Silicon Investor (SI) -- The First Internet Community

STOCKTALK

We've detected that you're using an ad content blocking browser plug-in or feature. Ads provide a critical source of revenue to the continued operation of Silicon Investor. We ask that you disable ad blocking while on Silicon Investor in the best interests of our community. If you are not using an ad blocker but are still receiving this message, make sure your browser's tracking protection is set to the 'standard' level.

Politics : GOPwinger Lies/Distortions/Omissions/Perversions of Truth -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: J_F_Shepard who wrote (158775)	4/23/2009 11:48:41 PM
From: Hope Praytochange	1 Recommendation Respond to of 173976

Within days of the Summit of the Americas, former Venezuelan presidential candidate Manuel Rosales formally applied for asylum in Peru, fearing a corruption trial at home. When Barack Obama was a candidate for president, the main plank of his foreign policy, other than withdrawing from Iraq, was agreeing to "talk to our enemies," notably Iran and Syria. The intellectual rationale for this policy, as far as one can make out, is that because George W. Bush wouldn't commit the office of the presidency itself to direct negotiations with the leaders of these regimes, and because everything George W. Bush did was wrong, reversing that policy would bear fruit. Iran just sentenced Iranian-American journalist Roxana Saberi to eight years in prison. Syria's leading pro-democracy dissident, Riad Seif, has spent the last year in Adra prison and is reportedly dying of prostate cancer. Syrian "president" Bashar Assad won't let him leave the country to get treatment. In Cuba, Dr. Oscar Elias Biscet is serving a 25-year prison sentence. In China, the whereabouts is unknown of Liu Xiaobo, co-author of a new, online pro-democracy petition. His wife has written to Mr. Obama for help. Tens of thousands of North Koreans are hiding in China. The Obama people seem to believe that talking top guy to top guy is the yellow brick road to progress. Why do they think that? They say Ronald Reagan negotiated over nuclear arsenals at Reykjavik. But virtually all desirable regime change in our time -- Soviet Communism, South Africa, the Philippines -- has come mainly from below, from the West protecting and supporting people in opposition to autocrats. The origin of the change-from-below movement was the 1975 Helsinki Accords, which ratified the legitimacy of self-determination. There was no stronger supporter of this liberal turn than AFL-CIO President Lane Kirkland. Where is his like today in the Democratic Party or its unions? Where is the left-wing blogosphere when the pro-democracy prisoners of Cuba, Iran and Syria need them? It's ranting about Bush "war criminals." It is early in the Obama foreign policy. They say the right thing on political rights. But there appears to be no coherent strategy beyond "talk to our enemies." So far, what do we see? Hugo Chávez is smiling. His fellow prison wardens around the world are smiling. The joke must be on someone else.