Excerpts from recent editorials in newspapers in the United States and abroad:
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Nov. 25
Charleston (W.Va.) Daily Mail on Obama’s image around the world:
The Obama presidency was supposed to revive America’s image in the eyes of the world, but results on that score have been mixed at best. Recent blunders show the White House struggling to manage relationships with our closest allies.
Speaking in the coal-producing Australian state of Queensland earlier this month during the G-20 Brisbane economic summit, Obama made what Greg Sheriden, foreign editor of The Australian, called “a bizarre decision to attack and damage his closest ally in Asia, and one of the most committed supporters of U.S. foreign policy.”
According to Sheriden, “the longest passage was an extraordinary riff on climate change that contained astonishing criticism - implied, but unmistakable - of the government led by Australian Prime Minister Tony Abbott.” Obama congratulated himself for signing a climate change agreement with China and urged Australia to take similar measures, repeatedly invoking the threat he says global warming poses to Australia’s Great Barrier Reef.
Prime Minister Abbott is a moderate conservative who has been an unflagging supporter of American strategic interests in Asia and the Middle East. On environmental issues, Abbott believes that climate change is a problem, and he has maintained his more liberal predecessor’s commitment to cut Australia’s carbon emissions.
But Abbot also kept a campaign promise to repeal an unpopular carbon tax. Apparently that deviation from environmentalist orthodoxy was enough to merit a swipe from America’s climate-warrior-in-chief.
“Barack Obama was rude to an ally, hypocritical and wildly misinformed,” wrote Andrew Bolt, an influential Australian political columnist, during the resulting furor. Some Queensland leaders were so insulted by Obama’s remarks that they’ve threatened to lodge a formal complaint.
Closer to home, the President insulted Canada recently while discussing the proposed Keystone XL pipeline: “Understand what this project is,” Obama said. “It is providing the ability of Canada to pump their oil, send it through our land, down to the Gulf, where it will be sold everywhere else. It doesn’t have an impact on U.S. gas prices.”
Not only was his characterization of Keystone incorrect - the Washington Post fact-checker gave it three Pinocchios - the statement was offensively dismissive of Canadian interests, and economically illiterate to boot. “Sometimes we wonder if President Obama has even the vaguest idea how a private economy works,” wrote the editors of the Wall Street Journal.
The president has two years to get his foreign policy back on track. Perhaps he should start by remembering who America’s friends are, and treating them accordingly.
Online:
https://www.charlestondailymail.com
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Nov. 23
Miami Herald on oil woes for Venezuela:
The global market is playing a cruel trick on the troubled regime of Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro.
What’s the latest drama? Well, the last time you gassed up did you pay under $3 a gallon? That’s bad news for the oil-rich Venezuelan government, whose economy depends almost solely on oil exports.
Falling gas prices around the world, now at a four-year low, could result in the lifting of government subsidies on gasoline inside Venezuela, which has been a big savings for its citizens. The combination of the end of the subsidies and the rise in the price of gasoline inside Venezuela could have a devastating impact on consumer spending in an economy already reeling from Maduro’s erratic leadership.
Venezuelans suffer one of the highest rates of inflation in the world, along with the scarcity of commodities, caused by poor governance and lack of incentives to a business sector cornered by state policies.
And Maduro’s popularity is in sharp decline and, according to the results of various surveys, a majority of the population believes that the country is in dire financial straits.
Worse yet, a dip in international oil prices could also reduce Caracas’ influence in Latin America. Venezuela has always garnered respect, largely because of its oil resources in the hemisphere.
What we pay at the gas pump in Miami could also have an unexpected impact on the world order in the region.
To make a point, Maduro announced he and Russia will meet Tuesday with oil countries outside OPEC to discuss ways to prop up the price of crude.
Meanwhile, OPEC will meet two days later in Vienna to decide on its production goals.
To add insult to Maduro’s regime, the U.S. and Canada have played a role in the drop in oil prices in the region. Together they have extracted more crude from shale and oil sands than they have in a half-century.
Ironically, petroleum, which was the mainstay of populism for the late Hugo Chávez, could now accelerate the decline of that model inherited by Maduro, who, thankfully, has done a lousy job at preserving it.
Online:
https://www.miamiherald.com
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Nov. 21
Kansas City Star on Keystone XL pipeline:
The debate over the future of the Keystone XL pipeline has dominated discussions about energy over the last few years in Washington.
Despite all the attention, however, the project remains stuck in the legislative process. The U.S. Senate this week could not muster enough votes to approve and send it to President Barack Obama, where it likely would be vetoed.
But even as supporters’ tantalizing promises of using the pipeline to create more jobs in America collide with detractors’ claims that it would be an environmental nightmare, an unexpected reality has emerged.
America’s oil industry is thriving again.
Remember the bad old days, when the United States was said to be a pawn in the game played by the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries and Americans were just a civil war in a Middle Eastern country away from $5 a gallon gasoline?
