The EU should be stronger and more united. Great Britain should belong to the Union.
Die EU sollte stärker und geeinter sein. Großbritannien sollte der Union angehören.
L'UE devrait être plus forte et plus unie. La Grande-Bretagne devrait appartenir à l'Union.
Showing posts with label President Barack Obama. Show all posts
Showing posts with label President Barack Obama. Show all posts
Monday, August 16, 2010
Turkey Told to Change Stance on Israel for US Arms Deals
THE TELEGRAPH: President Barack Obama has warned the Turkish prime minister that Ankara's position on Israel and Iran could lessen its chances of obtaining US weapons.
Erdogan: The United States voiced disappointment after Turkey voted against fresh UN sanctions on Iran, which the United Nations Security Council adopted in June. Photo: The Telegraph
The Turkish leader, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, wants to buy American drone aircraft to attack separatist Kurdish rebels after the US military withdraws from Iraq at the end of 2011.
The rebel group, the Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK), has bases in the mountains in the north of Iraq, near the Turkish border.
"The president has said to Erdogan that some of the actions that Turkey has taken have caused questions to be raised on the Hill (Congress)," a senior administration official told the Financial Times newspaper.
These questions centred on "whether we can have confidence in Turkey as an ally," said the official. >>> The Telegraph’s Foreign Staff | Monday, August 16, 2010
THE WALL STREET JOURNAL: President Barack Obama won the 2009 Nobel Peace Prize on Friday for "his extraordinary efforts to strengthen international diplomacy and cooperation between peoples," the Norwegian Nobel Committee said, citing his outreach to the Muslim world and attempts to curb nuclear proliferation.
The stunning choice made President Obama the third sitting U.S. president to win the Nobel Peace Prize and shocked Nobel observers because Obama took office less than two weeks before the Feb. 1 nomination deadline. President Obama's name had been mentioned in speculation before the award but many Nobel watchers believed it was too early to award the president.
"Only very rarely has a person to the same extent as Obama captured the world's attention and given its people hope for a better future," the committee said. "His diplomacy is founded in the concept that those who are to lead the world must do so on the basis of values and attitudes that are shared by the majority of the world's population."
The committee said it attached special importance to President Obama's vision of, and work for, a world without nuclear weapons.
"Obama has as president created a new climate in international politics. Multilateral diplomacy has regained a central position, with emphasis on the role that the United Nations and other international institutions can play," the committee said.
Theodore Roosevelt won the award in 1906 and Woodrow Wilson won in 1919. Former President Jimmy Carter won the award in 2002, while former Vice President Al Gore shared the 2007 prize with the U.N. panel on climate change. >>> Associated Press | Friday, October 09, 2009
Barack Obama Wins Nobel Peace Prize. For What?
THE WALL STREET JOURNAL: This is completely bizarre. President Barack Obama has just won the nobel peace prize. It is unclear why. For making peace, of a kind, with Hillary Clinton? For giving up the missile shield and cheering up the Iranians? For preparing a surge of troops and weaponry in Afghanistan? >>> Iain Martin | Friday, October 09, 2009
AFP: KABUL — The Taliban Friday condemned Barack Obama's Nobel Peace Prize, saying rather than bring peace to Afghanistan he had boosted troop numbers and continued the aggressive policies of his predecessor.
"We have seen no change in his strategy for peace. He has done nothing for peace in Afghanistan," Taliban spokesman Zabihullah Mujahid told AFP.
"We condemn the award of the Nobel Peace Prize for Obama," he said by telephone from an undisclosed location.
"When Obama was elected president, we were hopeful he would keep his promise to bring change. But he brought no change, he has continued the same old strategy as (President George W.) Bush. Taliban condemns Obama's Nobel Peace Prize >>> Waheedullah Massoud (AFP) | Friday, October 09, 2009
TIME: The last thing Barack Obama needed at this moment in his presidency and our politics is a prize for a promise.
Inspirational words have brought him a long way — including to the night in Grant Park less than a year ago when he asked that we "join in the work of remaking this nation the only way it's been done in America for two-hundred and twenty-one years — block by block, brick by brick, calloused hand by calloused hand."
By now there are surely more callouses on his lips than his hands. He, like every new president, has reckoned with both the power and the danger of words, dangers that are especially great for one who wields them as skillfully as he. A promise beautifully made raises hopes especially high: we will revive the economy while we rein in our spending; we will make health care simpler, safer, cheaper, fairer. We will rid the earth of its most lethal weapons. We will turn green and clean. We will all just get along.
So when reality bites, it chomps down hard. The Nobel committee cited "his extraordinary efforts to strengthen international diplomacy and cooperation between peoples." His critics fault some of those efforts: those who favor a missile shield for Poland or a troop surge in Afghanistan or a harder line on Iran. But even his fans know that none of the dreams have yet come true, and a prize for even dreaming them can feed the illusion that they have. Obama's Nobel Peace Prize: The Last Thing He Needs >>> Nancy Gibbs | Friday, October 09, 2009
«Un prix encombrant pour la poursuite de son mandat»
LE FIGARO: ANALYSE VIDEO - Selon Philippe Gélie, chef du service international du Figaro, le jury du Nobel n'a peut-être pas fait un cadeau à Obama en lui attribuant ce prix à la surprise générale.
