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社長バラックオバマ候補の日本語の話す字幕グアンタナモ
shachō barakkuobamakōho no nihongo no hanasu jimaku guantanamo
氏。グローブ：私たちはデッキから逃した問題が、グアンタナモ約され、本質的に彼はなぜこれほどグアンタナモ収容所の閉鎖に時間がかかりであると言っていた？
shi . gurōbu ： watashi tachi wa dekki kara nogashi ta mondai ga , guantanamoyakusa re , honshitsu teki ni kare wa naze kore hodo guantanamoshūyō sho no heisa ni jikan ga kakari de aru to i~tsu te i ta ？
社長：うーん、それはかなり簡単です。第1に、いくつかの人の非常に、一部の人の低された一部の人は、裁判所を決定したのは、最初の場所に配置されてはならないレベルの戦闘機、危険ですから、グアンタナモで、個人の全体の束持っている。
shachō ： ūn , sore wa kanari kantan desu . dai 1ni , ikutsu ka no hito no hijō ni , ichibu no hito no tei sa re ta ichibu no hito wa , saibansho wo kettei shi ta no wa , saisho no basho ni haichi sa re te wa nara nai reberu no sentō ki , kiken desu kara , guantanamode , kojin no zentai no taba mo~tsu te iru .
我々は、これらの各例の評価を見てきた例何百もの、1つ1つは、これらの様々な種類、そのためのプロセスや法的精査当社の基準に達してスタンドの方法でそれが何を行うかを決定する。
もしここで、我々は彼らになろうとしているグアンタナモ収容所を閉鎖しているその後、我々を把握するため、持っている？そして、私たちは、米国本土でのオプションのどこに軍事委員会のいずれか、または第3条裁判所の裁判は、これらの人々を保持することが数多く提案している保留している。しかし残念ながら、そこに政治的抵抗の駐車されていると、率直に言って、いくつかのそれだけで政治 - その一部の人々合法的に怖がっている詳細については、また、もし我々は人と言われている誰かが持っているテロリストと動機裏庭では、私たちの標的になるのだろうか？
1つは、物事の我々の国に大規模で通信しようとしなければなりませんでしたが、歴史的に、我々は法廷でテロリストの多くが試したである我々は、連邦刑務所での彼らが、彼らエスケープされたことはない。そして、これらの人々は異なっています。しかし、それはされての多くは、いくつかの例では、かなり政治ランク対象の1つのものの一つされている。
wareware wa , korera no kaku rei no hyōka wo mi te ki ta rei nan hyaku mono , 1tsu 1tsu wa , korera no samazama na shurui , sono tame no purosesu ya hōteki seisa tōsha no kijun ni tasshi te sutando no hōhō de sore ga nani wo okonau ka wo kettei suru . moshi koko de , wareware wa karera ni naro u to shi te iru guantanamoshūyō sho wo heisa shi te iru sonogo , wareware wo haaku suru tame , mo~tsu te iru ？ soshite , watashi tachi wa , beikoku hondo de no opushon no doko ni gunji iin kai no izure ka , matawa dai 3jō saibansho no saiban wa , korera no hitobito wo hoji suru koto ga kazuōku teian shi te iru horyū shi te iru . shikashi zan'nen nagara , soko ni seiji teki teikō no chūsha sa re te iru to , sotchoku ni i~tsu te , ikutsu ka no sore dake de seiji - sono ichibu no hitobito gōhō teki ni kowaga~tsu te iru shōsai nitsuite wa , mata , moshi wareware wa hito to iwa re te iru dare ka ga mo~tsu te iru terorisuto to dōki uraniwa de wa , watashi tachi no hyōteki ni naru no daro u ka ？ 1tsu wa , monogoto no wareware no kuni ni dai kibo de tsūshin shiyo u to shi nakere ba nari mase n deshi ta ga , rekishi teki ni , wareware wa hōtei de terorisuto no ōku ga tameshi ta de aru wareware wa , renpō keimusho de no karera ga , karera esukēpu sa re ta koto wa nai . soshite , korera no hitobito wa kotona~tsu te i masu . shikashi , sore wa sa re te no ōku wa , ikutsu ka no rei de wa , kanari seiji ranku taishō no 1tsu no mono no hitotsu sa re te iru .
