The Odds Of Actually Keeping Your New Year"s Resolution

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The Odds Of Actually Keeping Your New Year"s Resolution

Mandela"s friends often at odds with U.S.

Some of the leaders, like Raul Castro, were righ there at the memorial service. | AP Photo

JOHANNESBURG — President Obama’s tribute to Nelson Mandela Tuesday included a sharply critical swipe at the sort of “leaders who claim solidarity with Madiba’s struggle for freedom, but do not tolerate dissent from their own people.”

More than a few of those leaders, of course — including Cuban President Raul Castro — were right there at the former South African leader’s memorial service to hear Obama’s slam.

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The event itself drew attention to an awkward aspect of the relationship between the United States and the anti-apartheid movement Mandela led: some of his most fervent international supporters were leaders of countries sharply at odds with America.

While President Barack Obama got an invite to address the high-profile celebration of Mandela’s life Tuesday, the relatively short list of other leaders called to the stage to speak hardly read like a who’s who of America’s staunchest friends.

It included Castro — not one of the world’s great powers, but representing a government steadfast in its support for Mandela’s African National Congress.

Castro drew Obama into a handshake that grabbed the spotlight, given the long-chilly relationship between the United States and the island nation, under communist rule for more than five decades — and the Cuban government hailed the move as a hopeful and potentially significant sign, writing on its website: “May this… be the beginning of the end of the US aggressions?”

Also on the speakers list: China’s Li and Brazil’s Dilma Rousseff, both hailing from countries looking to challenge America’s superpower status.

During Mandela’s time as head the ANC, he also formed other alliances with controversial leaders who claimed to support national liberation movements, like Libyan strongman Muammar Qadhafi.

In his speech, Obama suggested there was a degree of cynicism and hypocrisy on the part of some who lined up with Mandela’s movement but stray far from its ideals.

“There are too many people who happily embrace Madiba’s legacy of racial reconciliation, but passionately resist even modest reforms that would challenge chronic poverty and growing inequality,” Obama said. “There are too many leaders who claim solidarity with Madiba’s struggle for freedom, but do not tolerate dissent from their own people.”

But if some of Mandela’s backers waffled on their principles, the U.S. government was also hardly a loyal friend to the anti-apartheid movement. U.S. intelligence agencies cooperated with the South African government and there are persistent reports that the Central Intelligence Agency aided in Mandela’s arrest in the 1962.

In the 1980s, the Reagan administration pursued a policy of “constructive engagement” under which the United States continued to cooperate with the South African government, while prodding them to dismantle apartheid. Reagan administration officials cited the Soviet threat and the fear that South Africa might become a client state of Moscow if the then-government in Pretoria was ousted.

The fear was not an outlandish one. Mandela briefly joined the South African Communist Party in the 1950s, and remained close with its members in the decades that followed.

Obama may have steered clear of discussing U.S. support for the apartheid regime because acknowledging it would have offered a difficult choice: publicly repudiate those decisions and risk stirring up another round of Republican criticism branding him as “apologizer in chief,” or offer no opinion on them and appear to bless them. He chose instead simply to leave aside the role the U.S. government played in propping up apartheid by backing the South Africans.

Whether prominent Republicans would have jumped on Obama for expressing regret over U.S. decisions in the apartheid era is hard to predict. Such criticism would be in line with other critiques the GOP has offered, but several party leaders issued their own statements praising Obama. Republicans are also trying to rebrand the party to make it seem more welcoming to minorities — a drive which might counsel against an attack that could reflect poorly on Mandela.

Former President Bill Clinton, who was close to Mandela and attended Tuesday’s memorial service, acknowledged in an interview last week that Mandela’s experiences in the struggle for equal rights in South Africa sometimes led him to overlook misdeeds of some of his backers.

“Mandela developed a fanatic loyalty to the people who supported him and the ANC during the prison years,” Clinton said told American Urban Radio Network’s April Ryan. “Even if they themselves weren’t democrats — small ‘d’ — and they didn’t support democracy and they did bad things, they had enabled him and his supporters to do great things, and for black South Africans to be freed for the first time in 300 years and to actually cast ballots He believed he had to honor their sacrifice and service.”

“There’s something to be said for the kind of dogged loyalty he felt,’ the former president added. “He understood it was a political process that set him free and he was grateful for those that enabled him to survive until the politics took hold.”

And in some cases, the U.S. enmity for leaders Mandela embraced is not widely shared. While Cuba has been repeatedly criticized by numerous countries for human rights violations under both former president Fidel Castro and the new president, his brother Raul, no other country imposes the type of broad embargo on trade with Cuba observed by the United States.

“The world looks very different if you’re not American,” Clinton explained in the radio interview.