Pour Philippe Gélie, chef du service international du Figaro, Barack Obama n'a pas encore d'énormes succès diplomatiques à son crédit, «c'est sans précédent je crois qu'un chef de l'Etat soit primé aussi tôt dans son mandat».
Il souligne également que ce prix pourra être lourd à porter pour un président dont le monde attend déjà énormément : «Est-ce qu'il a besoin, dix mois après le début de son mandat, d'être aussi prix Nobel de la paix?»
TIMES ONLINE: The award of this year’s Nobel peace prize to President Obama will be met with widespread incredulity, consternation in many capitals and probably deep embarrassment by the President himself.
Rarely has an award had such an obvious political and partisan intent. It was clearly seen by the Norwegian Nobel committee as a way of expressing European gratitude for an end to the Bush Administration, approval for the election of America’s first black president and hope that Washington will honour its promise to re-engage with the world.
Instead, the prize risks looking preposterous in its claims, patronising in its intentions and demeaning in its attempt to build up a man who has barely begun his period in office, let alone achieved any tangible outcome for peace.
The pretext for the prize was Mr Obama’s decision to “strengthen international diplomacy and co-operation between peoples”. Many people will point out that, while the President has indeed promised to “reset” relations with Russia and offer a fresh start to relations with the Muslim world, there is little so far to show for his fine words.
East-West relations are little better than they were six months ago, and any change is probably due largely to the global economic downturn; and America’s vaunted determination to re-engage with the Muslim world has failed to make any concrete progress towards ending the conflict between the Israelis and the Palestinians.
There is a further irony in offering a peace prize to a president whose principal preoccupation at the moment is when and how to expand the war in Afghanistan.
The spectacle of Mr Obama mounting the podium in Oslo to accept a prize that once went to Nelson Mandela, Aung San Suu Kyi and Mother Theresa would be all the more absurd if it follows a White House decision to send up to 40,000 more US troops to Afghanistan. However just such a war may be deemed in Western eyes, Muslims would not be the only group to complain that peace is hardly compatible with an escalation in hostilities. Comment: absurd decision on Obama makes a mockery of the Nobel peace prize >>> Michael Binyon | Friday, October 09, 2009
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Tuesday, June 02, 2009
President Hails Gay Pride Month
USA TODAY – THE OVAL: President Obama has issued a proclamation honoring "Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgendered Pride Month 2009."
Gay pride month is observed every June to commemorate the "Stonewall riots," an uprising that took place in 1969 when police tried to arrest gay patrons at the Stonewall Inn in New York City. The bar is shown here on the 25th anniversary of those events -- widely viewed as the beginning of the modern gay rights movement. >>> Kathy Kiely | Monday, June 01, 2009
Wednesday, April 15, 2009
Some Sugar from Obama before Tea Parties
THE SYDNEY MORNING HERALD: AS US taxpayers rush to meet the April 15 deadline to lodge their tax returns, and President Barack Obama talks up the economy, thousands of citizens will hold tea parties throughout the nation to protest the Administration's big-spending economic policies.
Organisers expect there will be at least 600 such events in towns and cities throughout the nation and are forecasting tens of thousands will attend some of the larger ones in major cities such as Chicago.
The tea party theme is a nod to the Boston Tea Party of 1773 when outraged colonists threw tea into the harbour to protest the tax on it imposed by their English overlords. It is regarded as the spark that ignited the American Revolutionary War. >>> Anne Davies Herald Correspondent in Washington | Thursday, April 16, 2009
Tuesday, April 14, 2009
Tide Turning for Same-sex Marriage
Image by Google Images
BRISBANE TIMES: A CULTURAL shift appears to be under way in the US in favour of same-sex marriages, with two landmark legal decisions this month and eight states set to vote on bills later this year.
Gay campaigners are celebrating a vote in the Vermont legislature last week and an earlier Iowa Supreme Court ruling, bringing to four the number of states where same-sex marriages are legal.
The mood contrasts with the despondency in November when the public in California ended a brief period in which same-sex marriages were allowed and voted for a definition of marriage as being only between a man and woman.
Evan Wolfson, the founder and executive director of the New York-based Freedom to Marry organisation, described the recent events as wonderful and said the public were beginning to see gay people in a different way.
The presidency of George Bush had been marked by social conservatism, often based on the agenda of the Christian right, he said. But the victory of Barack Obama in November had coincided with an apparent rejection of much of that agenda in favour of greater liberalisation.
"Eight years after the most polarising politics of Bush-Rove and orchestrated attacks on gay people, I think what happened in 2008 was the American people said they have had enough of divisiveness," Mr Wolfson said. >>> Agencies | Sunday, April 12, 2009
Friday, March 13, 2009
Iran Calls U.S. Sanctions "Childish"
CBS NEWS: Iran has dismissed President Obama's decision to renew economic sanctions against the Islamic Republic as "childish," and a "grave blunder".