我々は、プロセスのため議会最終的には新施設の作成に財布のひもをコントロールを通じて仕事を得た。議会が決定をすることは、新しい施設の開設をブロックしようとしているのことになる可能性のある当社の管理何ができるかを制限します。ので、この何かが私たちの両方から、議会で動作するようにも世論には、その人々が、最終的にこれを行うには正しいことだと理解して持っています。グアンタナモ閉鎖することにより、これらのテロ組織との戦いに道徳的な力を取り戻すことができます。
あるグアンタナモ収容所を指しているよりも、これらの過激派の多くにとっては大きな宣伝武器だったし、我々が我々自身の理想に住んでいないと述べた。そのことは何かが私を強く我々に抵抗している場合でも、それにいくつかのコストがかかる、と信じている場合でも、常に行うには、政治的に最も人気のあるものではありません。
氏。グローブ：大統領閣下、我々左にはあまり時間がありませんが、私たちはエネルギーの問題に、環境を得ることを確認します。
wareware wa , purosesu no tame gikai saishū teki ni wa shin shisetsu no sakusei ni saifu no himo wo kontorōru wotsūjite shigoto wo e ta . gikai ga kettei wo suru koto wa , atarashii shisetsu no kaisetsu wo burokku shiyo u to shi te iru no koto ni naru kanō sei no aru tōsha no kanri nani ga dekiru ka wo seigen shi masu . node , kono nani ka ga watashi tachi no ryōhō kara , gikai de dōsa suru yō ni mo seron ni wa , sono hitobito ga , saishū teki ni kore wo okonau ni wa tadashii koto da to rikai shi te mo~tsu te i masu . guantanamoheisa suru koto niyori , korera no tero soshiki to no tatakai ni dōtoku teki na chikara wo torimodosu koto ga deki masu . aru guantanamoshūyō sho wo sashi te iru yori mo , korera no kageki ha no ōku nitotte wa ōkina senden buki da~tsu ta shi , wareware ga wareware jishin no risō ni sun de i nai to nobe ta . sono koto wa nani ka ga watashi wo tsuyoku wareware ni teikō shi te iru baai demo , soreni ikutsu ka no kosuto ga kakaru , to shinji te iru baai demo , tsuneni okonau ni wa , seiji teki ni mottomo ninki no aru mono de wa ari mase n . shi . gurōbu ： daitōryō kakka , wareware hidari ni wa amari jikan ga ari mase n ga , watashi tachi wa enerugī no mondai ni , kankyō wo eru koto wo kakunin shi masu .
viernes, 5 de febrero de 2010
PRESIDENT BARAK OBAMA TALKING ABOUT GUANTANAMO
THE COMPLETE TEXT OF THE VIDEO
PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES TALKING ABOUT GUANTANAMO
MR. GROVE: The question we missed from the deck, but it was about Guantanamo, and essentially he was just saying why is it taking so long to close down Guantanamo?
THE PRESIDENT: Well, it's pretty straightforward. Number one, you've got a whole bunch of individuals in Guantanamo, some of whom are very dangerous, some of whom were low-level fighters, some of whom the courts have determined should never have been put there in the first place. We've had to evaluate each of those cases, hundreds of cases, one by one, to determine what these various categories are, and do it in a way that stands up to our standards of due process and legal scrutiny.
Then we've got to figure out, if we're closing Guantanamo, where are we going to put them? And we have proposed that there are a number of options on the continental United States where you could hold these people as trials either in military commissions or in Article 3 courts are pending. But unfortunately, there has been a lot of political resistance, and, frankly, some of it just politically motivated -- some of it people being legitimately scared about, well, if we've got somebody who we've been told is a terrorist in our backyard, will that make us a target?
One of the things that we've had to try to communicate to the country at large is that, historically, we've tried a lot of terrorists in our courts; we have them in our federal prisons; they've never escaped. And these folks are no different. But it's been one of those things that's been subject to a lot of, in some cases, pretty rank politics.
And we've got to work through that process because Congress ultimately controls the purse strings in creating new facilities. If Congress makes a decision that they are going to try to block the opening of a new facility, it potentially constrains what our administration can do. And so this is something that we've got to work through both in Congress but also with public opinion so that people understand that ultimately this is the right thing to do. By closing Guantanamo, we can regain the moral high ground in the battle against these terrorist organizations.
There's been no bigger propaganda weapon for many of these extremists than pointing to Guantanamo and saying that we don't live up to our own ideals. And that's something that I strongly believe we have to resist, even if it has some costs to it, and even if it's not always the most politically popular thing to do.
MR. GROVE: Mr. President, we don't have much time left, but I want to make sure we get to the issue of energy, the environment.
PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES TALKING ABOUT GUANTANAMO
MR. GROVE: The question we missed from the deck, but it was about Guantanamo, and essentially he was just saying why is it taking so long to close down Guantanamo?
THE PRESIDENT: Well, it's pretty straightforward. Number one, you've got a whole bunch of individuals in Guantanamo, some of whom are very dangerous, some of whom were low-level fighters, some of whom the courts have determined should never have been put there in the first place. We've had to evaluate each of those cases, hundreds of cases, one by one, to determine what these various categories are, and do it in a way that stands up to our standards of due process and legal scrutiny.
Then we've got to figure out, if we're closing Guantanamo, where are we going to put them? And we have proposed that there are a number of options on the continental United States where you could hold these people as trials either in military commissions or in Article 3 courts are pending. But unfortunately, there has been a lot of political resistance, and, frankly, some of it just politically motivated -- some of it people being legitimately scared about, well, if we've got somebody who we've been told is a terrorist in our backyard, will that make us a target?
One of the things that we've had to try to communicate to the country at large is that, historically, we've tried a lot of terrorists in our courts; we have them in our federal prisons; they've never escaped. And these folks are no different. But it's been one of those things that's been subject to a lot of, in some cases, pretty rank politics.
And we've got to work through that process because Congress ultimately controls the purse strings in creating new facilities. If Congress makes a decision that they are going to try to block the opening of a new facility, it potentially constrains what our administration can do. And so this is something that we've got to work through both in Congress but also with public opinion so that people understand that ultimately this is the right thing to do. By closing Guantanamo, we can regain the moral high ground in the battle against these terrorist organizations.
