Posts Tagged ‘china’
More bad news from the Middle East
It has been apparent for some time that when Secretary of State John Kerry (in his current spot or while in the Senate) gets pumped up about something (e.g. Bashar al-Assad is a reformer, get Turkey into the Middle East “peace process,” develop a special relationship with the Chinese government) it is probably a very bad idea, and when he is adamantly opposed to something (e.g. the Magnitsky human rights legislation, more sanctions on Iran, restoring defense spending), it is in all likelihood essential to do. He is, not unlike Jimmy Carter, the perfect embodiment of rotten judgment.
So when he commences to fawn over the newly named Palestinian Authority prime minister, Rami Hamdallah, you know he’s a bad replacement for Salam Fayyad.
Jonathan Schanzer of the Foundation for Defense of Democracies concurs. He tells me, “Hamdallah is an obscure academic with no experience in governing. His appointment marks a consolidation of power for Mahmoud Abbas. He is expected to be a ‘yes man’ — the opposite of Salam Fayyad, who openly disagreed with the Palestinian president on core issues, including transparency and institution building.” What is really going on here is the consolidation of corrupt Fatah’s authority. (Fayyad was never a Fatah member, which in large part accounted for his independence and the antipathy he generated.) Schanzer observes, “Unfortunately, Abbas is not only getting a weak prime minister. He is also weakening the institution of the position. This means less checks and balances in the Palestinian political system. Abbas, who is already four years past the end of his legal presidential term, has taken the institution of the presidency back to the future.”
It is noteworthy that the most significant accomplishment regarding the PA in the past few years was the ejection of Yasser Arafat and the division of authority between the president and prime minister. Now, as Schanzer notes, Abbas’s “ironclad grip on Palestinian politics rivals that of Yasser Arafat in his prime.”
Read More →
Facebook
Twitter
Google Buzz
LinkedIn
del.icio.us
Google Bookmarks
Yahoo! Buzz
Tumblr
StumbleUpon
FriendFeed
NewsVine
Digg
Cyber theft: A hard war to wage
Washington is angry. Really angry. It is just not sure what to do about it. US officials have accused Chinese hackers of stealing corporate trade secrets since the mid-2000s but during the past few months the outrage has reached a political tipping point. cyber security has been thrust to the top of the agenda in US-China relations.
The Obama administration, members of Congress and the think-tanks that advise them have cast around for ways to punish hackers from China and elsewhere. Washington is considering a series of unilateral trade and other sanctions against Chinese entities and individuals.
“We will start sending a message to countries, especially China, that there is a consequence to your economic espionage,” says Mike Rogers, the chairman of the House intelligence committee who is preparing a bill to penalise hackers. “We should have a dial we can turn up and a dial we can turn down. That means adding some teeth.” When Barack Obama welcomes Xi Jinping for their first presidential meeting on Friday, he will press his Chinese counterpart on the issue of cyber theft.
Yet while political pressure is building for Washington to find ways to do something about the theft of trade secrets, it faces two big problems. First, it is not clear if any of the suggested remedies are workable. Moreover, given that China denies the US allegations, American attempts at retaliation risk escalating into a broader trade war between the world’s biggest economies.
John Veroneau, a former deputy US trade representative, worries that the mounting tensions over cyber theft could cause deep damage to the global trading system. “The great recession did not cause a surge in protectionism despite many predictions,” he says. “But cyber theft is changing things.”
Read More →
- Facebook
- Twitter
- Google Buzz
- LinkedIn
- del.icio.us
- Google Bookmarks
- Yahoo! Buzz
- Tumblr
- StumbleUpon
- FriendFeed
- NewsVine
- Digg
Magnitsky bill opens door to wider targets
When the Magnitsky bill first started making its way through the US Congress a couple of years ago, its authors had one target in mind: to punish Russian officials behind the death of Sergei Magnitsky, a lawyer who blew the whistle on a government corruption case and died in jail.
With human rights causes, however, one powerful example can sometimes open the door to much broader action. This could well happen with the Magnitsky bill. As the legislation gets closer to passage – potentially this month – the human rights lobby is on the verge of winning an important tool to influence US foreign policy.
While Russian corruption was the initial target, some in Congress are already thinking about other causes it can be used to pursue. And they have some big fish in mind. “If the bill stays as it is at the moment,” says one Senate staff member involved with the legislation, “this will be as much about China as it is about Russia.”When Magnitsky was doing some legal work for the Hermitage investment group, he discovered evidence that a group of Russian officials had effectively stolen $230m in tax payments made by Hermitage. When he detailed his allegations, he was arrested in late 2008 and accused of fraud.
Nearly a year later, he died in jail after being denied medical treatment.
Two years ago, a couple of Democrats in Congress started to push a bill that named the 60 Russian officials and police officers they said were behind Magnitsky’s death.
