Yeltsin’s papers show Kennedy invited Russian interference
From the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette
The U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, Nikki Haley, has been given a painful, thankless task: implementing the budget proposal by the Trump administration to cut the U.N. portion of the overall proposed cut to U.S. foreign affairs, diplomacy and aid, by 28 percent.
So far, Haley has been doing a decent job in New York, in spite of the confused picture of overall U.S. foreign policy direction emerging from the White House, the National Security Council, the Department of State and the Pentagon. She is a strong enough political figure in her own right not to be owned by the president, his family and political cohorts, or the Congress. One sometimes has in mind the image of the statue of the girl on Wall Street facing defiantly the charging bull.
Even though many foreign affairs professionals have been weeping and gnashing their teeth over the proposed cuts to financing America’s foreign policy, such as it is, people sometimes partly do the right things for the wrong reasons. Cutting the U.S. contribution to U.N. peacekeeping falls in that category.
U.N. peacekeeping will cost $7.87 billion this year. The U.S. contribution to that is, by agreement, 28.57 percent, or $2.2 billion. U.N. peacekeeping missions across the world number 16 plus Somalia. The newest, in the Central African Republic, dates from 2014. The oldest, in the Middle East, is a hoary 69, dating from 1948.
And therein lies the rub. The United Nations is very good at establishing peacekeeping missions, but, for a variety of reasons, weak at ending them, not unlike American involvement in wars across the globe.
One reason is that it is hard for the United Nations collectively to take a chance on withdrawing peacekeeping troops from a troubled area or country on the basis that the conflict in question is over. If the U.N. forces leave and the little devils begin fighting again, it might be considered to be the U.N.’s fault, or, at least, a default in its duty to try to maintain peace.
Another reason is that the country or area in question probably makes money from the presence of the U.N. forces. Another important reason is that U.N. peacekeeping forces are almost always drawn from relatively poor countries such as Bangladesh, Pakistan, Ethiopia, Nepal and Egypt. Their income from U.N. peacekeeping means that they don’t have to put as much of their own countries’ budgets into paying and equipping their own troops. So they will fight to keep the U.N. spending money on peacekeeping — American money.
Of the 16 U.N. peacekeeping missions, there are some that should be cut or ditched for age. These include, arguably, those in the Middle East, established in 1948, India and Pakistan (1949), Cyprus (1964), the Golan Heights (1974), Haiti (2004) and Darfur, Sudan (2007). Others should be cut because the conflicts there are — or should be — over. These include the Western Sahara (1991), Mali (2013), the Democratic Republic of the Congo (2010 and before), Kosovo (1999), Liberia (2003) and Cote d’Ivoire (2004).
At the very least, each of the 16 missions should be reviewed strictly by some sort of relatively independent U.N. or other body, not including any of the interested parties, and a determination made as to the necessity of a continued expensive U.N. peacekeeping mission on site. The idea that it is up to someone else to stop people fighting with each other forever is logically untenable.
The U.N. can save some money. The U.S. can save some money, and, who knows, maybe the countries concerned will make a stronger effort to live in peace with each other without someone standing between them. From the Chicago Tribune
Donald Trump gave us “The Apprentice.” But can he give America apprenticeships? If he did, he’d be borrowing the European model for training the next generation for an economy ever-more reliant on software skills and cyber-smarts. Germany, for example, matches up teens with companies and begins honing their acumen in a trade or skill while they’re in high school. By the time they graduate, they have, if they choose, a job already lined up at the company where they’ve apprenticed. The Swiss have kids as young as 16 apprenticing in 230 fields — from information technology and health care to banking, insurance, even dance.
Who’s to say President Trump would ever think about carving out a place in the American education system for apprenticeships? Why, Trump did. He brought it up during German Chancellor Angela Merkel’s recent visit to the White House. The German apprenticeship model, he said, “is one of the proven programs to developing a highly skilled work force.”
The concept is centuries old. Think Middle Ages, when a youngster learned a craft from a craftsman, and in return the craftsman got cheap labor. Today, the training a German youth gets coincides with his or her secondary education — it doesn’t replace it. Alongside algebra and Goethe, students learn roofing, IT know-how or sales management. In European countries that have apprenticeships, the programs are voluntary. Students opt for an academic track or a career track.