There's been no bigger propaganda weapon for many of these extremists than pointing to Guantanamo and saying that we don't live up to our own ideals. And that's something that I strongly believe we have to resist, even if it has some costs to it, and even if it's not always the most politically popular thing to do.
MR. GROVE: Mr. President, we don't have much time left, but I want to make sure we get to the issue of energy, the environment.
jueves, 4 de febrero de 2010
TEXTO COMPLETO EN INGLES DE OBAMA EN YOUTUBE
MR. GROVE: Hello, everyone. We're here at the White House today for a very unique event -- an exclusive interview with President Obama in which the questions come from American people who have submitted them and chosen them online. My name is Steve Grove and I'm the news and politics at YouTube.
Mr. President, thank you for taking the time to answer these questions today.
THE PRESIDENT: It's my pleasure. Thank you, Steve. Thanks for having me and thanks to YouTube for doing this. We had a chance to do this before I was elected and had a great time, so I'm glad we can do it again.
MR. GROVE: Great. Well, let's tell people a little bit about how this works. Five days ago as you were delivering your State of the Union address, we opened up our moderator platform on YouTube, where thousands of people have been submitting and voting on both video and text questions. Some of them, as you'll see, were hard-hitting; others were emotional; some were even funny -- but all of the questions you'll see here today were voted into the top tier of the thousands of questions we received. And none of them have been chosen by the White House or seen by the President. So this should be a lot of fun.
Mr. President, let's let laymanmarcus from Silver Spring, Maryland, kick us off. He submitted this video to remind us of where things were a year ago.
(A video is shown.)
Mr. Marcus writes: "Mr. President, I know there have been political setbacks to getting health care reform done. The 40 million people who have no insurance can't wait. Will they be able to get insurance this year?"
THE PRESIDENT: It is my greatest hope that we can get this done not just a year from now, but soon. We came extremely close. We now have a bill that's come out from the House, come out from the Senate. That's unprecedented. And if you look at the core components of that legislation, what you have is 30 million people who get coverage, insurance reform so that people who have health insurance are going to be able to be protected from not being able to get it because of preexisting conditions or suddenly losing their health care because the insurance company has some fine print that they didn't read. It makes sure that we actually start bending the cost curve, controlling the rise in premiums, by instituting better practices in terms of how we reimburse doctors and how we ask hospitals to work together. We've already invested in electronic IT, electronic medical records, things that can help make the system more efficient.
So we had this enormous opportunity, but the way the rules work in the United States Senate, you've got to have 60 votes for everything. After the special election in Massachusetts, we now only have 59. We are calling on our Republican colleagues to get behind a serious health reform bill, one that actually provides not only the insurance reforms for people who do have health insurance but also the coverage for folks who don't.
My hope is, is that they accept that invitation and that they work with us together over the next several weeks to get it done.
MR. GROVE: A lot of people that submitted questions were sort of frustrated with the process of all of health care, and the number one question we got in health care came from Mr. Anderson in Texas who asked: "Why are the health care meetings and procedures not on C-SPAN as promised?" And then one of the top questions in the government reform category was Warren Hunter in Brooklyn, who said: "How do you expect people in this country to trust you when you've repeatedly broken promises that were made on the campaign trail, most recently the promise to have a transparent health care debate?"
THE PRESIDENT: Well, I guess, first of all, I would say that we have been certified by independent groups as the most transparent White House in history. It's important to understand. We are the first White House since the founding of the republic to list every visitor that comes into the White House online so that you can look it up. People know more about the inner workings of this White House, the meetings we have. We've excluded lobbyists from boards and commissions, but we also report on any lobbyist who meets with anybody who's part of our -- part of our administration.
So we've actually followed through on a lot of the commitments that we'd made. And so Warren is mistaken in terms of how he characterized it.
What is fair to say is that as the health care process went forward, not every single aspect of it was on C-SPAN. Now, keep in mind, most of the action was in Congress, so every committee hearing that was taking place, both in the House and the Senate, those were all widely televised. The only ones that were not were meetings that I had with some of the legislative leadership trying to get a sense from them in terms of what it was that they were trying to do.
I think it is a fair criticism. I've acknowledged that. And that's why as we move forward making sure that in this last leg, these five yards before we get to the goal line, that everybody understands exactly what's going on in the health care bill, that there are no surprised, no secrets. That's going to be an imperative. It's going to be one of my highest priorities.
MR. GROVE: Well, the central focus of your State of the Union was obviously jobs. And a lot of people wrote in asking for some clarity around some of your plans for small businesses. I'm going to play you two video questions in a row.
Q "Good evening, President Obama. One year ago today my wife and I were both let go from our jobs in corporate America within 48 hours of each other. We've since started a small business and we employ a couple people around us. What is being done to free up funding and encourage the growth of other small businesses that have such a tremendous impact on our economy? Thank you."
Q "Colin Callahan, Costa Mesa, California. Mr. President, how exactly are you planning on helping small businesses grow and prosper, besides simply providing tax breaks?"
THE PRESIDENT: Well, let me start with some specific issues that confront every small business all across the country, and it's absolutely true that if we can get small businesses back on their feet then that's going to go a long way towards bringing the unemployment rate down because that's the fastest generator of jobs across the country.