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Mandela"s friends often at odds with U.S.

O"Reilly: Press At Odds With Public Over Second Amendment

O’REILLY: There is no question the American media is opposing the majority of Americans over the Second Amendment. And the reason is that most journalists live in secure places. Here in New York City, many press people live in high-rise apartment buildings protected from intruders. But most Americans don’t have the money to do that. So they must protect themselves. That’s why the founding fathers put the Second Amendment into the Constitution — self-protection. Once again, when Americans lose their lives to violent crime, that situation should never ever be exploited for political gain.

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O"Reilly: Press At Odds With Public Over Second Amendment

Congress, Obama at odds over new Iran sanctions

President Barack Obama addresses an Organizing for Action summit in Washington, Monday, July 22, 2013. The group was formed from Obama’s 2012 re-election campaign with the express goal of backing his policy priorities. (AP Photo/Cliff Owen)

President Barack Obama addresses an Organizing for Action summit in Washington, Monday, July 22, 2013. The group was formed from Obama’s 2012 re-election campaign with the express goal of backing his policy priorities. (AP Photo/Cliff Owen)

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WASHINGTON (AP) — Congress is considering a new series of hard-hitting Iran sanctions on everything from mining and construction to the Islamic republic’s already besieged oil industry, despite concern from the Obama administration that the measures could interfere with nuclear negotiations.

House and Senate bills are both advancing at a time President Barack Obama’s national security team is gauging whether Iranian President-elect Hasan Rouhani is serious about halting some elements of Tehran’s uranium enrichment activity. Those involved in the process said the administration wants to temper Congressional plans until Rouhani takes office in August and has an opportunity to demonstrate whether his government will offer concessions.

The legislation would blacklist Iran’s mining and construction sectors, effective next year, because they are seen as heavily linked to Iran’s hard-line Revolutionary Guard corps. It also would commit the U.S. to the goal of ending all Iranian oil sales worldwide by 2015, targeting the regime’s biggest revenue generator and prime source of money for its weapons and nuclear programs.

U.S. penalties that went into effect last year already have cut Iran’s petroleum exports in half, but that still leaves billions of dollars coming in every month from Turkey, China and several other Asian countries.

The House’s bill may pass before Congress’ August recess. The Senate version won’t get a vote until at least September, said Sen. Bob Menendez, D-N.J., chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee and a leading advocate of tougher Iran sanctions. The Senate Banking Committee, which will put forward the package, is in ongoing consultations with the administration, according to one U.S. official who, like others, spoke on the condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to talk publicly about the sanctions.

John McCain, R-Ariz., said the U.S. should immediately “plow ahead” with greater and tougher measures against Iran. “We’re running out of time,” he said.

The U.S. and many other countries believe Iran is seeking to develop nuclear weapons. Obama has said Iran has until sometime next year to prove to the world its nuclear program is peaceful. If diplomacy fails, the stage may be set for a military intervention by the U.S. or Israel, which sees an Iranian nuclear weapon as a threat to its very existence.

In a report last week, David Albright and Christina Walrond at the Washington-based Institute for Science and International Security concluded that Iran will be able to produce enough weapons-grade uranium for a nuclear explosive without being detected by mid-2014.

Iranians insist their program is solely for energy and research purposes.

The State Department wouldn’t comment specifically on new legislation while it said it was waiting for Rouhani to be sworn in. “We will see what he does once in office,” spokeswoman Marie Harf said.

A senior U.S. official said the administration’s concerns were about the timing and content of the legislation.

If Rouhani is serious about compromise, setting new sanctions in advance of talks risks undercutting him, the official said. Even if the new Iranian leader isn’t serious, the oil measures in particular are problematic, turning a potential U.S. diplomatic success into a failure.

If China or Japan, for example, decides to flout the U.S. demand to stop all importing from Iran, the administration would then have to weigh enforcing the law by blacklisting Chinese and Japanese banks and companies at the risk of widespread economic harm — including for Americans. The likelier result is that the U.S. does nothing, making the sanctions look hollow and eroding international solidarity on pressuring Iran.

Despite wide bilateral support in Congress for tougher sanctions, some Democrats and Republicans are embracing the administration’s cautious approach. In a letter last week to Obama, 18 GOP House members joined more than 100 of their Democratic colleagues in urging the president to “reinvigorate U.S. efforts to secure a negotiated nuclear agreement” and give Rouhani a chance.

Rouhani’s election clearly has bolstered hope of compromise. A former nuclear negotiator and relatively moderate cleric, Rouhani has suggested a more accommodating approach than his predecessor, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. However, Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei has final say on nuclear issues.

Iranian Foreign Minister Ali Akbar Salehi said last week his country would be ready to resume talks once Rouhani, who takes office the first weekend in August, puts together a negotiating team.

