Global Paradigms

Business Times - 22 Sep 2010 Going way beyond the Palin Is the radical right taking over the Republican Party - and making things easier for the Democrats in November? By LEON HADAR WASHINGTON CORRESPONDENT KARL Rove, the legendary political strategist who helped George W Bush get elected president twice - he is AKA Bush's Brain - is one of the leading 'talking heads' of FOX-News where he has been bashing President Barack Obama and the Democrats, predicting huge Republican electoral gains in the coming midterm Congressional elections. And he is regarded by Democratic activists and liberal pundits as a symbol of the efforts by conservative Republicans to dominate the American political agenda and its public discourse through a web of media outlets and front organisations - including the Tea Party movement. Mr Rove is a conservative that liberals love to hate. So it was quite astonishing to watch him during an interview on FOX-News questioning the credentials of Christine O...

on The Huffington Posr Israeli-Palestinian talks recently convened by President Barack Obama may or may not lead to a peace agreement. But the negotiations could mark the last serious attempt by a U.S. president to invest his (or her) own political capital and American diplomatic prestige in resolving the conflict based on a two-state solution. An international consensus has emerged in support of a formula setting an end to the 100-year-old clash along the lines of the 2000 "Clinton Parameters." This consensus includes the members of the Middle East"Quartet," the Arab League, and mainstream Israeli and Palestinian leadership. Thus, Israeli and Palestinian negotiators are under pressure to conclude within the year negotiations over a final status agreement along the following lines: A Palestinian State that would be established on most of the West Bank and the Gaza Strip. Approximately 80 percent of the settler blocks in the West Bank would remain under Israeli sover...

Business Times - 21 Sep 2010 No relief for Sino-US trade tensions With midterm elections approaching, the Obama administration may be torn between taking a more populist rhetoric and a harder stance on China By LEON HADAR WASHINGTON CORRESPONDENT THE Obama administration seems to be embracing a harder hitting rhetoric on the issue of China's exchange rate policies. Or at least that was the message US Treasury Timothy Geithner was trying to convey to the US Congress during testimonies before the Senate Banking Committee and the House Ways and Means Committee on Thursday and Friday. While emphasising that China's management of its currency did not pose a 'systemic risk to the American financial system', he agreed with the lawmakers that the yuan was 'undervalued' and the Chinese were 'moving to let it rise, but not very quickly'. Mr Geithner told angry US lawmakers who accuse China of keeping its currency artificially low and gaining an unfair trade advant...