Obama’s silence makes U.S. seem weak

Cached:  http://www.dispatch.com/live/content/editorials/stories/2011/03/05/obamas-silence-makes-u-s–seem-weak.html?sid=101

The Columbus Dispatch

Saturday, March 5, 2011  02:53 AM

Two years into his presidency, the man who promised to restore America’s standing in world public opinion has rendered himself irrelevant on the world stage.

President Barack Obama came into office more popular abroad than he was even at home, where he won a resounding election victory. European crowds thronged his speeches; leaders complimented him on his cultural sensitivity; the foreign press praised his cosmopolitan roots. The cognoscenti were so enamored of Obama that he was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize barely nine months into office. The move embarrassed even Obama.

But as the world faces a cataclysm of popular revolt stretching across North Africa and into the Middle East, Obama stands mostly on the sidelines. He did nothing to support the brave Iranian demonstrators who flooded the streets of Tehran after fraudulent elections there in 2009. He waited too long to weigh in on the side of Egyptians who demanded an end to autocratic rule in their country. Now, as tens of thousands of Libyans flee their country and despot Moammar Gadhafi orders air attacks on his own people, Obama dispatches his secretary to Capitol Hill to quiet administration critics urging the U.S. to impose a no-fly zone over Libya.

The wisdom of setting up a U.S.-enforced no-fly zone is debatable, but that wasn’t the message Defense Secretary Robert Gates delivered. He implied that we couldn’t do it because the U.S. doesn’t have enough aircraft carriers in the region to support it.

The administration seems intent in engaging in the opposite of saber rattling; call it saber sheathing instead. Following the decision to dispatch a chartered ferry to evacuate Americans trapped for days in the escalating violence in Tripoli, his comments make us look weak.

The protests spreading throughout the Arab and Muslim world came with little warning – and it is far too early to tell whether things will end well for the people in the region or for United States’ interests. For more than 60 years, the one thing that has united Arabs is their hatred for Israel and Israel’s ally, the United States. Arab rulers have managed to quell opposition by ginning up hatred of Israel, crushing those who dare to challenge them, and – in oil-rich countries – providing a standard of living just high enough to keep the general populace from open revolt.

But it wasn’t Obama who saw the demand for democracy coming. It was his predecessor George W. Bush. Indeed, the push for democracy in the Middle East was the linchpin of his foreign policy in the region. He gave countless speeches on the subject, rarely missing an opportunity to promote his freedom agenda.

Yet, the very people who fawned over Obama openly reviled Bush. It wasn’t Obama but Bush who said in 2003: “Sixty years of Western nations excusing and accommodating the lack of freedom in the Middle East did nothing to make us safe – because in the long run, stability cannot be purchased at the expense of liberty.”

Bush warned that, “As long as the Middle East remains a place where freedom does not flourish, it will remain a place of stagnation, resentment and violence ready for export.”

And of course, thanks to Bush, the first country in the region to elect a representative government – outside Israel – was Iraq. Those elections were made possible by American blood and treasure. Obama, on the other hand, has managed to make the most powerful nation in the world look weak and ineffectual.

History is being made from Tripoli to Sana, and the United States plays no role. For years, the left has wanted the United States’ role in the world to diminish. Now they are getting their way, thanks to Obama’s reticence.

The vacuum created by our absence in the current revolutions will likely be filled. Let us hope that is not by the Islamists who will topple secular dictators in order to impose even more brutal religious tyrants. If that happens, Obama will share the blame.

Linda Chavez writes for Creators Syndicate.

In Egypt, crowd cheers newly appointed prime minister Essam Sharaf

 

 

Cached:  http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2011/03/04/AR2011030406378.html

By William Wan and Portia Walker

Washington Post Foreign Service
Saturday, March 5, 2011

 

CAIRO – Massive crowds turned out across the Arab world for a Friday of mostly peaceful protests, although the Iraqi government responded with a forceful crackdown and at least three people were killed in Yemen.

In Egypt, the huge crowd that had gathered in Cairo’s Tahrir Square cheered as the country’s newly appointed prime minister waded into throngs of protesters and asked for their support and help.

“I draw my legitimacy from you,” Essam Sharaf told the demonstrators, who greeted him with a deafening roar and later carried him off on their shoulders.

Sharaf had been appointed Thursday by the ruling military council in a move calculated to appease protesters ahead of Friday’s demonstrations. He replaced Ahmed Shafiq, who had been chosen for the job by President Hosni Mubarak just days before Mubarak resigned and who was considered by protesters an unpopular vestige of the old regime.

