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It is tough "fence mending" with the Russians because they too strike a hard bargain wanting much for nothing. How many times have we reset the dialogue.

Although I totally agree with Obama's position not to get us into another futile war in the Middle East - it is so obvious that the UN and other organizations are not doing enough. And thirdly Obama seems to prescribe to the philosophy that if you wait long enough 50% of the problems just go away.

Also unfortunately some representative of the UN task force has stated that one of the Rebel forces used Sarin. Talk about complicating the situation.

Yes, and I have to ask the question - why are they inserting themselves? Interesting bedfellows.

Maybe somebody put them up to it so as to have them join the world stage - seen more as a player helping to ease peace - I agree with everything you stated - why Palestine.

Interesting I guess - she was handed a pack of angry wolves and she got them domesticated - is that the message. I think she did a bang up job and it is a shame about Benghazi and a horrendous loss of US personnel - but this present Congress does not want to pay the price for increased security; in fact they do not want to even solve the Sequester debacle although it is causing difficulties. They just want to stir up non issues.

In fact every independent economist said this:

“When this sequester goes off, yes, it’s not going to hurt as much on Day 1. But, again, every independent economist agrees it is going to cost our economy 750,000 jobs just as our economy has a chance to take off.�

But the congressmen and Senators who are not voting to solve this issue are doing the American people a clear injustice at a critical time when they talk jobs but are clearly doing nothing about a situation which will cost Americans 750,000 of them.

I think it was a soft political article (smile) - these days all we seem to read are political articles.

I guess what I clearly missed saying in message 178 when I got sidetracked was that there are so many pressing issues that need to be resolved like the sequestration, immigration, job growth, etc, - why are we wasting more time on a political issue - just more gotchas.

It was an awful situation but it is in the past - learn from it, don't let it happen again and move forward.

Yes, I agree and there is no dog in the hunt. The dog that is in the hunt is how we view what the Republicans are doing or not doing. Jindal may have it right when he says that “They’ve got to stop being the stupid party.�

What bothers me while folks are losing their jobs that all of us are paying for this circus and the finger pointing and the incendiary rhetoric while nothing - absolutely nothing gets done.

Yes aside from that awful wig. It practically glows in the dark.

That was a big ring in the United States and they were just simply sent home to Russia.

The article makes a lot of sense and is well written that there might have been somebody in the inner circle who compromised Fogle and this is still a tit for tat game.

You know it is hard to give help with one hand and expect something with the other - then it is simply a business transaction. Politics seems to be undermining even charity.

Not sure of the dynamics of what is going on.

This sounds like the Chinese and the North Koreans. I do hope that they march Assad out peacefully and send him to Russia where he can live in exile with his family. Now what happens to the vacuum left in Syria after that departure remains unknown. Of course, I think I am getting ahead of myself - he may just be making a show of cooperation.

The fact that she is sitting in the front row between two military men gives me some hope. That is a lot further progress than women are making in other Middle Eastern countries.

Yes so true - Americans and I guess a lot of other parts of the world live in their own world so different from the Middle East and cannot understand why they live as they do and put up with what they put up with - but rising up in a country and trying to make a difference is almost impossible in a country like Yemen and so many others there - that you have to give credit where credit is due - to Karman and others like her.

Oh dear - their first point was a page from George W. Bush's book - leave no child behind program. 81 pages! (Only they changed a word or two)

I agree but at least there should be a three page executive summary.

Excellent photo.

As always the Russians are only concerned about themselves.

I wonder how all of those folks feel about being bugged? Putin tries to fit in with the Obama/Cameron brofest but he is a distance third.

Maybe they wanted it to appear intimate - but it is like they are out to a dinner at a Chinese restaurant. (smile)

You know how about let us go home and mind our home business school of forelgn relations. You take care of your business and people and good luck with that and we will keep our money to rebuild our own country. And we will still keep up our weapons systems and everything else to protect ourselves but we are just not going to spread ourselves too thin any longer because we just remembered that our founding fathers said beware of foreign entanglements. I think we should keep our bombs and brute force to ourselves and keep our NSA and those kinds of services on a short leash. Maybe things would go better for us in the future.

I guess I am still curious how this is a democratic coup - I agree that Morsi was stacking the deck in his favor with his cronies and fellow associates around him and maybe he intended to shut out other minorities; and was tranforming the government into anything but a democracy - I agree that there is a possibility that this might have been the case - but if he was elected by the people - should he not be allowed to serve out his term and then be ousted if he refused to leave or held corrupt elections to stay in power. Hard to tell if the military was worrying if they waited any longer if they would be able to remove him. I just do not know enough to be sure - but a coup is a coup is a coup and I am not for them ordinarily.