President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad gave his reaction Friday at a ceremony to inaugurate work on the next phases in the development of a massive natural gas field in the country's south, reports CBS News' Leily Lankarani.
The president said the U.S., "thought that with childish and ugly behavior they could stop a great nation and its capable experts from moving towards accomplishment."
On Thursday, Mr. Obama officially renewed economic sanctions against Iran which were enacted by then-President Bill Clinton in the 1990s.
Ahmadinejad's defiance came, symbolically, as he inaugurated phases nine and 10 of the South Pars gas development in Asaluyeh, southern Iran.
He claimed it was actually the West's strict sanctions against his country which have motivated Iran to develop its energy technology — including nuclear energy advances. America and its allies suspect Iran is trying to develop a nuclear weapon, though Tehran insists they just want to generate electricity. >>> Posted by Tucker Reals | Friday, March 13, 2009
POLITICO: Former Vice President Dick Cheney warned that there is a “high probability” that terrorists will attempt a catastrophic nuclear or biological attack in coming years, and said he fears the Obama administration’s policies will make it more likely the attempt will succeed.
In an interview Tuesday with Politico, Cheney unyieldingly defended the Bush administration’s support for the Guantanamo Bay prison and coercive interrogation of terrorism suspects.
And he asserted that President Obama will either backtrack on his stated intentions to end those policies or put the country at risk in ways more severe than most Americans — and, he charged, many members of Obama’s own team — understand.
“When we get people who are more concerned about reading the rights to an Al Qaeda terrorist than they are with protecting the United States against people who are absolutely committed to do anything they can to kill Americans, then I worry,” Cheney said.
Protecting the country’s security is “a tough, mean, dirty, nasty business,” he said. “These are evil people. And we’re not going to win this fight by turning the other cheek.” >>> By John F Harris & Mike Allen & Jim Vandehei | Wednesday, February 4, 2009
Barack Obama to Allow Anti-terror Rendition to Continue
THE TELEGRAPH: The highly controversial anti-terror practice of rendition will continue under Barack Obama, it has emerged.
Despite ordering the closure of Guantanamo and an end to harsh interrogation techniques, the new president has failed to call an end to secret abductions and questioning.
In his first few days in office, Mr Obama was lauded for rejecting policies of the George W Bush era, but it has emerged the CIA still has the authority to carry out renditions in which suspects are picked up and often sent to a third country for questioning.
The practice caused outrage at the EU, after it was revealed the CIA had used secret prisons in Romania and Poland and airports such as Prestwick in Scotland to conduct up to 1,200 rendition flights. The European Parliament called renditions "an illegal instrument used by the United States".
According to a detailed reading of the executive orders signed by Mr Obama on Jan 22, renditions have not been outlawed, with the new administration deciding it needs to retain some devices in Mr Bush's anti-terror arsenal amid continued threats to US national security.
"Obviously you need to preserve some tools – you still have to go after the bad guys," an administration official told the Los Angeles Times.
"The legal advisers working on this looked at rendition. It is controversial in some circles and kicked up a big storm in Europe. But if done within certain parameters, it is an acceptable practice." >>> By Alex Spillius in Washington | Sunday, February 1, 2009
THE JERUSALEM POST: Tehran, Iran – Iran's parliament speaker said his country has doubts that US President Barack Obama's Middle East policy will be different from the Bush administration, state television reported Sunday.
Speaker Ali Larijani said Obama's stance on the crisis in Gaza and the United States' support for Israel have "created many doubts about the 'change' theory."
He also cautioned that Obama's actions on Iran's disputed nuclear program would be "another test for the change word" used by the new president during his campaign.
The more critical comments came days after Iranian Foreign Minister Manouchehr Mottaki struck a moderate tone after Obama's inauguration. "We are ready for new approaches by the United States," he had said Wednesday.
But Larijani's more skeptical words come after Obama made his first comments on the recent Gaza conflict since taking office on Tuesday. Obama struck themes familiar with Bush over the Gaza crisis, including supporting Israel's right to defend itself, criticizing rocket attacks by Hamas, lamenting civilian deaths in Gaza and favoring an international effort to develop a durable cease-fire.
One Iranian hardline newspaper, Jomhuri Eslami, criticized Obama in its editorial on Sunday.
"Obama took a negative and disappointing stance on Palestine," the editorial said in response to Obama's comments on Gaza. >>> Associated Press | Sunday, January 25, 2009
REUTERS: LONDON - A member of Saudi Arabia's royal family warned U.S. President Barack Obama Friday the Middle East peace process and U.S.-Saudi ties were at risk unless Washington changed tack on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Israel had come close to "killing the prospect of peace" with its offensive in Gaza, Prince Turki al-Faisal wrote in an article published on the Financial Times's website.
"Unless the new U.S. administration takes forceful steps to prevent any further suffering and slaughter of Palestinians, the peace process, the U.S.-Saudi relationship and the stability of the region are at risk," said Turki, a former Saudi intelligence chief and former ambassador to the United States and Britain. >>> | Thursday, January 22, 2009