Number one, small businesses really are still struggling with financing. You hear stories everywhere you go that even profitable, successful businesses are having trouble getting financing because banks, frankly, just don't want to take the risk. After having taken way too many risks before, now they're taking no risk. And small businesses are punished for that.
So we've expanded the SBA loan -- the Small Business Administration loan portfolio by about 70 percent. We've been waiving guarantees and fees, trying to streamline the process, just to get more capital into the hands of small businesses. That's point number one.
Point number two then are the tax breaks that were alluded to. It is important to see if we can give more incentives to small business. So, for example, we're just eliminating capital gains for small business -- which is particularly important if you've got a start-up; 10 years from now you may end up being successful with your small business but suddenly you've got to pay taxes on it. If you can take that money and, instead of paying Uncle Sam, reinvest it in your business, you can grow it further. So we think that that's the kind of strategy that makes a lot of sense.
We want to also make sure that we're providing tax credits for hiring of small business -- small businesses that are hiring new employees. And so we've got a whole range of proposals there.
Now, in addition to the tax credits, in addition to the financing, one of the other things that, frankly, small businesses need is just a economic environment that is growing. And one of the things we're very proud of is the fact that we had a 6 percent contraction of the economy at the beginning of last year -- this past quarter we had a 6 percent increase in the growth of the economy. That 12 percent swing offers greater opportunities for small businesses to prosper and thrive.
The last point I'd make: One of the biggest burdens on small businesses is health care costs. And probably nobody benefits more from our health care proposals than small businesses, because what we're doing is we're saying that not only will you get tax credits to buy health insurance, but we're also going to let you pool -- buy into a big exchange so that you have the same purchasing power as a big company like Ford or Google is able to negotiate with insurance companies and get a good deal, well, now small businesses, by pooling together in this exchange, are going to have that same leverage. That will help lower their costs.
And for a lot of small businesses, it's not just a matter of giving health insurance to your employees; it's also just being able to buy health insurance for yourself. That will cut down on small businesses' costs and they'll be able to, again, invest more in their business.
MR. GROVE: A lot of Americans saw what happened on Wall Street this past year, and they wrote in saying, when are we going to get our bailout? Here is Frederick from Florida, who submitted the number one video question in the financial reform category.
Q "Mr. President, my name is Frederick from South Florida. I have a question about your HAMP program and why the banks are reluctant to modify loans for homeowners who can afford to stay in their homes. Now, the taxpayers bailed them out. They refuse to help us out. And I would like to know what say you, Mr. President?"
THE PRESIDENT: Well, look, this is something that we've been dealing with since the beginning of this financial crisis. We set up a program for loan modification that so far about
4 million people have taken advantage of across the country. You've got about 800,000 people who've gotten loan modifications that are saving them an average of $550. And so these are not insignificant savings. We've been able to get that done.
The problem is, is the number of people whose mortgages are underwater where they actually have a home value that's now less than their mortgage is a lot bigger than that. And you saw declining values all across the country.
So the amount of money that we've been able to get into this program has not met the entire need. We're now pushing the banks as hard as we can to make sure that not only do they do the most with the resources that we've been giving them, but that they also do a much better job of customer service with people who are coming to them. I get letters all the time of people who've gone through all kinds of hoops, filled out forms; the bank doesn't call them back, or after they've gone through a trial period, the bank says, well, we now think we shouldn't give you a home modification.
What we're trying to do is to increase transparency and force all the banks to tell us exactly what are you doing with your customers who want to stay in their homes, can't afford to pay a mortgage, but need something a little bit more limited.
And I'm hopeful that we're going to continue to see more and more people take advantage of it. But I want to be honest, given the magnitude of the housing problem out there, that there are still going to be pockets of areas where the housing values have dropped so much that it is still going to be tough for a lot of people, and we're just going to have to work our way through this as the economy improves.
MR. GROVE: Mr. President, let's lighten things up for a minute. We got a lot of people just submitting their ideas to you -- ideas for how to make the country better. They wanted to hear what you thought about them.
Let's play sort of a faster round of a thing we'll call "Good idea, bad idea." I'll show you an idea. You say whether you think it's good or bad, and maybe just a few sentences about what you think about it.
First one comes from Aloha Tony, your home state of Hawaii. He says, "Mr. President, our deficit is higher than ever at $12 trillion. Will you consider allowing the private sector to buy and take over the most troubled government-run agencies such as the U.S. Postal Service?"
THE PRESIDENT: Bad idea most of the time. There are examples where privatization makes sense, where people can do things much more efficiently. But oftentimes what you see is companies want to buy those parts of a government-run op that are profitable, and they don't want to do anything else.
So, for example, the U.S. Postal Service, everybody would love to have that high-end part of the business that FedEx and UPS are already in, business to business you make a lot of money. But do they want to deliver that postcard to a remote area somewhere in rural America that is a money loser? Well, the U.S. Post Office provides universal service. Those companies would not want to provide universal service. So you've got to make sure that you look carefully at what privatization proposals are out there.
MR. GROVE: So bad idea most of the time?
THE PRESIDENT: Most of the time.
MR. GROVE: Most of the time. Next idea is a video.
Q "My car insurance company will allow me to take driver's ed classes to reduce my monthly premiums. Could we do the same thing for health insurance -- take class in cooking, nutrition, stress management, communication, parenting, stopping smoking, maybe even exercise classes -- and get a reduction on our monthly premiums?"