Many hours later, after nightfall, hundreds of Egyptian protesters in Alexandria tried to storm a building belonging to the internal security service, a much-hated agency blamed for human rights violations during Mubarak’s rule. Officers inside the building opened fire on the crowd, injuring three demonstrators, according to the Associated Press, which quoted a medic and one of the protesters.

In his speech, Sharaf appealed to the crowd members, praising them for carrying out the revolution, promising to fulfill their demands and pleading for their help in “rebuilding Egypt.”

While the crowd’s celebratory response suggests the tensions that emerged after Mubarak’s ouster might be easing, it is unclear whether the latest moves will be enough. Protesters say many of their demands remain unmet, including the dissolution of the much-hated state security police and the release of political detainees.

“But just the fact that he came here without any protection, like an average man, this is good credit for him,” said Ashraf Abdel Aal, 45, a protester who witnessed Sharaf’s speech.

State television announced Friday that Egypt will hold a referendum March 19 on amendments to its constitution. The referendum is necessary before Egypt can hold free, multiparty elections later this year.

In Yemen, tens of thousands of people took to the streets Friday to protest the 33-year rule of President Ali Abdullah Saleh. In the northern town of Harf Sufyan, a rebel Shiite group said its peaceful demonstration was attacked by government forces, leaving at least three people dead and seven injured. The government disputed that account, saying an armed group had attempted to overrun a military checkpoint.

In the capital, Sanaa, and in other major cities, protests calling for Saleh’s ouster have united formerly disparate anti-government groups, including a separatist movement in the south and rebel tribes in the north. Although Saleh’s grip on his office appears precarious, so does this new bond among opposition forces, who have little in common beyond their mutual contempt for Saleh.

In Iraq, about 1,000 people gathered in Baghdad’s Tahrir Square despite government warnings, a ban on driving and recent clashes in which security forces have shot, beaten and detained demonstrators.

For every demonstrator who made it into Tahrir Square on Friday, dozens more were held up by a gauntlet of checkpoints and blockades.

Nidhal al-Azawi, who lives in a southern district of Baghdad, said that when she tried to leave her neighborhood Friday morning, a soldier told her: “If I let you go, I will be detained.”

The scene in Iraq was markedly different than the one last Friday, when tens of thousands of Iraqis streamed into the streets, only to be fired upon by security forces, resulting in at least 29 deaths.

This time, protesters were not shot, but they were chased into alleys and beaten with sticks. By evening, state television was broadcasting old images of Tahrir Square, pristine and empty of people.

In Saudi Arabia, a small number of protesters gathered in several areas, including the oil-rich Eastern Province. Although small compared with protests in other Arab countries, the demonstrations in favor of freedoms and the release of political prisoners were significant for a country in which rallies are rare.

In nearby Bahrain, opposition leaders ranging from moderate to hard-line spoke at a rally of tens of thousands Friday night in the capital, Manama.

They were unified in calling for further pressure on the government, saying that they doubted the royal family’s commitment to reform and that nothing short of a full resignation of the cabinet would satisfy them.

Walker reported from Sanaa. Staff writers Liz Sly in Cairo, Stephanie McCrummen in Baghdad, Michael Birnbaum in Manama and Janine Zacharia in Riyadh contributed to this report.

Environment: Lesson from Thailand with Mekong dams

VietNamNet Bridge – The World Wide Fund for Nature (WWF) on March 3 warned investors in dam construction projects in the Mekong River to learn the lesson from the dam on Mun River in Thailand, a failure in terms of economic, environmental and social impacts.

The Thai Government is considering permanently opening the doors of the Mun River dam in the hope to resume the ecological system in the Mun River, a branch of the Mekong River.

Mun River originates from the Khao Yai National Park, Thailand’s largest and oldest nature reserve. It meets the Mekong River in Ubon Ratthatchani province in northeastern Thailand.

The Mun River dam was built in the 1990s. The construction cost of the dam exceeded the scheduled budget while the dam caused a fall of seafood output from the river. Local people had to migrate while investors didn’t benefit from the project.

The above results may happen for Xayaburi, the dam that Laos wants to build in the major flow of the Mekong River. According to WWF, the lives of tens of millions of people in this region are being threatened.

