de Casco said, according to the Herald. "Honduras has been viewed as a small, poor country. It's said and unfortunate, but the freedom of Honduras is not for sale." Military leaders apparently were alarmed by Zelaya's advocacy of a referendum polling Honduran voters to see if they would accept extending his term of office as a power grab, on a par with efforts by Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez to convince voters to lift constitutional limits on his time in office. Zelaya had frequently clashed with Honduras' attorney general, Supreme Court and military leaders, the Herald said. But Zelaya immediately won the support of most countries, including the United States. The deposed leader vowed to return to Honduras on Sunday, even though the ruling junta cautioned that he would be arrested if he did.

Industry experts fear GM still stuck in same gear

Nice to hear that automobile industry experts have begun to question General Motors' decision to choose a longtime veteran insider to run the largest U.S. automaker after the federal government made removal of the old CEO a condition of extending billions of dollars in loans. Cable News Network (CNN) said today that "many" industry experts are questioning whether 25-year GM insider Fritz Henderson is the right person to make the major changes needed to turn the largely moribund carmaker around, an issue raised here three months ago. Like the Ford Motor Co. and bankrupt Chrysler Corp., GM has been unable to build fuel-efficient vehicles that could compete on quality with rival Japanese automakers Toyota and Honda, even more than 30 years after the first OPEC oil embargo heralded a sea change in world fuel supplies. GM filed for bankruptcy protection at the urging of the Obama administration on June 1. "The removal of managers and executives has been mainly at lower levels, thinning ranks and taking out layers. It's not replacing people who made the mess and created the culture," said former GM market research and planning executive Rob Kleinman. Now managing director of consulting firm RAK & Co., Kleinman said what GM needs now is a management overhaul if it is to return to profitability. "Most successful turnarounds have been led by outsiders," he said. "The fact that Fritz [Henderson] seems dedicated to keeping the management team in place makes me extremely uncomfortable." In fact, GM's domestic rivals are being run by former industry outsiders, with Ford hiring Alan Mulally from Boeing in 2004 and Chrysler now headed by Fiat CEO Sergio Machionne, who was not in the industry when he was hired by the Italian carmaker in 2004, Reuters said. "You need some fresh blood in there," said industry analyst and consultant Erich Merkle. "The culture is not one that fosters speed, especially speed to market." But Henderson insisted Fortune magazine that he can bring about the necessary changes, CNN said. "I know the industry inside and out; I know the industry well," he told the magazine. "I think that does bring some experiences that can be very helpful in terms of change because I know what needs to be changed." And David Cole, chairman of the Center for Automotive Research, called Henderson a "high-speed decision-maker" who already has made important changes in GM's executive culture, CNN said. But Kleinman said GM was suffering from being out-of-touch with consumers and a decided lack of accountability, things a corporate insider would be unlikely to be able to fix.

Iran's Islamic government facing fundamental doubts

In the aftermath of a disputed election, citizen protests violently quashed by security forces, arrests of dissident leaders and closures of newspapers, Iranian reformists have begun questioning the legitimacy of President Mahmoud Ahmedinejad's government, the Cable News Network (CNN) reported Wednesday. Ahmedinejad's chief opponent, Mir Hossein Mousavi, who has claimed the June 12 election was improper and has demanded a revote, issued a statement saying the government had created a "bitter coup d'etat atmosphere" by its actions, including the media crackdown. "If we do not stand our grounds now, then we will have no guarantees that we won't be at this exact point in the future, face to face with the bitter events of this election," Mousavi said. Mousavi also called for the release of arrested dissidents and said he had proof of election fraud. The statement followed the publication of a letter condemning the government from Mehdi Karrubi, a third presidential candidate, in his political party's newspaper. Further publication of the paper was promptly blocked by the government, CNN said. Karrubi, a 72-year-old cleric, said the government's actions were grounds for annulment of the election. "I will not recognize the legitimacy of the government which has resulted from this process," Karrubi said in the letter. Perhaps Iran's leading reformer, former president Mohammad Khatami, called on Iranians to keep fighting for a fair election. "We must not lose our social capital this easily," Khatami told the progressive Iranian newspaper Tahile Rouz, Reuters said. "I know Mousavi as one of the faithful, original and valuable capitals of our revolution, and considered his return to the political scene as a great chance." Twenty people were killed and more than 1,000 detained in the protests that followed the election. But whatever is going to happen in Iran apparently will have to happen by July 26, when Ahmedinejad is scheduled to take the oath of office before parliament for his second four-year presidential term.