THE PRESIDENT: Well, I think the idea is a good one, and that is that if people are being healthy, that they should be able to get some incentives for that. And a lot of companies are starting to do that. We probably don't want the insurance companies, though, making those decisions because insurance companies have every incentive to take the youngest, healthiest people and insure them, since they're less likely to pay out, and then leave older, sicker individuals out of their insurance pools. So it's important in any health care program to make sure that the young and the healthy and the older and the sicker are in a single pool.
But what we should encourage are individual companies who provide incentives for wellness programs, smoking cessation programs, they're going to get a workout once in a while -- those things are something we should encourage. And the First Lady, Michelle Obama, she's really focusing right now on childhood wellness, healthy eating, getting exercise. That's a campaign that she is going to be pushing all year long.
MR. GROVE: Let's get one more idea in here. This next one comes from JLevers in Dover, Delaware, who writes: "Do you think it would be worth looking at placing solar panels in all federal, state, and school buildings as a way to cut energy costs and put that budget money to better use?"
THE PRESIDENT: Good idea. And we want to do everything we can to encourage clean energy. And I have instructed the Department of Energy to make sure that our federal operations are employing the best possible clean energy technology, alternative energy technology. And what we're seeing is more and more companies realize this is a win-win for them. Not only is what they're doing environmentally sound, but it also over the long term saves money for them.
MR. GROVE: Great. Well, let's move back to the questions. And I got to tell you, the number one question that came in, in the jobs and economy category had to do with the Internet. And it came from James Earlywine in Indianapolis. He said: "An open Internet is a powerful engine for economic growth and new jobs. Letting large companies block and fill their online content services would stifle needed growth. What is your commitment to keeping Internet open and neutral in America?"
THE PRESIDENT: Well, I'm a big believer in net neutrality. I campaigned on this. I continue to be a strong supporter of it. My FCC Chairman, Julius Genachowski, has indicated that he shares the view that we've got to keep the Internet open; that we don't want to create a bunch of gateways that prevent somebody who doesn't have a lot of money but has a good idea from being able to start their next YouTube or their next Google on the Internet. So this is something we're committed to.
We're getting pushback, obviously, from some of the bigger carriers who would like to be able to charge more fees and extract more money from wealthier customers. But we think that runs counter to the whole spirit of openness that has made the Internet such a powerful engine for not only economic growth, but also for the generation of ideas and creativity.
MR. GROVE: Well, to get good jobs I think many Americans realize they need a higher education, but college tuition costs are so high. Here is a video question from Saginaw, Michigan:
Q "Dear President Obama, as a college student who has 14 credits and three part-time jobs, I'm just wondering what are your plans for -- plans to lower college tuition costs? I know we're in a struggling economy right now, but any little bit that you can help would be appreciated. Thank you. God bless. Bye."
THE PRESIDENT: Well, John is right that college tuition costs are just crushing on a lot of folks. And this is something that I remember from my own experience, because Michelle and I, we had college loans we kept on paying off for a decade after we had graduated from law school.
We've already done a huge amount to increase Pell Grants, to help increase the accessibility of college loans and grants at the college level. But we want to do more. And so we've put forward an initiative that is being debated in Congress -- and we hope to get passed this year -- where if you have student loans, that you will not have to pay more than 10 percent of your income on those loans; that after 20 years they'll be forgiven; and if you've gone into public service, they'll be forgiven after 10 years. That would provide a huge amount of relief for people.
We still need to expand more the Pell Grant program and make it both accessible to more people and raise the amount of tuition.
In order to pay for this -- the best part of this is we can actually figure out how to pay for it, because right now you've got a lot of banks and financial service companies who are still middlemen in the federally guaranteed loan programs. And if we can cut those middlemen out, then you've got several billion dollars that you can invest in the programs that I just described.
This is something that I've made a top priority. I want us to once again have the highest college graduation rates of any country in the world by 2020. We can get that done. But this is legislation that needs to pass.
And the last point I would make, colleges and universities also, though, have to figure out how can they cut their costs, because even if we're putting more and more loans in, more and more money for loans, if the inflation in higher education keeps on skyrocketing, over time it's still going to gobble up all that extra money and we'll be right back where we started. So we've got to show more restraint at the college and university level in terms of ever-escalating costs.
MR. GROVE: Well, let's back up a bit just from the specifics of education policy and ask a more fundamental question, which comes from Sean in Ohio.
Q "Mr. President, what do you want public education to help students become? Should they be good workers? Innovative thinkers? Something else? As a math teacher, I want to know what you think it means to be an educated person."
THE PRESIDENT: Well, I think obviously there's a huge economic component to being well educated. We know that if you've got a college education, you are going to make multiples of what you would make as a high school graduate, much less a high school dropout over the course of a lifetime. But it's absolutely true that a high-quality education is not just a matter of being a good worker; it's also a matter of being a good citizen, it's also a matter of being able to think critically, evaluate the world around you, make sure that you can process all the information that's coming at us in a way that helps you make decisions about your own life but also helps you participate in the life of the country.
