Global News Journal

from Tales from the Trail:

Clinton sees diplomats of the future in cargo pants as well as pinstripes

Secretary of State Hillary Clinton has urged Congress to finance a major new U.S. push on overseas development aid, arguing that only by building up a global middle class will the United States increase its own national security.

Clinton, in an article in Foreign Affairs magazine which previews a pending State Department report on diplomacy and development, says it is essential for Congress to keep the money flowing even as the United States grapples with its own financial problems at home.

"The American people must understand that spending taxpayer dollars on diplomacy and development is in their interest," Clinton wrote, saying it was time to put to rest "old debates on foreign aid."

"It is time to move beyond the past and to recognize diplomacy and development as national security priorities and smart investments in the United States' future stability and security," Clinton said. "These missions can succeed, but only with the necessary congressional leadership and support. Congress must provide the necessary funding now."

Clinton's article comes ahead of the expected release of the State Department's first Quadrennial Diplomacy and Development Review (QDDR), a study launched in July 2009 which aims to set the framework for how U.S. diplomacy and overseas aid efforts will work together in coming years.

As with so many things in Washington, it will essentially be a plea for more money -- a sore spot for Clinton, who frequently contrasts the relative ease the Pentagon has in pushing funding requests through with the much tougher sell she must make for diplomatic and development projects.

from Tales from the Trail:

U.S. lawmakers wonder, where did our love go? with Turkey

It almost sounded as if U.S. lawmakers felt jilted by Washington's long-time NATO ally Turkey.

"How do we get Turkey back?" demanded Representative Gary Ackerman at a House Foreign Affairs Committee hearing exploring "Turkey's New Foreign Policy Direction."

"Why is Turkish public opinion ... perhaps one of the most anti-American of any of the countries of the world?" asked the committee's chairman, Representative Howard Berman.

With a panel of experts on Turkey listening, Berman and other lawmakers listed their worries about recent Turkish policy turns on Iran, Israel and the Palestinians.

Concerns about Turkey had hit a new peak with its support of an aid convoy of ships that tried to run the Israeli blockade of the Gaza strip this summer, Berman said.

Turkey's contacts with the Islamist group Hamas -- which won the 2006 Palestinian parliamentary election -- are "deeply offensive," Berman continued, and show Turkey doesn't respect Washington's list of foreign terrorist organizations (Hamas is on it).

And Turkey effectively dissed the United States again this week when its finance minister said it would boost trade with Iran, while ignoring non-United Nations sanctions, said Berman, the author of recent tough new unilateral U.S. sanctions on Tehran.

U.S. cancer case the best? It is if you can pay for it…

Angela Kegler McDowell thought she was doing everything right.

A 38-year-old small business owner, she had bought her own personal health insurance and kept paying her premiums, even as they rose from $293 a month to $804 a month.

The insurance company said it had to raise her premiums when her breast cancer came back and she was forced to undergo expensive chemotherapy.

“When the renewal came up in January, they told me I was a high risk to insure and they were dropping my insurance,” McDowell told Reuters in an interview. “Even if I had a million dollars a month to pay for insurance, I couldn’t get it.”  See her on video here in a related story, young adults.

McDowell has been lobbying her members of Congress to ask them to make sure the healthcare reform plan ensures that private insurance — sure to be part of any reform package –cannot drop patients if their coverage becomes too expensive.

Plans also need to be more affordable, says McDowell, who estimates she spent $42,000 out of pocket on her 20 percent co-pays and wiped out her family’s life savings even before her insurance company dumped her.

McDowell was struggling to hold her company together, battle cancer, and fight with her health insuance company– which she doesn’t want to name because she is still negotiating to be reinstated. “It was truly more than a medical battle. It was a financial battle,” she said.

Cancer and healthcare

The American Cancer Society’s Cancer Action Network says one in  four families affected by cancer claims to have put off or delay care in the last year because of cost. Nearly third of cancer patients in current treatment cut pills or skipped doses, in the past year, nearly one-quarter delayed a recommended cancer screening or treatment and 1 out of 5 did not fill a prescription.

Today we met a 38-year-old small business owner whose premiums went up and up as she got treatment for her second bout of breast cancer. Finally, her insurance company pulled the plug entirely — yes that is legal when someone has individual coverage — and she must now pay for all her followup care herself. She gave her members of  Congress an earful…

Argentine election showdown: negative campaigns

Argentine electoral campaigns don’t go negative. They start negative and steadily crank up the intensity until the end.

This Sunday’s election showdown is a close race between ex-President Nestor Kirchner, running for Congress to bolster the faltering presidency of his wife Cristina Fernandez, and millionaire Francisco de Narvaez. They are both from different wings of the Peronist party and De Narvaez claims to want to make Argentina into a “normal” country that does business with the world instead of isolating itself and befriending extremists.

The stakes are high in the race between the two men, who are fighting to take the biggest chunk of the 35 lower house seats that are up for grabs in Argentina’s most populous district, Buenos Aires province.

If Kirchner loses, even by a small margin, he will still go to Congress under the proportional voting system, but he will have to give up on his run for president in 2011 to continue the interventionist economic policies of himself and his wife.

De Narvaez would use a win to push for the presidency even though the fact he was born in Colombia might rule out a candidacy.

De Narvaez launched his campaign a month ago with a brutally negative television advertisement that showed Argentines from all walks of life getting slapped across the face in slow motion — trying to cash in on the resentment of farmers and some business sectors sick of Kirchner tax and price control policies.

from Pakistan: Now or Never?:

Is Indian “patience” paying off over Mumbai?

Shortly after the Mumbai attacks, I asked whether India faced a trial of patience in persuading Pakistan -- with help from the United States -- to take action against the Islamist militants it blamed for the assault on its financial capital. India's approach of relying on American diplomacy rather than launching military action led to some  soul-searching among Indian analysts when it failed to deliver immediate results.  But is it finally beginning to bear fruit?

Former Indian diplomat M K Bhadrakumar writes in the Asia Times that diplomatic efforts over the Mumbai attacks are entering a crucial phase. "After having secured New Delhi's assurance that India will not resort to a military strike against Pakistan, Washington is perceptibly stepping up pressure on Islamabad to act on the available evidence regarding the Mumbai attacks."

Earlier this week, Pakistan admitted that the lone surviving Mumbai gunman, Mohammed Ajmal Kasab, was a Pakistani. The head of Pakistan's powerful spy agency, the Inter-Services intelligence or ISI, also gave a conciliatory interview to German magazine Der Spiegel.  Lieutenant-General Ahmad Shuja Pasha ruled out the possibility of war with India. “We may be crazy in Pakistan, but not completely out of our minds. We know full well that terror is our enemy, not India,” Dawn newspaper quoted him as saying.

Indian newspapers have seen Pakistan's acceptance of Kasab's nationality as a step in the right direction, while recognising that further progress will be slow. "The admission by Pakistan is also an indicator for the establishment that the diplomatic pressure is finally getting some results,"  the Economic Times said. "But New Delhi is also aware that it will take a lot of time and effort to push Pakistan to take even small steps."

So how is that going to play out in the context of a new administration taking over in Washington, a government in Delhi coming to the end of its term and facing elections due by May, and a civilian government in Pakistan still trying to find its feet after years of military rule?.