Honduras takes giant step backward -- military coup topples leftist government

No doubt, the military geniuses who engineered Sunday's dawn overthrow of the democratically elected president of Honduras, leftist Manuel Zelaya, thought they were doing the right thing. And maybe they were. The Supreme Court said it had ordered military commanders to remove the president after he precipitated a political crisis last week by firing the armed forces chief, Gen. Romero Vasquez, over a disagreement about a national election Zelaya had called in an effort to change the constitution to allow him to run again, according to the Reuters international news service. Zelaya was put on a plane and flown to exile in Costa Rica over objections from the United States, the European Union and other nations; and the Honduran legislature named Roberto Micheletti, a member of Zelaya's Liberal Party, as the new president of the poor Central American nation. Micheletti immediately declared a curfew for Sunday and Monday nights as the streets of the capital, Tegucigalpa, filled with pro-Zelaya protesters, Reuters said. U.S. President Barack Obama called for the reinstatement of Zelaya but Micheletti refused, Reuters said. "I don't think anybody here, not Barack Obama and much less Hugo Chavez, has the right to come and threaten," Micheletti said. It was Zelaya's growing relationship with Chavez, the leftist Venezuelan president famous for his angry anti-U.S. rhetoric, that appears to have upset the generals, Reuters said. The court ordered Zelaya's removal, saying he had exceeded his authority by firing Vasquez. The coup was a rather painful reminder of the political turmoil that characterized Central American governments last century, but which had calmed down in the past few decades as democracies became firmly established. The United States still has 600 troops stationed at Soto Cano Air Base in Honduras, Reuters said.

There's good news and bad news in House energy bill

U.S. President Barack Obama applauded Sunday the passage of an historic energy bill by the House of Representatives aimed at reducing greenhouse gas emissions and moving the United States away from oil dependence, according to the New York Times. The bill is historic because it would, if passed by the Senate and signed by the president, begin turning the United States from being one of the world's largest emitters of the gasses blamed for global warming and from its profligate use of fossil fuels. The proposal includes a cap-and-trade program to encourage emissions-reduction and support for solar energy and wind power, the Times said. "I think it's fair to say that over the first six month, we've seen more progress on shifting us away from dependence on foreign oil and fossil fuels than at any time in several decades," Obama told a group of reporters in the Oval Office, citing his administration's raising of automobile mileage standards and including support for energy research and home weatherization in the economic stimulus bill. But Obama took issue with one provision in the bill passed bythe House that could impose tariffs on countries that refuse to adopt limits on greenhouse gas emissions. "At a time when the economy worldwide is still in deep recession and we've seen a significant drop in global trade, I think we have to be very careful about sending any protectionist signals out there," Obama said. Okay, the president still sees the big picture on the economy. The best way to rein in the uncivilized regimes out there is by getting them engaged in the world economy -- there's enough money to be made out there for everyone, assuming the recession ends. Look at how it has been working with China. Instead of remaining a belligerent enemy, China has greatly benefitted from engagement and is working with the United States and the West on many issues. It's hard to remember the last time Beijing railed against U.S. "hegemony" -- the name the old Chinese Communists had for Washington's use of economic influence. And it's certainly a lot better than worldwide saber-rattling with nuclear arms, like we're seeing on a smaller scale with North Korea and Iran. But will Obama veto the bill if the Senate does not remove the tariff provision before it gets to him? He doesn't seem to have any choice, and is most likely working behind the scenes to make sure it doesn't come to that. Of course, it would have been nice if he had spoken equally eloquently about removing provisions from the bill that offer additional support for nuclear power and so-called "clean coal" technology. Nuclear power is simply too dangerous to depend on, and burning coal on a larger scale has catastrophic environmental consequences. It's far better, as Obama did say, to put the most energy into safe, renewable energy resources.