This was a little different than the normal cronyism - from some reports - it was strictly along religious lines and was based solely upon his allegiance and membership with the Muslim Brotherhood. It would be like a Catholic president installing Vatican officials and really taking his marching orders from Rome versus abiding by the US Constitution and being his or her own decision maker. I am a little suspicious of this plane deal still going through however. Why?

But of course, every news source seems to have their twist and bias so it is hard to tell what is going on and why the US is bent on not calling it a coup.

Bentley wrote: "why the US is bent on not calling it a coup...."

Maybe that the U.S. has too much invested in Egypt. It is a major ally against terrorism in the region and had had good relations with the country since Sadat. Just a guess...

Possible - there are limited friendships in the region aside from Israel and Jordan.

Many of us know the whys - in terms of why the US does not want to name it a coup - but it certainly walks like a coup, quacks like a coup and has most of the characteristics of a coup.

You know I think the US would be better off not being cozy - and just being forthright and honoring its principles and the principles of the founding fathers without believing that they know better than the founding fathers and circumvent our laws and freedoms because they are always using the excuse or reasoning that they are protecting us and making us safer - the reality appears to be the opposite in this region and elsewhere. Very troubling - personally I like the Constitution and the Bill of Rights just the way they are.

I do agree that they appeared to prefer Mubarak staying in power. And maybe they felt that the way things were going that Morsi and his cronies were violating what the country was fighting for in the first place and had rejected in the past and were setting them on a route which was excluding many. But I do hope that the government and world has a hands off policy and lets the Egyptians decide for themselves if that is possible at this juncture. This sale of the planes to me is perplexing under the circumstances until the dust settles yet they seem bent on having it go through.

Quiet means quite possibly that they are up to something and/or are possibly incapable of responding because they are doing something in the background. Who is to know. We seem to be kept in the dark as if we could not ever have a qualified opinion or are deemed too unimportant as citizens to ask what we want for ourselves. So I am not surprised at the White House being quiet. I am surprised at the media however.

Where did that quote come from? This country is really going off its tracks if that quote came from the government. Was it just a talking point gone bad? Carney? Carney seems sometimes to derail himself with his quips. I have not heard it from the President himself who seems guarded about the whole thing so I am curious.

It certainly is showing that democracy is failing in Egypt and I totally agree with you. And look at the approval ratings that George W had - nobody marched to the White House to put him in cuffs nor did the military decide to take action (thankfully). Those folks who disagreed with his policies and there were probably 80% of the population who did if you look at the approval ratings - yet everyone just had to wait it out. And by the way that is how it should be unless the President is guilty of an impeachable offense and then we have procedures for that too.

And that is the whole point - if he would not step down after losing a legitimate democratic election and the military at that point ousted him so that the elected official could take over - well that would not be too good either if it came to that - but maybe that might be more understanding.

The point is really that I just do not think that the military sat around contemplating a coup - there always is more to it.

And let us call it what it was - a coup.

I certainly can see that a lot of countries including our own preferred Mubarak but would not give him support either when he was in trouble.

Guess who runs the NSA and oddly enough that huge organization was not affected by the sequestor and why isn't that agency being cut like every other? If we are really worried about the deficit - I think we have found a good candidate for massive spending cuts.

Time to tighten our belts and that means the NSA too.

I would much rather have Senior Citizens get a bigger cost of living increase, increased spending for prescription drugs than to pay these thousands and thousands of folks to spy on Americans which they should not be doing in the first place. I honestly believe that we would be safer without them. And I know that we would be more free - it is so sad to think that the country of our parents with the belief in civil liberties and the constitution has been replaced by this organization which is not worthy of what the founding fathers fought and worked for. I am really sad over this.

I agree and I certainly hope 20 or 30 years from now we don't read that anybody had anything to do with this coup. People want to live in peace and have the privacy to kick back and be free.

You know something else that I was thinking about today and I have never agreed with the NRA on anything - but they have fought against all sorts of paperwork and checks and they have said right along - you never know how all of this is going to be used and by whom. And now unbelievable as it sounds - I am starting to see their point. I have to ask myself how bad is that. I guess what it boils down to is that we cannot stop bad things from happening to good people through the efforts of folks sitting in their cubicles listening in to everybody's conversations or collecting all of their telephone calls or emails and trying to keep them all to use them against somebody down the road.

