U.S. effort in Middle East appears doomed for now

The United States certainly may want it to happen, but the likelihood is extremely small that U.S. envoy George Mitchell will be successful in convincing negotiators for Israel and the Palestinian Authority to agree to resume peace talks. Mitchell said today that he hoped to wrap up an agreement in the next few days, according to the Reuters international news service. But that hope, if he really has it, seems unrealistic or, worse, dangerously naive. While Israel would love to be able to continue to relax its oppressive -- and expensive -- and oppressive military presence around territory it captured in 1967, and the PA needs statehood to fulfill the Palestinian people's desire for independence and to bolster its standing with its people, the two sides have rarely seemed further apart. The Palestinian Authority, of course, is insisting on a complete freeze of construction of housing for Israelis on land it wants for its state, including East Jerusalem. Israel, now led by a conservative prime minister, has offered to temporarily suspend future construction but refuses to stop building homes that are already planned or to give up any part of Jerusalem. "While we have not yet reached agreement on many outstanding issues, we are working hard to do so, and indeed the purpose of my visits here this week is to attempt to do so," Mitchell said Sunday with Israeli President Shimon Peres at his side, Reuters reported. Mitchell is scheduled to meet tomorrow with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyau and Tuesday with PA President Mahmoud Abbas in his effort to put together a deal that would freeze settlements and require Arab nations to move towards diplomatic recognition of Israel. But a look at the issues here underscores the impossibility of Mitchell's assignment. Israel is talking about where to put the border between the two countries, the PA and most of the rest of the Arab world is still pretending that Israel doesn't exist. That's a very long road to travel in three days. It's going to take a diplomat on the same level as, say, the late Anwar Sadat, to achieve a breakthrough, and it appears, sadly, the Netanyahu and Abbas are simply not up to the task. As for Mitchell, he might have had an distinguished career as a politician but he will more easily be remembered for botching the Major League Baseball steroids investigation than anything else he accomplished as a public figure.

Taking whatever to the streets

What does it mean that tens of thousands of demonstrators from all over the country turned out Saturday in Washington, D.C., to protest the policies of President Barack Obama? Well, it certainly says something about the new administration, but what it says is not quite so easy to figure out. Taken at face value, the demonstrators were showing their concern about the expansion of power by the federal government in borrowing hundreds of billions of dollars to stabilize the economy and in trying to insert itself into the nation's healthcare system, traditionally regulated by the states, according to the New York Times. But the demonstrator's enthusiastic singing of patriotic songs did not mask an undercurrent of violent dislike for Obama, the nation's first black president, who took office in January with a mandate to undo the excesses of the administration of George W. Bush, who Obama replaced. In fact, the hatred expressed by large numbers of demonstrators, many of whom compared the new president to Adolf Hitler and called his initial policy initiatives "socialism," sounded more like the irresponsible commentators on FOX news than the expressions of a concerned and informed populace. "He pledged a commitment of fidelity to the United States Constitution," former House Republican leader Dick Armey told the crowd near where Obama took the oath of office. "Liar, liar, liar, liar," the crowd shouted back, echoing what Rep. Joe Wilson (R-South Carolina) said three days earlier when he interrupted Obama's speech to a joint session of Congress, according to the Times. Armey's conservative advocacy group, FreedomWorks, was one of the organizations that helped organize the protest, and apparently organized the vocal opposition that dominated Obama's town-hall meetings last month. “This is not some kind of radical right-wing group,” Sen. Jim DeMint of South Carolina told the Times at the demonstration. “I just hope the Congress, the Senate and the president recognize that people are afraid of what’s going on.” But what, exactly, is going on? Where was these people's concern for the Constitution when Bush grossly expanded the president's war-making powers and repeatedly and deliberately violated the country's treaty obligations? Where was these people's concern for the Constitution when Bush grossly expanded the president's power by issuing signing statements that rejected the spirit of laws passed by Congress? Resetting the balance between the three branches of the federal government would be the province of a truly involved populace. Unfortunately, the demonstration in Washington seems more like a stampede by a disinterested, uninformed and uninvolved electorate than a legitimate political movement.

Twitter invites its own disaster with 9/10 announcement

Wildly popular microblogging site Twitter.com could be headed for disaster after yesterday's announcement that it would begin to allow advertising on its pages, which attract more than 45 million visitors monthly. The two-year old service, which allows legions of users to post messages of up to 140 characters, does not charge for access and has been looking for ways to turn its burgeoning popularity into profitability. "We leave the door open for advertising," founder Biz Stone said Thursday on the San Francisco-based company's official blog, according to the Reuters international news service. "We'd like to keep our options open, as we've said before." Until now, Twitter has been funded with venture capital, Reuters said. To accomplish the change, Twitter revised its terms of service to include the phrases "The services may include advertisements, which may be targeted to the content or information on the services, queries made through the services, or other information. The types and extent of advertising by Twitter on the services are subject to change." Users also are now required to concur that "in consideration for Twitter granting you access to and use of the services, you agree that Twitter and its third-party providers and partners may place such advertising on the services." Industry analysts were skeptical of the change, contending that advertising rarely succeeds on social networking sites and that advertisers would be reluctant to link their products with the unpredictable and often offensive chatter on the site, Reuters said. But advertising is the primary financial engine that drives free Web service, Reuters said.