The facts are different today.
- U.S. oil prices recently fell below $75 a barrel. That’s the lowest price in four years, adjusted for inflation, and well under the $90 and $100-plus costs during most of that span.
- U.S. petroleum production topped 9 million barrels a day for a full week this month. For the year, the country is pumping more than 8 million barrels a day. That would be the highest level of domestic production in almost 30 years. And federal government predictions for 2015 show the daily output could exceed any other year since 1972.
- Gasoline prices are below $3 a gallon nationally, and closer to $2.60 in the Kansas City area, at their lowest in five years when adjusted for inflation.
The sudden emergence of the United States as the third largest producer of petroleum in the world, behind Russia and Saudi Arabia, has surprised even longtime experts in the industry.
As usual, the costs of dealing with environmental problems caused by tar sands oil are not included in the equation that supporters are using to try to pass the Keystone XL pipeline.
Still, the project eventually could move ahead in Washington, despite this week’s defeat. With a larger number of Republicans in 2015, the Senate might have the votes needed to send a revived bill to Obama’s desk. If he vetoes the pipeline, which might stop it once again - unless GOP leaders can muster enough allies to get to a two-thirds vote needed to override the president.
When that debate occurs, pipeline opponents will be able to point to the already much higher petroleum production in this country and wonder if the environmental risks inherent with the pipeline are truly worth taking.
Online:
https://www.kansascity.com
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Nov. 25
Los Angeles Times on immigration enforcement:
The federal government’s Secure Communities program has been as controversial as it has been counterproductive, so we’re glad the Obama administration’s new approach to immigration enforcement will mean the program’s demise. Yet we also harbor some skepticism about its successor, the Priority Enforcement Program - and wonder whether there will be much difference.
Under Secure Communities, local police forwarded fingerprints of detained criminal suspects to the FBI and the Department of Homeland Security. Those agencies checked the prints against federal databases to find people with serious criminal records who were in the country illegally (thus targeted for removal). Database hits led to requests that the police hold the detainees past scheduled release dates pending further federal action.
Yet more than half of those eventually deported under the program had minor or no criminal records. Families were torn apart, and several thousand legal citizens were detained. In the worst cases, detainees languished in jails awaiting federal action without criminal charges or court orders, violations of the 4th Amendment for which federal courts have held the local agencies liable. The program generated so much mistrust that immigrant communities stopped cooperating with police in routine criminal matters. As local agencies began dropping out, the Department of Homeland Security tried in 2011 to fix the worst of the problems, with little effect.
Under the new Priority Enforcement Program, immigration agents will still receive fingerprints from local agencies, then make their priority those detainees who have been convicted of a felony, are gang members or pose “a demonstrable risk to national security.” Lower-priority targets include those convicted of three misdemeanors or one significant misdemeanor (such as domestic or sexual abuse); new illegal arrivals; and those who “have significantly abused the visa or visa waiver programs.”
To avoid the legal problems of unconstitutional detentions, the federal government will now just ask local agencies to notify them when a potentially deportable detainee is scheduled for release. If Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents determine that someone should be detained longer, they “must specify that the person is subject to a final order of removal or there is other sufficient probable cause to find that the person is a removable alien.”
Those are sound and reasonable parameters. But we can’t help but note that Secure Communities was supposed to target the dangerous and the threatening too, not the otherwise law-abiding but undocumented. Given the history of Washington wanting one thing and immigration agents on the ground doing another, the proof will be in the execution.
Online:
https://www.latimes.com
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Nov. 25
New York Times on new frontier of Ebola:
The huge, impoverished country of Mali looks like the new frontier in the fight to control the Ebola epidemic in West Africa. The virus has killed thousands in Guinea, Liberia and Sierra Leone, the three countries where the virus first emerged, but it has not gained much of a foothold elsewhere. Small outbreaks of 20 cases in Nigeria and a single case in Senegal were found in October. Now the potential for many more cases in neighboring Mali has health authorities scrambling to contain a small outbreak before it can get very far.
That will be challenging. At least six people have died from Ebola in Mali already, and the country’s health officials, aided by American and international advisers, are racing to find, test and isolate, if necessary, hundreds of people exposed to an infected cleric who died in Mali last month after traveling there from Guinea. Many of the people had engaged in ritual washing of the dead imam’s body, a particularly dangerous practice since the corpse is apt to be highly infectious and the mourners rarely wear protective clothing.
The dangers in Mali caused leaders in the United Nations and the World Health Organization last week to temper their earlier optimism that worst-case outcomes might be avoided if 70 percent of the dead could be buried safely and 70 percent of the sick treated by Dec. 1. Now they express doubts that the targets can be met and talk about containing the epidemic by the middle of next year.
Dr. Margaret Chan, the director general of the W.H.O., traveled to Mali on Friday to encourage health workers in the anti-Ebola effort. The United Nations said it will open an emergency response office in Mali this week, signifying its importance as the latest battleground. The next 15 days are deemed critical for ending Ebola transmission in Mali, the United Nations says.