It is a shame and I feel for the Egyptian people so much and wish them a better outcome - but I wonder what that outcome will be. You have to ask yourself who is the puppet master that set all of this into motion and why.

It appears that the intelligence community was not part of the sequester, not cut back due to the budget deficits - yet health care, medicare, social security which at least for two out of the three are subsidized by the American people themselves - are always mentioned as being on the cutting block.

Yes, that is the notion but this apparatus is not really out there defending anybody. It is an apparatus that can only get larger as the population grows because it is collecting every ounce of metadata and now content on each and every one of us, data mining all of us and storing the content in a computer somewhere much as you place things in a safe for safe keeping for use at a later time.

In our country it appears now that everybody is under surveillance not just the bad guys or the terrorists. There is not any one of us who could have expected that revelation. Being told the same story no matter who is the whistle blower and reading the article written by the Congressman outlining the program and how it works has to remove all doubt about what is being done.

Mexico is getting to be unsafe for tourists and it is surprising that it is getting this bad but there seem to be a lot of bad people around in many of these countries.

Yes, one must be extra careful and vigilant.

Not Somalia again. A very interesting article nonetheless.

The title is what deters me. I think it was a disaster for all concerned. And it has provided the American people with no greater safety than they had before and an economy still at death's door - hobbling along.

The point is even if it were the best run war which I do not believe it was - the whole point and the only point is that it was unnecessary and that we got into that war due to faulty intelligence from the NSA and CIO and because Cheney and Bush wanted to take us into that war because of unfinished business in the eyes of Bush.

Oh absolutely - they really think that the majority of the electorate is stupid and so ill informed and powerless that they cannot do anything about it. Maybe they are right to a certain extent - but I think Iraq is another reason of many other ones that the Republicans are not in power now (Presidency) and lost it twice. Look at how bad the economy was and still they could not elect a President. There is a huge mistrust of the Republicans on big issues and until they stop being the party of stupid - who knows what lies ahead for them. However, having said that, Obama and the Democrats better watch out because most folks are not happy with Obama either at this point - and with his stance on the NSA and a surveillance state - a completely opposite point of view from his campaign promises - you have to wonder what is going on and whether a Democrat will be elected next time either. Obama won't care because he will be out of office garnering in the money with speaking engagements and book deals (smile). As popular as Obama was - he has certainly fallen from graces with huge percentages in key groups like the demographics of your age group Christopher for starters. Things are not going well for him at all and he always has to get involved with things that are going on in state governments if there is ever an African American involved - he is all about race every hour of the day although he accuses everybody else of that.

I have never heard a president get involved in court proceedings in another state or insert himself in biasing a court case - in any case mind you where a white person was involved. Why is he inserting himself and trying to dig up charges because an African American was involved and getting Eric Holder (another person very biased) to do his bidding.

I have no dog in the hunt here but I find it very suspicious to start meddling in state courts (before and after the verdict has come in). Just because he did not like the outcome - right or wrong.

As far as Iraq - that is another thing that took him an Ice Age to get the troops home and that was his major selling point - he was going to bring the troops home from this ill gotten war.

The next election here is going to be very interesting because folks have long memories and are thoroughly disgusted with the status quo and what Congress and the government are allegedly doing on their behalf. The world is getting more unsafe rather than safer for Americans and pretty soon there will be no place else we can travel aside from the British Isles and get a friendly hello. Especially when he and NSA have condoned spying on our so called allies as well as all Americans. What is next - I don't even want to imagine.

Gridlock: Why Global Cooperation is Failing when We Need It Most

by Thomas Hale (no photo)

Synopsis:

The issues that increasingly dominate the 21st century cannot be solved by any single country acting alone, no matter how powerful. To manage the global economy, prevent runaway environmental destruction, reign in nuclear proliferation, or confront other global challenges, we must cooperate.

But at the same time, our tools for global policymaking - chiefly state-to-state negotiations over treaties and international institutions - have broken down. The result is gridlock, which manifests across areas via a number of common mechanisms.

The rise of new powers representing a more diverse array of interests makes agreement more difficult. The problems themselves have also grown harder as global policy issues penetrate ever more deeply into core domestic concerns.

Existing institutions, created for a different world, also lock-in pathological decision-making procedures and render the field ever more complex. All of these processes - in part a function of previous, successful efforts at cooperation - have led global cooperation to fail us even as we need it most.

