"News Analysis: Plan for peace in the Mideast may see shift" by Mark Landler New York Times, June 1, 2019
WASHINGTON — President Trump plans to throw his full weight behind Benjamin Netanyahu’s campaign to save his job as prime minister of Israel, but to do that, analysts and former diplomats said, the president will have to sacrifice any last hopes of proposing a peace plan that is acceptable to both Israelis and Palestinians.
Trump’s son-in-law and senior adviser, Jared Kushner, met Netanyahu in Jerusalem to discuss the status of the plan Thursday, hours after the prime minister failed to form a governing coalition. Kushner emerged with a longer timetable and a narrower diplomatic mission, these people said.
Yes, Washington really does get its marching orders from Israel!
Rather than make concessions to the Palestinians, Kushner will be under pressure to tilt the plan further in Israel’s favor. Far from being a bold effort to break decades of enmity between the two sides, it could end up becoming a vehicle to resurrect Netanyahu’s political fortunes and to protect Trump’s.
How does that protect Trump?
His MAGA has gone MIGA!
You don't think the base notices this?
The plan, which Kushner has drafted under a veil of secrecy for more than two years, was already looking like a doomed effort. Though its details remain unknown, Kushner has suggested it will not call for the creation of a Palestinian state, jettisoning decades of US policy toward the conflict. The Palestinians have vowed to reject it out of hand, branding it a blueprint for Israeli domination.
It is nothing more than a land-stealing "settler" wish list -- as if the place didn't have people living there. It calls for a Greater Israel!
Certainly, a wounded Netanyahu lost no time in exploiting his friendship with Trump. He brandished a copy of a map of Israel that Trump had signed and sent to him with Kushner. In the margins, the president had drawn an arrow pointing to the long-disputed Golan Heights, which he had recognized as Israeli territory, and had scrawled “Nice.”
As if he were the sole decider and dictator of the world!
The White House is expected to hold off on the political component of its plan — which deals with thorny issues such as borders, security, and the status of Jerusalem — until after the Israeli elections, set for Sept. 17. A senior administration official said only that the plan would be presented when the “timing is right,” but that timing has grown increasingly problematic. Any new Israeli coalition probably would not be formed until at least October, which would delay the announcement of a Trump plan until November, uncomfortably close to the first primaries of the 2020 election in the United States.
Those are all excuses so they can never present a plan and the status quo reins. Thus more Palestinians will die and more land will be stolen by Israelis while the world does nothing.
Trump, eager not to alienate evangelical voters or influential pro-Israel donors like casino magnate Sheldon Adelson, is unlikely to present a plan that would put Israel or Netanyahu in an awkward position. For both leaders, therefore, the political calculus will argue for a plan that makes as few demands of Israel as possible.
Now you know who pulls the foreign policy strings over here -- not that it was a secret from anyone willing to take a look. After all, this is straight from the JYT's mouth!
“To get Netanyahu reelected, Trump is clearly now willing to take instructions from him,” said Martin Indyk, former US ambassador to Israel. “I believe Netanyahu will return the favor by arguing forcefully to American Jews and evangelical voters that they should vote for Trump because he’s the best friend Israel has ever had.”
Isn't that INTERFERING in OUR ELECTION?
I do agree, however, that Trump is the best friend Israel has ever had and we should have seen it coming:
President-elect Trump became decidedly more pro-Israel as his campaign progressed, and last week aligned with Israel in a recent UN vote from which the US abstained. Above, a placard in Tel-Aviv. (JACK GUEZJACK GUEZ/AFP/Getty Images/FILE)
A picture is worth a thousand words.
Trump has already gone further in his support of Netanyahu than any president has for any Israeli leader. Before recognizing Israeli authority over the Golan Heights, he moved the US Embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem, and in a remarkable intrusion into Israeli electoral politics, Trump on Monday tweeted his support of Netanyahu’s efforts to form a coalition.
Their intrusion into ours, one far more intrusive than the alleged Russian ads on social media, is not even worth a mention.
Two days later, the White House announced an unprecedented three-way meeting in Jerusalem between national security adviser John Bolton and his Israeli and Russian counterparts, Meir Ben-Shabbat and Nikolay Patrushev. The meeting, to discuss security issues in the Middle East, is a feather in the cap for Netanyahu, underlining his ability to convene the world’s major powers.
So Putin is at his beck and call, too, huh?
The next gift for Netanyahu could come June 25, when Kushner convenes an economic conference in Bahrain. The Palestinians have announced they will boycott the meeting; the Israelis are going. That will allow Netanyahu to showcase another of his long-term strategic goals — closer ties between Israel and Sunni Muslim leaders in the Persian Gulf, with whom he shares hostility toward Iran.