“The Mekong is a unique and particularly complex ecosystem that hosts the most productive inland fisheries in the world and is second only to the Amazon in number of fish species. The lessons of Thailand’s Mun River dam are still fresh: Hasty environmental and social impact studies can lead to a bitter lose-lose situation for both fishermen and dam owners,” said Dr. Suphasuk Pradubsuk, National Policy Coordinator with WWF-Thailand.

At $233 million, the Mun River dam cost investors twice the original estimate, and energy production fell to a third of expected capacity during the dry season. Return on investment dropped from a projected 12 percent to 5 percent.

“All promoters of hydropower in the Mekong must learn the lessons of the Mun River dam. Current limited baseline studies do not sufficiently explain how the different parts of the ecosystem interact, so we can’t accurately predict the effects of any mainstream dam. The stakes are very high for people and nature, and therefore for investors as well,” said Dr. Suphasuk Pradubsuk.

The Xayaburi dam in Laos, the first to be proposed on the lower Mekong mainstream, is just ending the “consultation” phase stipulated under the procedures of the Mekong River Commission (MRC). This is meant to ensure a rigorous and transparent scientific assessment of the impact of the dam. However, the just-released Xayaburi feasibility study gives no indication that any of the Mun River dam lessons have been learned, WWF noted.

“The study blandly assures us that impacts of the Xayaburi dam would be low level without providing anything much to justify this optimism. Dam proponents were equally bland about impacts on the Mun River too, but there was economic and environmental disaster lurking in what was ignored and what was only superficially considered,” said Phansiri Winichagoon, WWF-Thailand Country Director.

WWF supports a 10-year delay in the approval of all lower Mekong mainstream dams to ensure a comprehensive understanding of all the impacts of their construction and operation.

Source: WWF

Mekong Crisis: Push to Build Dams Sparks New Warnings Over Mekong River’s Future

Environment

Cached:  http://www.voanews.com/english/news/environment/Push-to-build-dams-sparks-new-warnings-over-Mekong-Rivers-Future-117396313.html

Ron Corben | Bangkok  | March 4 2011

Reliable source of water important for a hydropower dam

Governments along the Mekong River are nearing a decision on plans to build a hydropower dam in Laos. Environmentalists fear that a planned series of dams will damage the environment, and the livelihoods of the people living along the Mekong.

In northern Laos, the government plans to build the Xayaburi hydropower dam, capable of generating 1,260 megawatts of electricity – on the main stream of the lower Mekong River.

It is the first of 12 dams planned for the Mekong. The Southeast Asian governments involved say the dams will be a clean source of energy for a rapidly developing region and will help cut poverty.

The $3.5 billion Xayaburi project is being built in cooperation with Thailand, which will buy almost all of the electricity it generates.

It is the first project requiring approval by the four governments along the lower Mekong – Laos, Thailand Cambodia and Vietnam – under a consultative process overseen by the Mekong River Commission.

The governments could present their decision later this month.

Under a 1995 agreement the four countries are to cooperate to ensure sustainable development along the 4,900-kilometer Mekong system.

Environmentalists say the consultations have not been transparent and that plans for the dams have not had adequate local debate or study.

Ame Trandem is with the environmental group International Rivers. She says the governments have not reached a point where they can make informed decisions.

“This is why it recommended deferring the decisions for the next 10 years,” Trandem said. “And we feel the Xayaburi consultation process right now should be halted in order to allow that 10 year deferment so people can understand the Mekong River better.”

The Mekong River Commission, which is funded by countries that include Australia, New Zealand, the European Union and the United States, recommends that the Xayaburi project be deferred. The commission says more work is needed to assess the effect of having 12 hydropower dams.

But the Lao government says it sees no reason for delay, and that the government has met all legal, environmental and social requirements.

Climatologist Anond Snidvongs at Thailand’s Chulalongorn University says while dams regulate water flows, they can harm biodiversity and the economy.

“It’s very clear and very well proven. Fish in the Mekong, they are both food and also economics,” Trandem said. “About one-third of the economy of Cambodia at the moment relies on the exporting those fish to other countries, especially Thailand.”

Environmentalists such as International River’s Trandem say millions of people will be affected.

“When we look into the future if these dams are built the future is going to be very grim,” Trandem added. “People will be poor because they have lost their main source of income – fisheries – people will also not have enough food to eat. This is a huge worry.”

Environmentalists are pressing the four Mekong governments to stall the Xayaburi program to further assess the long-term implications for both the Mekong River and its people.