Posts Tagged ‘jennifer rubin’
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.”
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U.S. Senate stands up for human rights
How many times have I said in the past few years that the Senate has stood up for human rights? Not many, but it is deserving for two actions taken yesterday.
First, a bipartisan resolution co-sponsored by Sen. Pat Toomey (R-Pa.) and 30 other senators called for the immediate and unconditional release of Alan Gross from imprisonment in Cuba. The resolution also calls on Cuba to provide needed medical treatment to Gross, who reportedly is quite ill and has lost more than 100 pounds in prison. Gross was the U.S. contractor thrown in the dungeons of Cuba after a Mickey Mouse trial for bringing satellite phones to the Jewish community there. This outrage followed the U.S. administration’s lightening of sanctions on Cuba, a move yet to be reversed.
The resolution is important not only because it prevents Gross from being forgotten and gives hope to him and all imprisoned human rights victims; it also may stop in the tracks any deal by which Gross would be released in exchange for release of five convicted Cuban spies. The Post editorial board put it this way: “There is no equivalence between Mr. Gross and the five prisoners, as Havana itself acknowledges. It agrees the Florida prisoners were its spies, but it has never charged Mr. Gross with espionage.” So bravo to the Senate for its demand for Gross’s unconditional release.
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Morning Bits
Sorry, but when the administration is opposed to putting sanctions on perpetrators of human right abuses, there is a problem. At issue is the “Sergei Magnitsky Rule of Law Accountability Act of 2011 — legislation meant to promote human rights in Russia that is named for the anti-corruption lawyer who died in a Russian prison, after allegedly being tortured, two years ago”: “Those who support repealing Jackson-Vanik without any replacement human-rights legislation include [Sen. Max] Baucus, the Obama administration, large sections of the business community, and the Russian government. Moscow has already praised and promoted the officials accused of torturing Magnitsky for their investigation into the case, and has now begun retrying Magnitsky for criminal tax violations — even though he is dead.” Good grief. займ на карту без отказов круглосуточно займ на карту https://zp-pdl.com/online-payday-loans-in-america.php https://zp-pdl.com/online-payday-loans-cash-advances.php микрозаймы онлайн
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Unexpected delights of 2011
There are those columnists who keep meticulous lists of events during the year so that in the final days of December they can churn out detailed reflections on the proceeding 12 months. I’m not one of them. But, nevertheless, I do have my own list of standouts — some unexpected delights — that deserve recognition.
I’ll start with the courageous Senate Democrats. Sen. Ron Wyden (Ore.) on Medicare reform, Sen. Ben Cardin (Md.) on the Magnitsky bill to sanction Russian human rights abusers and Sen. Robert Menendez (N.J.) on Iran sanctions all put principle and good policy above partisanship, defied the White House (which sneered at Wyden-Ryan, and tried to undermine the Magnitsky bill and water down Iran sanctions) and showed that the Democratic Party has not become entirely McGovernized on foreign policy.
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Time to increase pressure on Putin
Tomorrow in the European Affairs Subcommittee of the Senate’s Foreign Relations Committee, a number of activists will testify on Russian human rights abuses and pending legislation that would bar them from entering the U.S. Those testifying include The Post’s Robert Kagan (from the Brookings Institute), David Kramer of Freedom House, and Tom Malinowski of Human Rights Watch. In advance of the hearing, a group of human rights activists sent an open letter to the subcommittee which reads in part:
We are writing to encourage action to address widespread and egregious violations of human rights in the Russian Federation contrary to international commitments. For too long, there has been a culture of impunity for Russian officials involved in human rights violations. Many of these cases – such as the death of Sergei Magnitsky, an attorney investigating official corruption, and the trials and incarceration of Mikhail Khodorkovsky, a successful businessman and regime critic – are well known outside of Russia. Many others are not. We raise our voices on behalf of all Russians who have suffered serious human rights abuses by the government.
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Lawmakers introduce Russian “reset”; Russian political prisoners’ appeal denied
Mikhail B. Khodorkovsky, the imprisoned former oil tycoon, lost an appeal of his second conviction for fraud Tuesday, but his sentence was cut by a year and now will end in 2016.
Khodorkovsky and his business partner and fellow defendant, Platon Lebedev, had been convicted in December of embezzling nearly $30 billion from Yukos, the oil company they ran. Khodorkovsky had antagonized Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin, and the charges were widely considered not only politically motivated but also legally dubious.
Khodorkovsky, to the applause of the courtroom crowd, had this stem-winder statement on the court’s ruling:
In what dusty cellar did they dig up that poisonous Stalinist spider who wrote this drivel?
What kind of long-term investments can one talk about with such justice?
No modernization will succeed without a purging of these cellars.
The authors of the verdict have shown both themselves and the judicial system of Russia in an idiotic light, having declared in a high-profile, public trial that in Russia injured parties from a theft receive a profit, that the aspiration to increase it is a crime, that the “right” prices for oil in Siberia must be equal to the prices in Western Europe, transportation, customs duties and restrictedness of export notwithstanding.
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