World powers want the meeting “as soon as possible,” Catherine Ashton, the European Union’s foreign policy chief, said last week. Ashton has served as the point of contact for the U.S., Britain, China, France, Germany and Russia since talks with Iran restarted last year. They’ve yet to make significant headway despite four rounds of discussions.

Mark Dubowitz, executive director of the Foundation for Defense of Democracies and an adviser to Congress and the administration on Iran sanctions, said moving forward with new measures made sense. “Iran’s nuclear ploys continue to beat Western economic pressure,” he said. “The administration must go into the next round of negotiations with significant, re-enhanced leverage.”

The administration has other options too. It could toughen enforcement of existing restrictions on Iran related to energy, shipping, port management and other sectors the U.S. has blacklisted in recent months. Dubowitz estimated that stamping out gold flows to Iran that already are subject to U.S. penalties could eliminate $ 20 billion a year in Iranian government revenue alone.

The rough parameters of any larger nuclear deal with Iran are clear. It would have to include the West scaling back some of the sanctions that have crippled Iran’s economy over the past few years. In return, the Iranians probably would be allowed to continue producing low-enriched uranium for fuel but would be required to halt production of any higher-enriched material that comes closer to warhead-grade, and send existing stockpiles of such material out of the country for safekeeping. Western powers also would surely demand tougher monitoring of Tehran’s nuclear activities.

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Congress, Obama at odds over new Iran sanctions

Germany Warns Against "Silvio the Savior" (And That May Backfire); Fake Horse Race Odds Get Around Blackouts

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Italians head to the polls on February 24-25 to replace the technocrat government of prime minister Mario Monti.

Pier Luigi Bersani, who heads the centre-left Bene Commune (Common Good) coalition was considered a shoo-in a few short weeks ago, at least in the Chamber (the lower house of parliament).

It’s all up in the air now as Silvio Berlusconi, head of the centre-right Il Popolo della Libertà (the People of Freedom) has staged a massive rally in the polls (now blacked out). Berlusconi has been on a rampage lately blaming Germany and Chancellor Angela Merkel for the unemployment problems in Italy. It’s a populist message that is resonating well with voters.

Beppe Grillo’s Movimento 5 Stelle (Five Star Movement) has been largely ignored in the Italian press, yet Grillo has been wildly popular at rallies. Grillo has a chance to come in second, and I would not be surprised by a first place finish.

Mario Monti, who heads the centrist Con Monti per l’Italia (With Monti for Italy) coalition, is running a very distant 4th.

“Fare per Fermare il Declino” (literally “Act to Stop the Decline”, acronym FiD), is a primarily Libertarian party founded less than a year ago but until a recent stumble had been gaining enough steam to possibly overtake Monti.

For further analysis of FiD and the other parties, please see European Reader Offers Insights on Upcoming Italian Election

Poll Blackouts

Officially, pollsters cannot post poll results in a blackout period before the election. That blackout period started February 9. Here is a snapshot of the polls on February 8.

Those results are misleading because they do not include undecided voters, and the undecided vote is a whopping 20-25 percent!

With such little difference between Berlusconi and Bersani, and with huge rallies for Beppe Grillo and Berlusconi, any outcome is possible. Will Grillo take votes from Berlusconi or Bersani (or both). If enough of both I could even envision a win. If he takes more votes from Bersani, then Berlusconi is likely to win.

From my experience, late deciders break in a massive way for one candidate or the other (and in the US election I predicted for Obama). Here, it appears against Bersani (to who is more uncertain).

Fake Horse Race Odds Get Around Blackouts

Adding more confusion rather than clarity, Yahoo!News reports Fake horse racing blog dodges Italy’s election polls blackout

A blog appears to have found a way around a publishing ban on polls in the two weeks before the vote by writing up the results of pretend “underground horse races”, which appear to reflect each party’s standing.

On the final day polls could be published before the blackout fell, bloggers Andrea Mancia and Simone Bressan posted “The illegal races return!” on their site Notapolitica.it setting out the main “stables” and “jockeys” competing.

In line with the last published official polls, the winning horses of Tuesday’s “San Nicola Racetrack” came from the “Bien Comun” stables, a thinly disguised name for the centre-left “Italia Bene Comune” coalition.

The centre right of former Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi was shown coming in just 3.5 “seconds” behind.  Using a mix of puns and French, Notapolitica.it renders centre-left leader Pier Luigi Bersani as jockey “Pier le Smacchiateur” and Mario Monti as “Mario de la Montaigne”. Berlusconi is dubbed “Burlesque”.