Taiwan government should survive turmoil over typhoon response

Monday's resignation by Taiwan's premier is not expected to alter the current administration's focus on better ties with China, according to the Reuters international news service. More cabinet ministers are expected to resign in the furor of what most see as a botched response to devastation wrought by Typhoon Morakot, which struck the island over three days in August and killed 758 people. Torrential rains caused massive landslides that buried villages in the southern islands, Reuters said. President Ma Ying-jeou accepted the resignation of Premier Liu Chao-shiuan and appointed Wu Den-yih, another top Nationalist Party official, to replace him. "I'm the top administrator and all of the political responsibility rests on my shoulders, so I offered my resignation to the president, and he agreed," Liu said, according to Reuters. Ma has faced severe criticism over his government's disaster response efforts, but mostly for remarks he made after the disaster that appeared to blame residents of the six affected counties for not being adequately prepared. Wu said at a news conference that he would pursue Ma's policies of stronger economic ties with Beijing, Taiwan's rival since the 1949 revolution that brought the Chinese Communist Party to power in the mainland. The Nationalist Party fled offshore to nearby Taiwan, where it now rules an island nation of 23 million. China maintains that Taiwan is a renegade province and frequently threatens to recapture the island by force. Taiwan's ruling party was considered by many Western nations, including the United States, to be the legitimate rulers of mainland China until 1971, when the United Nations transferred its seat to the Communist government. Taiwan's vice-premier, Paul Chiu, also resigned Monday and was replaced by another party official, Chu Li-lun. Hsu Yung-ming, a political science professor at Soochow University in Taipei, Taiwan's capital, told Reuters it was customary in Taiwan for the premier to resign in such a circumstance.

War means big business -- U.S. tops list of weapons exporters

Just when it seemed Washington was ready to resume its expected role of helping to bring sanity to world affairs comes word of a congressional study finding the United States was involved in more than two-thirds of worldwide arms sales last year. The study, released Friday by the nonpartisan Congressional Research Service, found U.S. arms sales increased 50 percent in 2008 to $37.8 billion despite the worldwide recession, according to the New York Times. The report shows the United States is by far the world's largest arms trader, with Italy a distant second at $3.7 billion and Russia third at $3.5 billion. The report said U.S. arms sales increased nearly 50 percent from 2007. The increase was attributed by the report "not only to major new orders from clients in the Near East and in Asia, but also to the continuation of significant equipment and support services contracts with a broad-based number of U.S. clients globally. The study, “Conventional Arms Transfers to Developing Nations," was written by Richard F. Grimmett, a specialist in international security at the CRS, a division of the Library of Congress. Top buyers of U.S. arms and equipment in the developing world were United Arab Emirates, Saudi Arabia and Morocco, the report said, while main buyers of Russian armaments were China, India and Venezuela. Arms sales to major oil exporting countries helps keep the trillions of dollars they earn in circulation and keeps the world economy in some sort of balance, but is an enormous temptation to become aggressive and start wars.

Venezuelans split over success, future of Hugo Chavez

Maybe the most encouraging thing about Saturday's mass demonstrations in Caracas was that a large portion of the citizenry were showing concern -- and rightly so -- about the expansion of power by the central government. Led by President Hugo Chavez, the leader whose socialist policies have made him a hero among the nation's poor by raising living standards with redistributed oil wealth, Venezuela has nationalized major industries and removed the constitutional limit on consecutive terms, according to the Reuters international news service. So the man who famously called former U.S. President George W. Bush "the devil" at the United Nations in 2006 could end up controlling Venezuela and its oil reserves for decades. The government in Caracas also has been cracking down on opposition media and threatening opposition protesters with arrests for "rebellion," raising the specter of dictatorship. In that light, then, perhaps the most troubling thing about the day of protest was the people wearing red "I love Chavez" T-shirts, as if the man were more important than the institutions and rights of the people he leads. That's the danger -- the cult of personality combined with the temptation of power -- in Chavez's movement. Venezuelans who want to keep their government democratic ought to be deeply concerned about that. Then again, Chavez has a right to be angry at the United States, which almost surely played some sort of role in the coup that briefly toppled Chavez's government in 2002.

Shadowy environmental group knocks down radio towers

In a world grappling with international terrorism and cowardly attacks that kill hundreds or thousands of people in an instant, it's easy to react with outrage but not nearly as simple to craft a proportionate reaction to Friday's toppling of two radio station towers north of Seattle by a radical environmental group. The Earth Liberation Front claimed responsibility for knocking the KRKO-AM towers down with a stolen bulldozer in Snohomish County, Washington, according to Cable News Network. One of the towers was 349 feet tall. The ELF, which has been involved in other high-profile attacks in the Northwest, issued a statement claiming the towers were destroyed because they caused higher cancer rates and harmed wildlife, as well as interfering with phone lines. "When all legal channels of opposition have been exhausted, concerned citizens have to take action into their own hands to protect life and the planet," said Jason Crawford, a spokesman for the group. No one has been killed in any of the group's attacks. But federal and local law enforcement officials were not exactly tolerant. The Snohomish County Sheriff's Department turned the case over to the FBI's Seattle office for a formal investigation. KKRO manager Andy Skotdal said the tower complex was "flattened like a pancake" and would take at least three months to repair. "There's quite a bit of destruction to the antenna and it will probably take at least three months to get it back up and operational again," station manager Andy Skotdal said, according to CNN. If caught, the ELF people responsible for the attack will no doubt face prosecution. A crime is a crime. But there's a difference between crimes against property and crimes against people.