Cafepolitico.us Blog

In an interesting, albeit strange development, former President Bill Clinton has been named UN Special Envoy to Haiti, a country which the former President has been very interested in for some time. There is no doubt he is extremely popular there and can use his status to bring attention to the many social issues [...]

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The Dalai Lama will be coming to Boston April 30th-May 3, 2009 and will be giving a series of lectures as well as being the guest of honor at the new Dalai Lama Center for Ethics and Transformative Values at MIT. I am going to one of his workshops this upcoming Saturday.
The Tibetan-American community [...]

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President Obama and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton exceeded expectations at the Fifth Summit of the Americas in Trinidad/Tobago. There was much hand-wringing by the US corporate media with respect to what might happen if, God forbid, Venezuela’s nutty President, Hugo Chavez, and President Obama happened to bump into each other at the Summit. [...]

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Some mid-east observers are saying that there are increased tensions between Israel and the US, due in part to uncertainty about a new US administration, appointment of George Mitchell as Mid-East envoy, plan to engage Iran in dialogue and the recent Israeli elections which placed the much more conservative “Bibi” Netanyahu (as compared to Tipi [...]

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Hillary Clinton just returned from a two day trip to Mexico, where she did something a US Secretary of State has not done for quite a while- injected some humility into her speeches, Q&A’s and demeanor. And guess what? It seems to be helping the United State’s image abroad which will benefit us [...]

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Over at the Washington Note, Steve Clemons has an interesting post (and video) about an interview he did yesterday with a member of Palestinian Fatah who supports a pro-unity government. It is a very interesting dialogue and worth checking out. The post is here and there is a video link once you get [...]

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Yesterday I blogged about South Africa’s refusal to issue a visa to the Dalai Lama to attend an international peace conference in Johannesburg- the reasoning given by the SA government was that it was not in their best interest to allow His Holiness into the country lest it upset China, with whom SA has increasing [...]

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China continues to throw it’s economic weight around and seems to have been successful in ensuring that other countries ignore it’s deplorable human rights record.
When Secretary Clinton went on her first overseas trip to Asia, she managed to appease a nervous Chinese Government by declaring that China’s worsening human rights, rigid communism and [...]

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So far, things don’t look to good for the two US journalists being held in North Korea. I am sure a lot of behind-the-scenes wrangling is going on at the State Department, but if the US can’t get them back without having to give in to N. Korean concessions, this could get ugly.

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I don’t really understand President Obama’s over-all policy with respect to Gitmo detainess, people already labeled as enemy combatants:

Court documents filed Friday reveal that Obama’s lawyers are arguing that Ex-Guantanamo detainees have no constitutional rights.
The Center for Constitutional Rights(CCR), a non-profit legal advocacy group, is supporting four British citizens – Shafiq Rasul, Asif Iqbal, [...]

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