Thus far the virus has sickened more than 15,000 people in the region and killed more than 5,400 of them, almost all within the three hardest-hit West African nations. Progress in containing the outbreaks has been spotty.
Liberia, which has suffered the largest number of infections and deaths, has succeeded in slowing the rate of increase in new cases in recent months.
Sierra Leone’s epidemic continues to spread rapidly while medical teams and supplies from Britain and other donors scramble to catch up. Guinea, where the outbreak first emerged, has suppressed it in some areas but not in remote jungle regions.
This is clearly no time for international agencies and national donors to let their guards down. The United States has led the international response so far by contributing the most money, equipment and manpower and prodding other nations to increase their aid. The Obama administration has requested some $6 billion to make further progress in West Africa and prepare American hospitals to cope with cases brought into this country. Congress ought to provide every penny.
Online:
https://www.nytimes.com
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Nov. 26
Pittsburgh Post-Gazette on Ferguson decision:
Tweets and Facebook posts, 30-second TV clips and lengthy newspaper articles have flooded the country since a white police officer shot and killed a young black man, Michael Brown, on Aug. 9, but observers, reporters and pundits could not do what a panel of citizens did in Ferguson, Missouri.
The 12 members of the grand jury, for 70 hours spread over 25 days, listened to the testimony of 60 witnesses.
Some were experts who recounted facts, such as how many times Mr. Brown, 18, was hit (at least six) and where (his right hand and arm, the front of his body and his head). Other witnesses were friends, passersby and shop owners who explained what they had seen, or thought they’d seen, honest in their recollections even as they disagreed or contradicted one another. One witness was Officer Darren Wilson, even though it is unusual for grand jury testimony to come directly from the perpetrator of the event under scrutiny.
The panel concluded on Monday that no criminal charges should be brought against the officer. Its decision must be accepted and, while disagreement is understandable, frustrated Americans must speak out within the confines of the law.
Was the grand jury steered toward its conclusion by a prosecutor with a reputation for defending the police? The answer may never be known but, also unusual in such a case, the same prosecutor released hundreds of pages of transcripts from the closed-door proceedings so citizens can read the exchanges and decide for themselves.
At this stage, there is just one incontrovertible conclusion, one that cannot heal Mr. Brown’s family and friends or quell the anger expressed in streets across America: Michael Brown, who was unarmed and had just completed high school, should not be dead. He should not be dead any more than Trayvon Martin should have died at the hands of a Florida vigilante or 12-year-old Tamir Rice should have died Saturday with a pellet gun in his hand, shot by a Cleveland police officer who feared it was a more dangerous weapon.
Yet they all are gone, and America is left wrestling again with a problem it has encountered over and over, each case with slightly different circumstances and each troubling because these tragedies at their core have something in common. Black victims, white officers and a nation awash in guns that can pose a lethal threat to both police and the public.
Too often race can be a factor in the fundamental divide, a reality that is not easy to accept in America, a land that was founded and that survives on the principle that all people are equal despite their differences.
How can this chasm be bridged? Michael Brown’s is only the latest case that must force Americans to examine their approach to race, police and violence. The question is nagging and comes with no ready answer. But Americans who want to live in a land of fairness and lawfulness must be willing to work, as fellow citizens, toward change. The legacy of the victims demands it.
Online:
https://www.post-gazette.com
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Nov. 27
Khaleej Times, Dubai, on Hagel’s departure:
Chuck Hagel is not the first to cross swords with Barack Obama. History will footnote him in the long list of people such as Robert Gates, Leon Panetta and the like, along with a couple of top army generals, who begged to differ with the president, and gracefully opted to walk away. As the point that the policy-making buck stops at the presidency, Obama has been very tactful in dealing with dissent and never made a fuss of it. But Hagel’s exit has come at a time when the administration hardly has two years to go and security-related issues are far from satisfactorily addressed.
The senator from Nebraska, who was the sole Republican-at-heart to serve the Democrat president as the Pentagon chief, will be missed for his articulate skills and no-nonsense style of working. He and John Kerry, both Vietnam veterans, successfully foresaw the exit of US troops from Iraq and Afghanistan, and were instrumental in seeing the Bilateral Security Agreement with Kabul get the nod at the right time. But it seems the rise of the ISIS in the Middle East and Obama’s decision not to commit to another war in the region are the root causes of the dispute. Moreover, Washington’s policy on letting Syrian President Bashar Al Assad stay on in office has irked many, including Vice-President Joe Biden. Thus, the White House, the State Department and the Pentagon seem to lack the necessary cohesion in coming up with a unanimous approach to issues of peace and security.
What impact Hagel’s exit will have is too early to guess, but it is a foregone conclusion that the US is struggling to draw up a straight approach in dealing with the ISIS menace. Hagel’s stepping down has just made it official.
Online:
https://www.khaleejtimes.com
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