How is that betrayal by the Sunnis leaders going to fly with their populations?
Could be another Arab Spring, right?
Who benefited from that again?
Kushner won a pledge by Qatar, a major financial supporter of the Palestinian enclave of Gaza, to attend the workshop, even though it was pushed by Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates, which are engaged in a bitter feud with the Qataris.
Who remembers the feud instigate by Kushner and his clan?
I gue$$ Qatar has become useful again (that is the kind of back-stabber you are dealing with).
During his tour of the region, Kushner worked to build Arab support for his plan. His meetings with King Mohammed VI of Morocco and King Abdullah II of Jordan were “very positive and productive,” according to an administration official, though King Abdullah pointedly declared that any plan must provide for a Palestinian state. The refusal of the Palestinians to attend the Bahrain meeting was a reminder of Kushner’s uphill struggle to engage with them, ever since they broke off communications with the White House after Trump moved the embassy.....
Yeah, poor President Jared!
Given that the plan was almost certain to be summarily rejected by the Palestinians if Kushner had presented it in the coming weeks, some former diplomats said the Israeli elections amounted to a reprieve for him and his partner, Jason Greenblatt, the president’s special envoy.
“What happened in Israel over the last 48 hours gives them a more public rationale for why they’re delaying, so it’s actually good news for them tactically,” said David Makovsky, who negotiated between the Israelis and Palestinians during the Obama administration. “The Israeli election has given them an out.”
Makes you think they are manipulating everything, but then you would be accused of advancing an anti-semitic trope.
The trouble is, the political atmosphere for a peace initiative is not likely to get any less forbidding in the fall. Kushner, who helped manage his father-in-law’s campaign in 2016, will be as aware as anyone of the domestic political cost of a plan that puts pressure on Israel.
“You’ll see the political folks in the administration weighing in on how it affects the election dynamics,” said Ghaith al-Omari, a former Palestinian negotiator who is a senior fellow at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy. “We’ll get into a totally different set of considerations by November and December.”
Who or what is WINEP (did you see who the founding director was)?
Oh, it is another war-monger Zionist outfit without the AIPAC baggage.
That's jwho the Times turned to for expert and unbiased analysis.
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Related:
"News Analysis: Trump’s reliance on pressure tactics is showing diminishing returns" by David Nakamura Washington Post, June 1, 2019
President Trump’s brinkmanship with Mexico over immigration has opened a new and risky front in his global campaign to pressure other nations to capitulate to his demands, a strategy that has paid few dividends over 2½ years and left his major foreign policy initiatives in doubt.
All except one (keep reading).
From his ‘‘fire and fury’’ rhetoric against a nuclear-armed North Korea to an escalating trade war with China to new ultimatums aimed at Mexico, Trump has wielded threats, insults, and punishments against his foreign counterparts with diminishing returns.
There they go again, trying to goad him into war.
Though he lured Kim Jong Un to the negotiating table through a ‘‘maximum pressure’’ campaign of economic sanctions, Trump’s historic summits with the young dictator ended in failure after talks collapsed in February.
Beijing tried to negotiate over Trump’s push for a trade deal, but President Xi Jinping has met successive rounds of US tariffs on Chinese goods with commensurate retaliatory measures, deepening an increasingly zero-sum clash between the world’s two largest economies, and although Mexico took steps to comply with Trump’s hard-line immigration policies — allowing Central American asylum seekers to the United States a temporary haven — Trump’s vow this week to impose sweeping tariffs unless that nation curbs unauthorized immigration into the United States stirred a public backlash.
For Trump, who campaigned on achieving ‘‘peace through strength,’’ the consistent application of a tool kit of toughness has limited his options and left him in a precarious position as he accelerates his campaign for a second term.
Despite his pressure tactics, unauthorized immigration at the US-Mexican border is at a 12-year peak, the tariff wars have sent jitters through Wall Street, and Pyongyang has resumed testing of short-range missiles, a sign that Kim is growing impatient.
We were told by the pre$$ that there was no crisis down there.
‘‘We are in the middle of an unprecedented and multifaceted experiment in the application of brute force,’’ said Daniel Russel, who served as an assistant secretary of state on Asian affairs in the Obama administration. ‘‘President Trump has been extraordinarily effective at generating leverage . . . but it has yet to be shown that he has the ability to translate that leverage into results that are advantageous to the United States or are durable.’’
OMG, look who is talking!
He is from an administration that regime-changed Libya (what the hell is happening there, btw), failed to overthrow Assad, split Ukraine in two with a coup, and collaborated in the war crime that is Yemen!