Horses representing Beppe Grillo’s 5-Star Movement are referred to as “stellar”, while the names of races allude to different pollsters. “San Walter Giuliano Racecourse”, for example, appears to refer to research group SWG.

It is difficult to say if those are official polling results or fictional. Assuming the polls are accurate (not an assumption I am ready to make), it is still difficult to know how undecided voters were handled.

Germany Warns Against Berlusconi

Of potentially more importance, Berlin Warns Italians against Berlusconi

Here are a few examples from the story.

German Finance Minister Wolfgang Schäuble reportedly said (but later denied) “Silvio Berlusconi may be an effective campaign strategist, but my advice to the Italians is not to make the same mistake again by re-electing him.”

Polenz, a senior member of Chancellor Angela Merkel’s Christian Democrats, said: “Italy needs political leaders who stand for the future. Berlusconi is certainly not one of them.”

One Italian bank even went so far this week as to issue a report arguing that a Berlusconi election would almost certainly force the country to apply for emergency bailout aid from the EU. Mediobanca, Italy’s largest investment bank, wrote that “a last-minute Berlusconi victory would scare the market sufficiently to put pressure on the spread.”

“Silvio the Savior”

In Italy, the opposite is happening. Spiegel reports Berlusconi’s Faithful: ‘Only Silvio Can Save Italy’

Adoration of Berlusconi in Italy remains widespread. In the parallel universe occupied by his followers, there is no room for doubt about Berlusconi and lines are clearly drawn. Silvio is good and the others are bad.

These fans gather at his speeches, like the Saturday rally in Palermo, where thousands crowded into the venerable Teatro Politeama. There were women in long fur coats and fine gentlemen in three-piece suits. Dock workers like Ferrante squeezed with them through the entrance, everyone pushing and shoving each other like adolescents at a rock concert. The hundreds who didn’t make it in must stand outside.

Silvio the Savior

Fans of the 76-year-old ex-premier see him as more than just a beacon of hope. “Berlusconi will now start a revolution,” says teacher Marinella Romano. She confesses “I have always loved Silvio.” Donatella Catalano, a friendly retiree, gushes, “He stands for everything that is good in the world.” The unemployed Ferrante says that “only Silvio can save Italy, he will bring us much good.”

Fully a quarter of Italians are prepared to vote for Berlusconi again. It is an astounding degree of homage paid to man who faces allegations of abuse of power and bribery; who faces the scandal surrounding the underage escort Karima el-Marough, alias Ruby Rubacuori; who has been blasted for blatantly misogynistic comments; and who broke many promises as prime minister. Instead, the opposition, left-leaning judges and even the Germans are blamed for all that is not right with Italy.

“It was Merkel who toppled him,” says retiree Catalano, referring to the German chancellor. She then turns to her neighbor and says: “It’s better not to tell the man anything, because the Germans always write negatively about Berlusconi.” Another voice yells: “First World War II and now attacks against Berlusconi!”

The comments are not surprising. In almost every campaign speech, Berlusconi rails against Germany. “Should we continue to allow Germany to dictate policies that ruin Italy?” he calls out. “Nooooo!” scream his followers.

Election Predictions

It’s difficult to judge from this side of the Atlantic, but things do not look good for a viable center-left coalition. At best, Bersani will win the Chamber and lose the Senate. That would likely result in a hung parliament.

Anti-German sentiment in Italy is high already. The entrance of German politicians into the battle may fuel that sentiment in a major way.

It is conceivable “Silvio the Savior” pulls off a stunning upset win in both the Chamber and Senate, but a Senate victory would still require a coalition (no party will come close to a majority).

In theory, Movimento 5 Stelle and Silvio Berlusconi could form a nice anti-Euro coalition and put the Euro to a vote, but given the anti-political party platform of Movimento 5 Stelle it’s hard to see that coalition forming.

Indeed it may be difficult if not impossible for any party to form a Senate coalition if Monti’s party does poorly enough (as I expect it will).

The most likely outcome once again is a hung parliament, and the next most likely outcome may very well be a return of Silvio Berlusconi (rather than a weak center left coalition of some sort that most seem to expect).

Regardless, Berlusconi is no savior (nor is there one to be found in the entire group). There are no good outcomes for Italy.

Mike “Mish” Shedlock
http://globaleconomicanalysis.blogspot.com

Mike “Mish” Shedlock is a registered investment advisor representative for SitkaPacific Capital Management. Sitka Pacific is an asset management firm whose goal is strong performance and low volatility, regardless of market direction. Visit http://www.sitkapacific.com/account_management.html to learn more about wealth management and capital preservation strategies of Sitka Pacific.

Mish’s Global Economic Trend Analysis

Germany Warns Against "Silvio the Savior" (And That May Backfire); Fake Horse Race Odds Get Around Blackouts