And I'm a big believer that the most important thing that a kid can learn in school is how to learn and how to think. If Malia and Sasha, my two daughters, are asking questions, know how to poke holes in an argument, know how to make an argument themselves, know how to evaluate a complicated bunch of data, then I figure that they're going to be okay regardless of the career path that they're in. And I think that that requires more than just rote learning -- although it certainly requires good habits and discipline in school -- it also requires that in the classroom they're getting the kind of creative teaching that's so important.
And that's why our administration has initiated something called Race to the Top, where my Secretary of Education, Arne Duncan, has helped to design a competition among states so that they can foster the kinds of excellence in learning everywhere. Not just in some schools, not just in some states, but in every school in every state. If states want money, we're going to reward excellence, and we will show them what has been proven to work in terms of encouraging the kind of critical thinking that all of our children need.
MR. GROVE: Mr. President, the number two category after jobs and economy that people submitted to was national security and foreign policy. And the number one question came from concernedconservative in Georgia, who asked about your plans for the war on terror. And then Sean from Pennsylvania followed it up with: "Dear President Obama, if we remove our troops from the war on terror, how will you continue to combat the threat of terrorism?"
THE PRESIDENT: Well, first of all, I think it's important to understand that we are at war against a very specific group -- al Qaeda and its extremist allies that have metastasized around the globe, that would attack us, attack our allies, attack bases and embassies around the world, and most sadly, attack innocent people regardless of their backgrounds, regardless of their religions. Al Qaeda is probably the biggest killer of innocent Muslims of any entity out there.
And so that is our target and that is our focus. Now, they employ terrorist tactics, but we need to be clear about who our target is.
And we have to fight them on all fronts. We have to fight them in very concrete ways in Afghanistan and along the border regions of Pakistan where they are still holed up. They have spread to places like Yemen and Somalia, and we are working internationally with partners to try to limit their scope of operations and dismantle them in those regions.
But we also have to battle them with ideas. We have to help work with the overwhelming majority of Muslims who reject senseless violence of this sort, and to work to provide different pathways and different alternatives for people expressing whatever policy differences that they may have. And I think we haven't done as good of a job on that front.
We have to project economically, working in country like a Yemen, that is extraordinarily poor, to make sure that young people there have opportunity. The same is true in a place like Pakistan.
So we want to use all of our national power to deal with the problem of these extremist organizations. But part of that does involve applications of military power. And that's why, although it is the hardest decision that a Commander-in-Chief can make to send our troops into battle, I thought it was very important to make sure that we had an additional 30,000 troops in Afghanistan to help train Afghan forces so that they can start providing more effective security for their own country in dealing with the Taliban, and ultimately allow us to remove our troops but still have a secure partner there that's not going to be able to use that region as a platform to attack the United States.
MR. GROVE: Well, another central issue in the war on terror now is Guantanamo, and a lot of users wrote in about this. Oh, actually, you know what, I think we're going to -- well, how about I come later -- I think that question is actually about Sudan, which you didn't actually address in your State of the Union, but it was actually the number one voted question, and it's a video from the EnoughProject here in D.C.
Q "President Obama, more than 3 million Darfuris fear returning home because of instability. Many fear that Sudan may be on the brink of war. What will you do to galvanize the international community to ensure that widespread violence does not occur in Sudan this year?"
THE PRESIDENT: Well, the situation in Sudan has been heartbreaking but also extremely difficult, and something that we started working on the day that I came into office. Our first task was, at that time, making sure that people who were in refugee camps in Darfur had access to basic water, food, other necessities of life. And this was after the Sudanese government in Khartoum had kicked out a whole bunch of nongovernmental organizations that were providing assistance there. We were able to get that assistance back in to help at least initially stabilize the situation.
The next step in the challenge is to broker a lasting peace agreement between rebels who are still in the Darfur region and this government. And I've got a special envoy who has been very active in trying to bring together the international community to get that deal brokered.
Part of what makes it complicated is you also have a conflict historically between northern Sudan and southern Sudan. They finally reached a agreement after a lot of work. But the Sudanese now -- the southern Sudanese now have an option where they may be seeking to secede from all of Sudan. That's another potential conflict that could create additional millions of refugees.
And so what we are doing is try to work with not only the regional powers but the United Nations and other countries that have shown a great interest in this to see if we can broker a series of agreements that would stabilize the country, and then allow the refugees who are in Darfur to start moving back to their historic lands.
Sadly, because of the genocide that took place earlier, a lot of those villages are now destroyed. And so thinking about how to resettle these populations in places that are viable economically, that have the resources to support populations, is a long-term development challenge that the international community is going to have to support.
We continue to put pressure on the Sudanese government. If they are not cooperative in these efforts, then it is going to be appropriate for us to conclude that engagement doesn't work, and we're going to have to apply additional pressure on Sudan in order to achieve our objectives. But my hope is, is that we can broker agreements with all the parties involved to deal with what has been enormous human tragedy in that region.
MR. GROVE: The question we missed from the deck, but it was about Guantanamo, and essentially he was just saying why is it taking so long to close down Guantanamo?
THE PRESIDENT: Well, it's pretty straightforward. Number one, you've got a whole bunch of individuals in Guantanamo, some of whom are very dangerous, some of whom were low-level fighters, some of whom the courts have determined should never have been put there in the first place. We've had to evaluate each of those cases, hundreds of cases, one by one, to determine what these various categories are, and do it in a way that stands up to our standards of due process and legal scrutiny.