Read More →
- Facebook
- Twitter
- Google Buzz
- LinkedIn
- del.icio.us
- Google Bookmarks
- Yahoo! Buzz
- Tumblr
- StumbleUpon
- FriendFeed
- NewsVine
- Digg
Disgraceful, Craven, and Cowardly
Chinese dissident Chen Guangcheng is now pleading for asylum in the United States, literally hours after he left the US embassy in Beijing, under the terms of a stitched together deal which supposedly guaranteed his safety and the safety of his family. His presence in the embassy was a huge embarrassment, especially in view of the impending visit of Hillary Clinton and Timmy! for talks with the Chinese leadership. Reports strongly suggest that the US pressured Chen to leave, and at the very least, did nothing to push back on Chinese threats (delivered to Chen) to beat his wife to death.
So the United States government did something exactly analogous to turning over a fugitive slave, to avoid a conflict with the slaveowner, or in response to the slaveowner’s threat to whip the slave’s wife to death.
This is disgraceful, craven, and cowardly
Obama claims that human rights are raised at every meeting with the Chinese. I can imagine the conversation now: Obama: “You need to respect human rights.” Chinese official: “Mind your own business.” Obama: “Now we have that out of the way . . . ”
Deeds speak far louder than words. The immediate and panicked capitulation shows clearly that Obama has no real interest in human rights, and is unwilling to risk the slightest displeasure from the Chinese. Not that he has succeeded in the latter: the Chinese are shrilly demanding an apology for us letting Chen step onto embassy grounds.
Read More →
- Facebook
- Twitter
- Google Buzz
- LinkedIn
- del.icio.us
- Google Bookmarks
- Yahoo! Buzz
- Tumblr
- StumbleUpon
- FriendFeed
- NewsVine
- Digg
Nocera Hits the Bulls-Eye on Magnitsky Act
Seth Mandel
04.17.2012 – 12:45 PM
President Obama has been decrying “the way Congress does its business these days” and promising to act “with or without this Congress,” so fed up is he by the lack of bipartisan solutions coming from the legislative branch. So the president, one would think, would be delighted that Congress has come together to produce a bipartisan, popular bill that would also give the president a strong foreign policy move while simultaneously beefing up his credentials on human rights and democracy.
I’m talking, of course, about the “Sergei Magnitsky Rule of Law Accountability Act of 2011,” a bill that would sanction Russian human rights offenders. It is named after the Russian attorney who was detained without trial for investigating Russian corruption and then beaten and left to die in prison. It is intended to replace the Cold War-era Jackson-Vanik amendment, aimed at getting the Soviet Union to allow Jewish emigration, but which is outdated and will likely be repealed now that Russia is joining the World Trade Organization. The bill was introduced by Democratic Senator Ben Cardin and has broad bipartisan support. But Obama staunchly opposes the bill. Today, New York Times columnist Joe Nocera adds his voice to the growing chorus of commentators, both liberal and conservative, who support the bill:
I have to confess that when I first began receiving press releases about this effort, which has gained traction in Europe as well as the U.S., I didn’t take it very seriously. Visa restrictions didn’t seem like much of a price for allowing an innocent lawyer to die in prison. But after watching the reaction of the Russian government, which has repeatedly and vehemently denounced the bill — and which is now, out of pure spite, prosecuting Magnitsky posthumously — I’ve come to see that it really does hit these officials where it hurts them most.
Read More →
- Facebook
- Twitter
- Google Buzz
- LinkedIn
- del.icio.us
- Google Bookmarks
- Yahoo! Buzz
- Tumblr
- StumbleUpon
- FriendFeed
- NewsVine
- Digg
What the Chinese can tell Russia about murder
If China can detain the wife of a top politician on suspicion of murdering a British businessman, can there be hope that Russia will adjudicate the jailhouse death of Sergei Magnitsky? What about the elevator execution of journalist Anna Politkovskaya? Or the nuclear-isotope poisoning of former KGB officer Alexander Litvinenko?
Beijing has detained Gu Kailai, the wife of now-disgraced Communist Party official Bo Xilai, on suspicion of murdering Neil Heywood, a long-time British business associate whose body was found in a Chongqing hotel Nov. 15. At first, Chinese authorities blamed alcohol poisoning, but yesterday they said he was murdered.
The hard facts are clear, most experts agree — this is a real murder, and authorities suspect that Gu and a servant played a role in it. But the rest is politics, said Chris Johnson, a former senior analyst on China for the CIA, and now a fellow at the Center for Strategic and International Studies. Johnson told me that Bo crossed an invisible line: He had seemed destined to be elevated to the all-powerful standing committee of the Communist Party Politburo. But he had created powerful enemies along the way, and ultimately self-destructed when a senior aide fled into a U.S. Consulate on Feb. 6, and divulged details of Bo’s corrupt dealings, and the Heywood murder. Breaking the law and common decency are one thing when you are a senior Chinese official, but it appears that having it aired very publicly is quite another.
Read More →
- Facebook
- Twitter
- Google Buzz
- LinkedIn
- del.icio.us
- Google Bookmarks
- Yahoo! Buzz
- Tumblr
- StumbleUpon
- FriendFeed
- NewsVine
- Digg