Not that I approve of Trump, I don't (keep reading).
Trump campaigned on the theme that the rest of the world was taking advantage of the United States because of weak political leaders who valued multilateral partnerships over the unapologetic pursuit of national self-interest. He pledged that, as president, he would not hesitate to pressure rivals and allies alike to win a better deal for Americans.
In Europe, some NATO members moved to accelerate previous pledges to increase their own national defense budgets amid Trump’s complaints that they were freeloading off the United States’ security umbrella — and his vague threats, first issued during his 2016 campaign, that he would pull out the United States from the alliance, but on his signature initiatives, Trump’s go-to tactics have faltered and the president has grown increasingly frustrated, prompting him in recent weeks to escalate his threats and punitive actions......
What is above contained what my print paper bring me (with selected edits), and what I noticed was there was NO MENTION of Iran, Russia, Venezuela, or Israel.
What comes below is the web addition after the print cut:
For Mexican President Andrès Manuel Lòpez, a liberal who took office in December, Trump’s threats are a serious concern, given that 80 percent of Mexico’s exports enter the US market, but Lòpez, who dispatched diplomats to visit Washington on Friday, is facing increasing calls from the public and political columnists to take a tougher line with the White House.
Trump, frustrated by Mexico’s refusal to pay for a border wall, flirted with a plan to seal the southern border to trade and tourism in April before backing off over concerns from advisers about the effect on the American economy. This week, however, amid reports that US authorities apprehended nearly 120,000 unauthorized immigrants at the border last month, Trump overrode similar warnings from aides.
‘‘What’s so striking with him is his willingness to pick multiple fights without thinking through the consequences,’’ said Eliot Cohen, a former State Department adviser in the George W. Bush administration who organized a ‘‘Never Trump’’ coalition of foreign policy experts during the 2016 campaign. ‘‘The Mexico thing is a great example. It could really hurt him domestically.’’
That is jwho they turned to for expert analysis?
Other analysts noted that Trump’s trade war with China could harm his efforts to negotiate a nuclear weapons disarmament pact with North Korea, given that the president has counted on Beijing maintaining tough economic sanctions on Pyongyang, but Trump has shown few signs of second-guessing himself. He has threatened new auto tariffs on Japan to win leverage in ongoing trade talks, although he announced during a state visit to Tokyo last week that he would delay any action for six months, and Trump’s reputation for hostility has preceded him. In London, where Trump will arrive next week on a state visit to meet Queen Elizabeth, Sky News broadcast a promotional video featuring a Trump baby balloon, flown by protesters during Trump’s visit last summer, darkening the skies with the ominous tagline, ‘‘He’s back.’’
George W. Bush claimed he never made a mistake, and don't go to the bathroom in England.
‘‘One of Trump’s major failings is that he only has a hammer,’’ said Andrea Schneider, a professor of law at Marquette University who focuses on negotiations and has studied Trump’s tactics. ‘‘He has no capacity of looking at the long term and recognizing that the vast majority of our interactions in life are repeat interactions. I joke with my students that if you treat negotiations as a one-shot deal, it will be. No one will ever want to deal with you again.’’
That's why Iran hasn't called him.
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One of the reasons, at least.
I'm sure this has more to do with it:
We know the cause, but who will save us?
"Now that’s a good story: news revival in Berkshires" by Mark Shanahan Globe Staff,
June 1, 2019
PITTSFIELD — Fred Rutberg and his wife, Judith, were on Nantucket, listening to a talk at the island library by veteran political journalist Joe Klein.
Of course.
Five years later, the former district court judge is president and publisher of the Eagle, a once-great daily newspaper whose staff, circulation, and prestige all declined dramatically during two decades of corporate ownership. Backed by a group with local ties and deep pockets, Rutberg bought the moribund paper in May 2016 and began investing in it, hiring reporters and editors, adding new sections, revitalizing its website, even spending money on better-quality newsprint.
So far, the results are promising. Print subscriptions, which had been dropping for years, are holding steady, and the Eagle’s digital subscriptions are growing — and not coincidentally, there has been an increase in furrowed brows among local officials who are now being confronted by a more active press.
They consider that promising?
Still water coming into the boat, but the pumps are keeping up!
“I wanted to do something useful,” said Rutberg, sitting behind his desk at the Eagle’s offices in a converted mill building on the edge of downtown.....
So did I, and this is not it.
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I'm told that “at some point, democracy requires citizenship and citizenship requires a town square,” and it is time to flush this $ickening, $elf-$erving $hit!
