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Politics : The Donkey's Inn -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: TigerPaw who wrote (3166)	3/7/2002 1:24:33 PM
From: Mephisto	Respond to of 15516

W's Axil of Evil speech has brought only protests, criticism and contempt for the US. The speech was a failure. Did you know that W couldn't come up with his own ideas for the speech? He depended upon a speech writer for the Axis of Evil term. The press said the speech writer lost his job when the public found out the term wasl term was the speech writer's invention. There were several articles about it this week. From news reports W is disengaged from all international problems except for one: his obsession with the capture of Bin Laden and other top Taliban leaders. Hopefully, this latest military campaign will fracture the strongest group of the Taliban that are in the Afghanistan-Pakistan area. I believe the European leaders have the best approach to eliminating or at least reducing the number of people who join these causes. Also, the Europeans have had more experience with terrorism. Weren't you surprised that the US cast the lone vote for withdrawing Israel forces from Palestinian areas in December? Maybe, we shouldn't be surprised. Sharon leans to the extreme right and is a very nasty person. Did you see the articles that I found? Israel determined that Sharon was responsible for up to 1,700 Palestinian deaths in 1982 when he was defense minister. The Europeans approach international discord in a positive way: The following is an excerpt from the article, "Europe, U.S. Diverging on Key Policy Approaches" By Keith B. Richburg Washington Post Foreign Service Monday, March 4, 2002; Page A13 (For full story see: siliconinvestor.com "Europeans are continuing overtures to North Korea and reformist groups in Iran, rejecting President Bush's view that those countries and Iraq form an "axis of evil." On the Middle East, the Bush administration has largely followed the lead of Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon, isolating Yasser Arafat and blaming the Palestinian leader for not clamping down harder on Palestinian "terrorism." But the Europeans see a Middle East settlement as crucial to solving the global terror problem, and say the way to get one is to be far more critical of Israeli incursions into Palestinian areas and to insist that Arafat remains the legitimate voice of the Palestinians. Above all, the Europeans believe the threats exposed by Sept. 11 require more than ever a multilateral approach, and that the United States is trying to go it alone. "You can't deal with the dark side of globalization -- the terrorism, the financing of terrorism, the crime, the drugs, the trafficking of human beings, the relationship between environmental degradation and poverty and security . . . unless you deal with them as a result of multilateral engagement," said Chris Patten, the European Union's external affairs commissioner. "There is a real European perplexity in the face of an American administration that, in a little more than a year, has opposed the Kyoto protocol [on global warming] . . . several disarmament accords, and took advantage of its Security Council veto on the question of the Middle East," French Foreign Minister Hubert Vedrine said in an interview in Friday's Liberation newspaper. In December, the United States cast the lone veto of a Security Council resolution calling for Israeli withdrawal from Palestinian-controlled territority."

To: TigerPaw who wrote (3166)	3/8/2002 2:46:34 PM
From: Mephisto	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 15516

Bush's folly An EU rush to retaliate would compound the damage " And the crisis in steel is global: worldwide, although companies are working at only 77 per cent of capacity, production exceeds demand by 100 million tonnes a year. Mr Bush's act has weakened the chances of international agreement to deal with this surplus capacity." thetimes.co.uk A mere two months ago George W. Bush chided Americans seeking to "shut down trade" for lacking confidence in American workers, entrepreneurs and products. Now, in a political gesture to the US steel lobby and to swing voters in politically sensitive rust-belt states, the President has delivered his own vote of no confidence. This short-sighted act recalls his father's fateful decision to raise taxes, having promised the opposite and invited voters to "read my lips". The punishing import tariffs he has authorised will not save the US steel industry, where 31 companies have filed for bankruptcy since 1997. It has resisted consolidation for too long; fat benefits paid to retired steelworkers, of whom there are now 600,000, are alone enough to drive most of them to the wall and the Administration is not going to pick up that bill. And the crisis in steel is global: worldwide, although companies are working at only 77 per cent of capacity, production exceeds demand by 100 million tonnes a year. Mr Bush's act has weakened the chances of international agreement to deal with this surplus capacity. It is politically foolish; and it makes no economic sense. The first thing for America's indignant trading partners to remember is that these tariffs will backfire. They will cause many more job losses in other sectors of the US economy than can conceivably be saved in its floundering integrated steelmills. The weakness he has shown may hurt Mr Bush's own high standing, based as it is on the resolution he has shown in meeting the terrorist threat. That is America's business. But, because US leadership in opening markets is as crucial now as it has always been, this ill-considered act could also cripple the fresh effort, launched last year at Doha, to boost global growth by further liberalising international trade. That is the world's business. In trade disputes, it always pays to turn the other cheek. That is because tariff walls are an own goal. This is true even for the sectors that demand protection; they lose the incentive to recover their competitive edge by restructuring. But protectionism also harms the whole economy. In the US, it is a long time since steel was king; vehicle and other manufacturers now employ 50 times as many workers. The steel they use will now cost more, driving up production costs, affecting both profit margins and consumers of their goods. In a globalised economy, that will tempt more US companies to shift production to countries where costs are lower. Thanks to this futile effort to preserve unviable jobs in steel, US labour will be less productively employed than it should be. America, in other words, is about to hand advantages to its competitors, not harm them. If the European Union were to raise its own tariffs, that would damage Europe's economies too. That is not, however, how Russian, Asian and European steelmakers understandably feel about being effectively excluded from the US market. However valid they are, when one country raises tariffs the classic arguments for free trade get drowned out by shrieks of pain. Russia, foremost among the cash-strapped countries the US should be nurturing in the campaign against international terrorism, stands to lose $1.5 billion in export earnings. With elections looming in France and Germany, the US is not the only country where short-term electoral calculations will win out over the national interest. Even in Britain, Patricia Hewitt has sworn to erect "safeguards" against "a flood" of cheap Asian steel. Tony Blair should swiftly rein her in. The EU will rightly haul the US before the World Trade Organisation for this fresh breach of its rules. If the EU targets America's steel-producing states, as it exacts the compensation for disguised US export subsidies the WTO has already authorised, that is Mr Bush's funeral. But outsiders must at all costs avoid retaliatory tariffs. Widening this war would hurt the world far more than this single bit of protectionism could ever do. Mr Bush has done damage enough. The natural political instinct is to repay him in his own coin. It is an instinct to suppress. thetimes.co.uk