Then we've got to figure out, if we're closing Guantanamo, where are we going to put them? And we have proposed that there are a number of options on the continental United States where you could hold these people as trials either in military commissions or in Article 3 courts are pending. But unfortunately, there has been a lot of political resistance, and, frankly, some of it just politically motivated -- some of it people being legitimately scared about, well, if we've got somebody who we've been told is a terrorist in our backyard, will that make us a target?
One of the things that we've had to try to communicate to the country at large is that, historically, we've tried a lot of terrorists in our courts; we have them in our federal prisons; they've never escaped. And these folks are no different. But it's been one of those things that's been subject to a lot of, in some cases, pretty rank politics.
And we've got to work through that process because Congress ultimately controls the purse strings in creating new facilities. If Congress makes a decision that they are going to try to block the opening of a new facility, it potentially constrains what our administration can do. And so this is something that we've got to work through both in Congress but also with public opinion so that people understand that ultimately this is the right thing to do. By closing Guantanamo, we can regain the moral high ground in the battle against these terrorist organizations.
There's been no bigger propaganda weapon for many of these extremists than pointing to Guantanamo and saying that we don't live up to our own ideals. And that's something that I strongly believe we have to resist, even if it has some costs to it, and even if it's not always the most politically popular thing to do.
MR. GROVE: Mr. President, we don't have much time left, but I want to make sure we get to the issue of energy, the environment. One of the rare moments where you were able to get applause from your friends on the Republican side of the aisle in Congress the other night was when you mentioned nuclear energy. And just today your budget announced tripling the loan guarantees for nuclear reactors. A lot of people had questions about just how this would work and why you did that.
Q "President Obama, record numbers of young people elected you in support of a clean energy future. If money is tight, why do you propose wasting billions in expensive nuclear, dirty coal, and offshore drilling? We need to ramp up efficiency, wind and solar, that are all economically sustainable and create clean and safe jobs for our generation."
THE PRESIDENT: Well, you're not going to get any argument from me about the need to create clean energy jobs. I think this is going to be the driver of our economy over the long term. And that's why we put in record amounts of money for solar and wind and biodiesel and all the other alternative clean energy sources that are out there.
In the meantime, though, unfortunately, no matter how fast we ramp up those energy sources, we're still going to have enormous energy needs that will be unmet by alternative energy.
And the question then is, where will that come from?
Nuclear energy has the advantage of not emitting greenhouse gases. For those who are concerned about climate change, we have to recognize that countries like Japan and France and others have been much more aggressive in their nuclear industry and much more successful in having that a larger part of their portfolio, without incident, without accidents. We're mindful of the concerns about storage, of spent fuel, and concerns about security, but we still think it's the right thing to do if we're serious about dealing with climate change.
With respect to clean coal technology, it is not possible at this point to completely eliminate coal from the menu of our energy options. And if we are ever going to deal with climate change in a serious way, where we know China and India are going to be greatly reliant on coal, we've got to start developing clean coal technologies that can sequester the harmful emissions, because otherwise -- countries like China and India are not going to stop using coal -- we'll still have those same problems but we won't have the technology to make sure that it doesn't harm the environment over the long term.
So I know that there's some skepticism about whether there is such a thing as clean coal technology. What is true is right now that we don't have all the technology to prevent greenhouse gas emissions from coal-fired power plants, but the technology is close and it makes sense for us to make that investment now, not only because it will be good for America but it will also ultimately be good internationally. We can license and export that technology in ways that help other countries use a better form of energy that's going to be helpful to the climate change issue.
MR. GROVE: Mr. President, I think we're out of time, but I know a lot of people really enjoyed the opportunity to ask questions of you in this way, and we'd love to do this again with you some time.
THE PRESIDENT: You know, this was terrific. And I just want to thank everybody who submitted questions, whether via e-mail or over the Internet. And I hope we get a chance to do this on a more regular basis, because it gives me great access to all the people out there with wonderful ideas. And even if you didn't make your question, even if it wasn't on this show, we appreciate your submission, and hopefully we'll catch you next time.
MR. GROVE: Great. Thanks, Mr. President.
THE PRESIDENT: All right, thank you, appreciate it.
Mr. President, thank you for taking the time to answer these questions today.
THE PRESIDENT: It's my pleasure. Thank you, Steve. Thanks for having me and thanks to YouTube for doing this. We had a chance to do this before I was elected and had a great time, so I'm glad we can do it again.
MR. GROVE: Great. Well, let's tell people a little bit about how this works. Five days ago as you were delivering your State of the Union address, we opened up our moderator platform on YouTube, where thousands of people have been submitting and voting on both video and text questions. Some of them, as you'll see, were hard-hitting; others were emotional; some were even funny -- but all of the questions you'll see here today were voted into the top tier of the thousands of questions we received. And none of them have been chosen by the White House or seen by the President. So this should be a lot of fun.
Mr. President, let's let laymanmarcus from Silver Spring, Maryland, kick us off. He submitted this video to remind us of where things were a year ago.
(A video is shown.)
Mr. Marcus writes: "Mr. President, I know there have been political setbacks to getting health care reform done. The 40 million people who have no insurance can't wait. Will they be able to get insurance this year?"