It’s clear apprenticeships pay off. Among developed countries, Switzerland in 2016 had the lowest youth unemployment rate, along with the world’s fourth highest per capita income. Youth unemployment in Germany is just 7.4 percent, half of what it is in the U.S.
Here, fewer than 5 percent of young people train and work as apprentices. In Germany, that number is 60 percent. In parts of America, however, the idea has caught on. South Carolina’s apprenticeship effort now has 600 companies in its fold, training 4,500 students. The result: South Carolina has lured several European manufacturers, which employ thousands of young Carolinians.
All of that is encouraging, but it’s not enough. The demand for skilled workers in an increasingly digital economy will only grow. European countries like Germany, Switzerland, the Netherlands and Austria have shown that apprenticeships can become vital wellsprings for skilled labor; the U.S. risks getting left behind if it doesn’t innovate in the way it trains workers.
One tantalizing element of the European model is its reliance on the private sector to foot the bill. It’s the companies that have a dearth of skilled labor, so they’re the ones that underwrite much of the cost. Can that happen here? It already is. South Carolina employers pay for most of the cost of apprenticeships there. That’s as it should be — on a larger scale.
That’s where Trump should step in. He needs to get educators and employers on board with the notion of making apprenticeships commonplace.
In the era of innovation, America ought to innovate the way it educates.
Every indication is the Russians tried to interfere with our elections. There is now proof they did, and by invitation.
The year was 1983 and the invitation was to the General Secretary of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, Y.V. Andropov. The appeal was from Senator Edward Kennedy. A record of the interchange was recently discovered when the archives of former Russian President Boris Yeltsin were opened to the public.
Kennedy was candid in proposing a mutually beneficial deal. He would give Andropov insight into how to deal with President Reagan. Reciprocally the Soviet leader would aid the Democratic party in opposing Reagan’s 1984 presidential election.
Unbelievably, Kennedy would aid the Russians in telling them how to enhance their propaganda against Reagan. He offered to arrange for Andropov to visit America and have several TV interviews to make “a direct appeal ... to the American people ...” Upon success in these interviews, Kennedy would endeavor to have representatives of the major U.S. TV networks contact Y.V. Andropov appealing for interviews in Moscow to pursue the undermining of Reagan’s campaign.
Kennedy’s overtures made it obvious he was ambitious to deal with Andropov who was the Vladimir Putin of his day, a former director of the KGB and primary leader in both the crushing of the 1956 Hungarian Revolution and the suppression of the 1968 Prague Spring. Sound familiar?
This action interchange occurred in 1983 shortly after President Reagan called the Soviet Union an “evil empire.”
There is no evidence Andropov every acted on the proposal. He died within eight months.
Historian Paul Kengor has observed, “The document has stood the test of time. I scrutinized it more carefully than anything I’ve ever dealt with as a scholar. I have showed the document to numerous authorities who deal with
Email letters to the editor to MColombo@RN-T.com or submit them to the Rome News-Tribune, 305 E. Sixth Ave., Rome, GA 30162. REV. NELSON PRICE Mike Lester, Washington Post Writers Group Soviet archival material. No one has ever debunked the memorandum or shown it to be a forgery.”
This is only one revelation of Russia being involved in our election. There should be no surprise that using high tech methods they tried to do so in our most recent election. The important thing is we recognize they always will try to gain their advantage and not with our elections only.
Thomas Jefferson, the apostle of liberty is quoted as saying, “eternal vigilance is the price of liberty.” Though the quote is thought to have been made originally by John Philpot Curran, it was soon credited to Jefferson. It matters not who said it, truth is embodied in it.
It is such vigilance that has prompted President Truman to issue a temporary ban on immigrants from some countries deemed to be terrorist hot beds.
In the “Congressional Research Service,” Kate M. Manuel reported the following on Jan. 23:
Trump’s ban is for three months. President Obama had a six month ban on people coming in from Iraq. As a matter of fact Obama issued nineteen different bans. President Clinton, referred to people wanting entrance as “aliens” and aggressively said certain ones should be banned. Twelve times he issued bans. His statement mirrors that of Trump. Presidents Reagan issued five bans. Presidents Carter and Chester Author likewise imposed temporary bans.
Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s State Department suspended, without presidential action, all applications for people from Iraq for six months in 2011.
If critics are going to confront President Trump, they should at least be honest and allow him equity.