I'm Speechless
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry decried what he called a "new isolationism" in the United States on Wednesday and suggested that the country was beginning to behave like a poor nation.
Speaking to reporters, Kerry inveighed against what he sees as a tendency within the United States to retreat from the world even as he defended the Obama administration's diplomatic efforts from Syria to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
In comments tied to the budget that U.S. President Barack Obama is expected to present on Tuesday, Kerry suggested that tighter spending, in part at the behest of congressional Republicans, may limit U.S. clout around the world.
"There's a new isolationism," Kerry said during a nearly one-hour discussion with a small group of reporters.
"We are beginning to behave like a poor nation," he added, saying some Americans do not perceive the connection between U.S. engagement abroad and the U.S. economy, their own jobs and wider U.S. interests.
Kerry made the case as Obama prepares to release a budget that will adhere to spending levels agreed to in a two-year bipartisan budget deal struck late last year, entailing some spending cuts the administration would have preferred to avoid.
The U.S. State Department budget will decline slightly in the president's budget submission, Kerry said, saying this was a direct result of the bipartisan budget deal that cut funding further than Obama wanted.
"This is not a budget we want. It's not a budget that does what we need," he said, saying the budget deal entailed cuts demanded by the Republican-led House of Representatives. "It was the best the president could get. It's not what he wanted."
In speaking of what he called the "new isolationism," Kerry cited the limited support in the U.S. Congress to back Obama's plan to launch an air strike against Syria last year because of its suspected use of chemical weapons against civilians.
Obama, in a decision criticized by some U.S. allies in the Gulf and elsewhere, asked Congress to vote on a strike. With limited congressional backing, he ultimately abandoned a strike and pursued a deal to get Syria to give up its chemical weapons.
"Look at our budget. Look at our efforts to get the president's military force decision on Syria backed up on (Capitol Hill). Look at the House of Representatives with respect to the military and the budget," Kerry said.
"All of those things diminish our ability to do things," he added.
Kerry took particular aim at critics of his efforts to get the Syrian government and the opposition that has sought to oust Syrian President Bashar al-Assad for nearly a year to reach a peace agreement that would entail Assad's departure.
A second round of peace talks in Geneva broke up on Saturday, with chief mediator Lakhdar Brahimi lamenting a failure to achieve much beyond agreement on an agenda for a third round.
"These people who say that it's failed or that it's a waste of time ... Where is their sense of history?" Kerry said.
"How many years did the Vietnam talks take? How many years did Dayton take in Bosnia-Herzegovina?" he added. "These things don't happen in one month. I mean it's just asinine, frankly, to be making an argument that after three weeks it's failed."
Kerry blamed the lack of a diplomatic resolution on the marked shift in momentum on the ground to Assad's forces, backed by Iran and by the Lebanese militant group Hizbollah, as well as on what he called "the opposition's machinations."
"The dynamics on the ground shifted and with that shift, I believe, came an additional ingredient ... which was the infighting of the opposition began to divert from the focus on Assad," he said.
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Permalink Reply by Not mainstreamer on
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With style
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mor6Skt9pmI
video 2:30 --
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Who is Timothy D. Snyder?
(Himself) "We on the American left"
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timothy_D._Snyder
... his book, Bloodlands: Europe Between Hitler and Stalin, which was published in 2010 to considerable acclaim. A bestseller in four countries, Bloodlands has been translated into twenty languages.[7]
The numerous publications in which Snyder's essays have appeared include: the International Herald Tribune, The Nation, New York Review of Books, the Times Literary Supplement, The New Republic, Eurozine, Tygodnik Powszechny, the Chicago Tribune, and the Christian Science Monitor.
Snyder is a member of the Committee on Conscience of the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum; the Council on Foreign Relations; and is on the editorial boards of the Journal of Modern European History and East European Politics and Societies.[8]
Timothy Snyder Receives 2011 Ralph Waldo Emerson Award The Phi Beta Kappa Society, December 5, 2011
"Bloodlands: Europe Between Hitler and Stalin" -> Holocaust history promotion
"Ralph Waldo Emerson Award The Phi Beta Kappa Society" -> that is Khazarian/Zionist gatekeeper society
Timothy D. Snyder -> Khazarian/Zionist
Amy Goodman (Jewish):
(citing Ukrainians politicians/Obama/John Kerry in length) He said Putin has effectively declared war on this country (Ukraine) ... may ask for international support if Russia expands ...
Then Timothy Snyder is presented and later ex-CIA McGovern as opponent
On Ukraine we cannot see much difference between Amy Goodman/Democracy NOW and Obama propaganda
Very sad
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http://rinf.com/alt-news/breaking-news/leaked-telephone-conversatio...
Below is the excerpt of the transcript of the leaked telephone conversation (emphasis added):
Urmas Paet: “There is now stronger and stronger understanding that behind the snipers, it was not Yanukovich, but it was somebody from the new coalition,”
Catherine Ashton: “I think we do want to investigate. I mean, I didn’t pick that up, that’s interesting. Gosh,”
According to RT: The telephone call “took place after Estonia’s Foreign Minister Urmas Paet visited Kiev on February 25 at the peak of clashes between the pro-EU protesters and security forces in the Ukrainian capital. Paet also recalled his conversation with a doctor who treated those shot by snipers in Kiev. She said that both protesters and police were shot at by the same people.”
Urmas Paet “And second, what was quite disturbing, this same Olga [Bogomolets] told as well that all the evidence shows that the people who were killed by snipers from both sides, among policemen and then people from the streets, that they were the same snipers killing people from both sides,” the Estonian FM stressed.
Catherine Ashton; “Well, yeah…that’s, that’s terrible.”
Urmas Paet: So that she then also showed me some photos she said that as a medical doctor she can say that it is the same handwriting, the same type of bullets, and it’s really disturbing that now the new coalition, that they don’t want to investigate what exactly happened,”
While the EU’s High Representative for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy Catherine Ashton does not have “blood on her hands”, she has had frequent meetings with Oleh Tyahnybok, leader of the Neo-Nazi Svoboda Party, who in all likelihood was involved in the sniper killings.
“Well, yeah…that’s, that’s terrible.” says Catherine Ashton. But what is the followup? Will the matter be debated by the EU Commission or will it be hushed up?
(Catherine Ashton center with Svoboda Leader Oleh Tyahnybok, left)
The February 20th Sniper Killings: What Happened?
Acknowledged by media reports, more than twenty opposition Maidan protesters were killed by professional snipers on February 20. This was not a spontaneous event resulting from clashes between protesters and riot police, nor was it marked by an exchange of gunfire between the police and the Neo-Nazi militia.
The sniper killings had the hallmarks of a carefully planned operation. They happened within ‘the space of a few hours”. They were carefully timed. The killings coincided with the meetings of President Viktor Yanukovych with a high level EU delegation.
In a bitter irony, these targeted killings were used as a pretext to topple the government and issue an arrest warrant directed against president Yanukovych on charges of “mass murder” of Maidan protesters.
Now confirmed by the leaked telephone conversation, the purpose of the sniper killings was to provide a pretext for “regime change”.
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