Ranging over the main areas of global concern, from security to the global economy and the environment, this book examines these mechanisms of gridlock and pathways beyond them. It is written in a highly accessible way, making it relevant not only to students of politics and international relation but also to a wider general readership.

Oh dear - why doesn't China just give up its posturing and we bring our planes back.

And they all should be worried with China's military being so out of control - I have said before that I think their tether should be shortened.

It has been doing that for years Christopher - this is not something new - have you visited China - I think it is a very interesting place and it has many faces.

Well you are in Korea so start with that first - maybe if you are brave take one of those tours of NK if they are still offering them and once you are back - tell us how bizarre it was.

Yes, where are these folks coming from and they look mighty young.

More than likely - make sure you get the free newletters and all of the free mailers.

This is what the NSA has done to us:



German Companies View China, US as Top Cyber Threats

German companies consider the United States the second most threatening country for industrial espionage and data theft � just behind China.

That’s the conclusion of a survey of German company executives and information security managers at 400 companies conducted by the consulting firm, Ernst and Young, now known as EY.

According to the survey, 26 percent of those polled said the United States was a high risk country for cyber theft and industrial espionage. That was second only to China, which was cited by 28 percent of respondents as a high risk country.

Last year, only 6 percent of those surveyed viewed the U.S. as a threat.

Bodo Meseke, Head of Forensic Technology & Discovery Services at EY, said that while German companies are used to viewing China and Russia as threats, the companies need to realize that “Western intelligence agencies carry out very extensive monitoring measures.�

"When it comes to their own safety, the companies are, unfortunately, often blue-eyed and lulled into false sense of security," Meseke added.

U.S. surveillance became a hot-button issue in Germany after the German magazine Der Spiegel alleged that the U.S. government’s National Security Agency (NSA) worked closely with Germany’s Federal Intelligence Agency (BND).

The BND is Germany's main overseas intelligence agency. German officials say its cooperation with the NSA was fully regulated by strict legal guidelines.

Earlier this month, Germany ended a Cold War area surveillance pact with the U.S. and Britain in the wake of information revealed about U.S. surveillance activities by NSA contractor Edward Snowden.

In July, Germany demanded a public explanation for Snowden's allegations of large-scale spying by the NSA.

Source: Voice of America

Mr. Obama, you should have met with Putin
By Matthew Dunn
Published August 07, 2013
FoxNews.com

As an impartial outsider, I’ve always believed that President Obama’s administration has struggled to reconcile its political beliefs with the actions required to deal with the global challenges America currently faces.

That’s not to say that I’ve felt the president himself couldn’t have been an excellent leader at other key points in U.S. history.

Specifically, I’ve believed that he would have made an excellent Cold War president during moments when that war was in danger of becoming explosive.

My take on the man is that he is a measured, calm, cerebral, individual who � despite recent evidence to the contrary � doesn’t like a fight. I could imagine him picking up the phone to Khrushchev, speaking privately to him without the pressure of media scrutiny, and averting a crisis.

Obama's decision to cancel the summit with Putin is a snub, plain and simple. It is also petulant, and potentially dangerous.

This year, tensions between Russia and the United States have been steadily increasing.

We’ve had spies being caught and expelled, disagreements on major issues such as the Syrian disaster, open U.S. hostility toward Russia’s human rights violations, a Russian president who’s described America’s foreign policy as imperialistic, and most recently a 1-year Russian visa being issued to NSA leaker and American fugitive Edward Snowden.

Alright, despite these antagonisms and the fact that Russian and American missiles have always remained pointing at each other after the collapse of communism, that doesn’t mean that we’re back in the bad old days of a nuclear standoff. But it does mean we are emerging into in a period where Russia is once again in the headlines. If my analysis of the U.S. president was correct, it’s a time when Obama’s strengths should shine.

That hasn’t happened.

Instead, Deputy National Security Adviser Ben Rhodes announced Wednesday that Obama’s cancelling plans to have a summit with Putin in Moscow, because the Snowden situation has been the last straw amid increasingly acerbic relations between Russia and America.

It’s a snub, plain and simple. It is also petulant, and potentially dangerous.

Let’s look at the facts amid the areas of conflict between Russia and America.

Earlier this year, a CIA officer was caught in Moscow, publicly humiliated, and expelled. For sure, Russia could have been handled the episode differently, but it’s not something we should get upset about. We spy; they spy. It’s what we’ve always done to each other.

The Syrian disaster’s getting worse � more people have died there than during the entire Bosnian War � and we need Putin fully at the Security Council negotiating table given that his support of President Assad is perpetuating the problem.

