Two areas of great interest to China are Central and South America, and Chinese investments in that part of the world are rapidly expanding. Just this week, Chinese president Hu Jintao met with the Costa Rican president Oscar Arias to discuss new business ties. Venezuelan President visited Beijing last month signing new bilateral commercial and military treaties.
Chris Sabatini, senior director of policy at the Council of the Americas, discusses Chinas interests in the Americas and what impact it could have on the U.S.
China has surpassed Japan as the U.S. governments largest creditor. China owns at least 10 percent of all U.S. debt, as much as $800 billion dollars.
Brad Setser of the Council on Foreign Relations speaks with Martin Savidge about the potential upset of the balance of power and influence between the U.S. and China.
California’s highest court agreed Wednesday to hear several legal challenges to the state’s new ban on same-sex marriage but refused to allow gay couples to resume marrying before it rules. Tomorrow here in San Francisco, there will be a town hall meeting open to all at McAllister Hall from 5PM to 7PM.
Al-Qaida’s No. 2 leader used a racial epithet to insult Barack Obama in a message posted Wednesday, using a demeaning racial term implying that the president-elect is a black American who does the bidding of whites.
The message appeared chiefly aimed at persuading Muslims and Arabs that Obama does not represent a change in U.S. policies. Ayman al-Zawahri said in the message, which appeared on militant Web sites, that Obama is “the direct opposite of honorable black Americans” like Malcolm X, the 1960s African-American rights leader.
In al-Qaida’s first response to Obama’s victory, al-Zawahri also called the president-elect — along with secretaries of state Colin Powell and Condoleezza Rice — “house negroes.”
Speaking in Arabic, al-Zawahri uses the term “abeed al-beit,” which literally translates as “house slaves.” But al-Qaida supplied English subtitles of his speech that included the translation as “house negroes.”
The message also includes old footage of speeches by Malcolm X in which he explains the term, saying black slaves who worked in their white masters’ house were more servile than those who worked in the fields. Malcolm X used the term to criticize black leaders he accused of not standing up to whites.
To be honest, I am not quite sure what to make of the video, its timing and its effect on US and global politics. On the one hand, I do not for a moment believe that its power is yet broken though its abilities to do substantial damage seem diminished. Calling the President-Elect, former Secretary of State Powell and current Secretary of State Rice a racial epithet only seems to indicate how out of touch Al-Qaeda is. This sort of message simply does not resonate.
Former Senator and Senate Minority Leader Tom Daschle of South Dakota, among the earliest backers of the Presidential ambitions of Barack Obama, was today expected to be named to serve as Health and Human Services. What does Tom Daschle know about being human or service? He does have a book on health care. Still count me out on this one.
President-elect Barack Obama will nominate former Senator Thomas A. Daschle of South Dakota as secretary of health and human services, and is leaning toward former Deputy Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr. as attorney general, people close to the transition said Wednesday.
At the same time, Mr. Obama is also moving forward on other fronts, offering the job of health and human services secretary Mr. Daschle.The former Senate Democratic leader, who lost his seat in 2004, became an important early supporter of Mr. Obama’s run for the presidency.
Democratic sources said Mr. Daschle has accepted the job. But aides to Mr. Obama said a formal announcement would not be made until after the national security and economic teams were unveiled. Mr. Obama’s transition team did announce Wednesday that Mr. Daschle will oversee the new president’s health policy working group.
Mr. Daschle was initially considered for White House chief of staff, but Mr. Obama chose instead to name Representative Rahm Emanuel of Chicago. If confirmed, Mr. Daschle could end up being the point man on any efforts to overhaul the country’s health care delivery and insurance system, a tall order, health policy experts say, because of the current economic situation.
This appointment is bound to disappoint. On the other hand, Ezra “makes a mean kung pao” Klein raves about the appointment:
This is huge news, and the clearest evidence yet that Obama means to pursue comprehensive health reform. You don’t tap the former Senate Majority Leader to run your health care bureaucracy. That’s not his skill set. You tap him to get your health care plan through Congress. You tap him because he understands the parliamentary tricks and has a deep knowledge of the ideologies and incentives of the relevant players. You tap him because you understand that health care reform runs through the Senate. And he accepts because he has been assured that you mean to attempt health care reform.
Compare the choice of Daschle to Clinton’s decision to task Hillary Clinton and Ira Magaziner with health care reform. Neither Clinton nor Magaziner had any relevant experience in Washington, either with the health care bureaucracy or with the legislative branch. They did not have deep relationships on the Hill or a nuanced understanding of the players. Hillary Clinton had spent the last few decades in Arkansas. Magaziner had helped Rhode Island build a new economic plan. Both of them were, fundamentally, policy wonks. And so they built a process that was, in essence, by wonks and for wonks. The resulting bill might have passed a meeting of the Brookings Institution’s Executive Committee. It was an elegant and innovative policy idea. But it was not a robust piece of legislation. It was not responsive to the concerns of the public, and it was not built to win votes in Congress. All of this is explained at greater length in the lessons of 1994.
The choice of Daschle suggests that the Obama team has learned those lessons well. Magaziner and Clinton signaled that the Clinton administration viewed health care as a policy problem. For them, the key to success was the genius of the policy team. Daschle signals that the Obama administration view health care as a political problem. The key to success is votes. And Daschle is a guy whose last job was lining up votes. He is also a guy who has recently written a book on health reform. Critical: What We Can Do About the Health-Care Crisis should now be on every health wonk’s reading list. Among other things, his book argues that reform must be comprehensive, as we can no longer afford incrementalism or inaction, and that the real problem with health care reform is, well, Congress.
I will read the book but shouldn’t the fact that as the Democratic Party Leader in the Senate Senator Daschle was an abject failure count for anything?
Last week, the Italian government announced that it will work to cut the number of unskilled immigrants. About 24,241 illegal immigrants came to Italy between January and September of this year, reflecting a massive influx to the country.
In July, the Italian government declared a state of emergency due to the high level of illegal immigration, largely from Africa. The following month, soldiers were deployed across the country in an effort to stop crime that has been blamed on illegal immigrants. Even the pope has weighed in on the issue.
More than 3.5 million foreign-born people currently live in Italy.
Worldfocus correspondent Martin Seemungal heads to the northern town of Treviso, where gunslinging mayor Giancarlo Gentilini has brought order to the town and cracked down on illegal immigration, even as accusations of racism linger.