We may not like Putin’s stance on Syria, but distancing him from our thus far fruitless attempts to resolve the situation will only produce one outcome: further massacres.

Right now, U.S. attempts to adopt a moral high ground over human rights abuses in Russia is pointless and some might say even hypocritical given allegations of human rights abuse during the American War on Terror and more recently the startling revelations about PRISM and its intrusion in the lives of law abiding U.S. citizens.

Putin’s assertion that America’s foreign policy is imperialistic, together with other anti-U.S. comments, has just been vote-winning rhetoric.

During the last year he’s felt vulnerable and in need of playing the strong man to a vast, disparate, and in large part impoverished populous.

I don’t think Putin’s displaying himself as an international statesman by doing this, but nor do I think it’s something to get worked up about.

And finally, there’s Edward Snowden.

Yes, Putin’s given him a visa to stay in Russia, but it’s only a 1-year visa. If Putin really wanted to antagonize Obama, he’d have given Snowden unconditional asylum.

Instead, he’s stuck a finger up to Obama but at the same time done the bare minimum for Snowden while allowing doors to remain open for future bilateral talks between America and Russia. Obama and his administration should have realized that, and attended the Moscow summit.

Snowden’s future is irrelevant. There’s big boys stuff to discuss, and everyday lives are being lost while that’s not happening.

On Tuesday’s “The Tonight Show,� Obama said that the Snowden development and other issues showed that Russia was “slipping back into Cold War thinking and a Cold War mentality.�

It’s interesting that he references that mentality, because at that time most statesmen and politicians on both sides averted a catastrophe by being able to focus on the bigger picture.

Despite assassinations, scandals, proxy wars, missile crises, frenetic espionage, and the Sword of Damoclese hanging over the world, leaders back then carried on talking to each other.

Talk is anything but cheap. Mr. Obama and his administration would do well to remember that at a time when the world has enough existing problems to deal with, when we need statesmen to be magnificent negotiators and diplomats, and when snubs are antagonistic and destructive.

Matthew Dunn was a former MI6 officer who worked in hostile locations around the world. He is the author of the espionage novels "Slingshot," "Spycatcher" and "Sentinel" (William Morrow).

Read more:

by Matthew Dunn

I agree on both counts.

That is the million dollar question.

Indeed it is. We can't ignore Russia; it is a problem. Let Secretary Kerry do most of the work and let Obama meet with Putin a once a year and smile.

Exactly - I think he should rise to the occasion like I have seen him do on the campaign trail - smile and be cordial not be goaded by folks who like constant agitation and turmoil and wars. It is not a sign of weakness to get together with Putin, talk and break bread and converse about one's family. You know one thing that I did like about George W and I am digging for this one but whether I like the man or not - it is true - he invited Putin to Kennebunkport to his father's and family's place in Maine and Putin came and I think Putin went to Crawford Texas and hung out - here is a photo which is proof:





Now we have this:



AND



OR



Now Putin did cancel out on Obama first when he invited him to Camp David but two wrongs do not make a right. But at least with George W - the man was engaged and looking at George W - these two cannot even look at each other.

Putin does not like Obama and Obama is not helping the situation by saying that the leader of Russia is acting like a bored child. That is really a dig and Obama should be above that.

Russian President Vladimir Putin wishes President George W. Bush a speedy recovery, after Obama cancels Moscow summit in showdown over Snowden

TUESDAY, AUGUST 6, 2013, 9:45 AM



Here you can see human bonding. Just look at Putin's eyes.

And we all do wish George W a speedy recovery too.

Doesn't Putin look like a different human being with an entirely different personality than with Obama - you would not even think it was the same man?

I have a philosophy about people - if you treat a person like he or she is a cold hearted KGB operative who you don't trust - you will get a cold hearted KGB operative who you cannot trust - if you treat a person with respect, warmth and without any arrogance - just a wish to get to know them better and seek their better side because that is what you try to see in them - then that is what you are going to get back. Obama in these photos comes off as arrogant and trying to get the upper hand rather than seeking consensus or even agreeing to disagree - and who is the bored child - I see two of them not just one.

I just can't believe the difference:

Bush Visits Russia

See slideshow:



April 5: U.S. President George Bush and Russian President Vladimir Putin, foreground, meeting at Putin's summer residence in Sochi, Russia. AP

Usually what you see and what you project is what you get back

Hmmmm. I am sure. Very complicated.