THE PRESIDENT: It is my greatest hope that we can get this done not just a year from now, but soon. We came extremely close. We now have a bill that's come out from the House, come out from the Senate. That's unprecedented. And if you look at the core components of that legislation, what you have is 30 million people who get coverage, insurance reform so that people who have health insurance are going to be able to be protected from not being able to get it because of preexisting conditions or suddenly losing their health care because the insurance company has some fine print that they didn't read. It makes sure that we actually start bending the cost curve, controlling the rise in premiums, by instituting better practices in terms of how we reimburse doctors and how we ask hospitals to work together. We've already invested in electronic IT, electronic medical records, things that can help make the system more efficient.
So we had this enormous opportunity, but the way the rules work in the United States Senate, you've got to have 60 votes for everything. After the special election in Massachusetts, we now only have 59. We are calling on our Republican colleagues to get behind a serious health reform bill, one that actually provides not only the insurance reforms for people who do have health insurance but also the coverage for folks who don't.
My hope is, is that they accept that invitation and that they work with us together over the next several weeks to get it done.
MR. GROVE: A lot of people that submitted questions were sort of frustrated with the process of all of health care, and the number one question we got in health care came from Mr. Anderson in Texas who asked: "Why are the health care meetings and procedures not on C-SPAN as promised?" And then one of the top questions in the government reform category was Warren Hunter in Brooklyn, who said: "How do you expect people in this country to trust you when you've repeatedly broken promises that were made on the campaign trail, most recently the promise to have a transparent health care debate?"
THE PRESIDENT: Well, I guess, first of all, I would say that we have been certified by independent groups as the most transparent White House in history. It's important to understand. We are the first White House since the founding of the republic to list every visitor that comes into the White House online so that you can look it up. People know more about the inner workings of this White House, the meetings we have. We've excluded lobbyists from boards and commissions, but we also report on any lobbyist who meets with anybody who's part of our -- part of our administration.
So we've actually followed through on a lot of the commitments that we'd made. And so Warren is mistaken in terms of how he characterized it.
What is fair to say is that as the health care process went forward, not every single aspect of it was on C-SPAN. Now, keep in mind, most of the action was in Congress, so every committee hearing that was taking place, both in the House and the Senate, those were all widely televised. The only ones that were not were meetings that I had with some of the legislative leadership trying to get a sense from them in terms of what it was that they were trying to do.
I think it is a fair criticism. I've acknowledged that. And that's why as we move forward making sure that in this last leg, these five yards before we get to the goal line, that everybody understands exactly what's going on in the health care bill, that there are no surprised, no secrets. That's going to be an imperative. It's going to be one of my highest priorities.
MR. GROVE: Well, the central focus of your State of the Union was obviously jobs. And a lot of people wrote in asking for some clarity around some of your plans for small businesses. I'm going to play you two video questions in a row.
Q "Good evening, President Obama. One year ago today my wife and I were both let go from our jobs in corporate America within 48 hours of each other. We've since started a small business and we employ a couple people around us. What is being done to free up funding and encourage the growth of other small businesses that have such a tremendous impact on our economy? Thank you."
Q "Colin Callahan, Costa Mesa, California. Mr. President, how exactly are you planning on helping small businesses grow and prosper, besides simply providing tax breaks?"
THE PRESIDENT: Well, let me start with some specific issues that confront every small business all across the country, and it's absolutely true that if we can get small businesses back on their feet then that's going to go a long way towards bringing the unemployment rate down because that's the fastest generator of jobs across the country.
Number one, small businesses really are still struggling with financing. You hear stories everywhere you go that even profitable, successful businesses are having trouble getting financing because banks, frankly, just don't want to take the risk. After having taken way too many risks before, now they're taking no risk. And small businesses are punished for that.
So we've expanded the SBA loan -- the Small Business Administration loan portfolio by about 70 percent. We've been waiving guarantees and fees, trying to streamline the process, just to get more capital into the hands of small businesses. That's point number one.
Point number two then are the tax breaks that were alluded to. It is important to see if we can give more incentives to small business. So, for example, we're just eliminating capital gains for small business -- which is particularly important if you've got a start-up; 10 years from now you may end up being successful with your small business but suddenly you've got to pay taxes on it. If you can take that money and, instead of paying Uncle Sam, reinvest it in your business, you can grow it further. So we think that that's the kind of strategy that makes a lot of sense.
We want to also make sure that we're providing tax credits for hiring of small business -- small businesses that are hiring new employees. And so we've got a whole range of proposals there.
Now, in addition to the tax credits, in addition to the financing, one of the other things that, frankly, small businesses need is just a economic environment that is growing. And one of the things we're very proud of is the fact that we had a 6 percent contraction of the economy at the beginning of last year -- this past quarter we had a 6 percent increase in the growth of the economy. That 12 percent swing offers greater opportunities for small businesses to prosper and thrive.
The last point I'd make: One of the biggest burdens on small businesses is health care costs. And probably nobody benefits more from our health care proposals than small businesses, because what we're doing is we're saying that not only will you get tax credits to buy health insurance, but we're also going to let you pool -- buy into a big exchange so that you have the same purchasing power as a big company like Ford or Google is able to negotiate with insurance companies and get a good deal, well, now small businesses, by pooling together in this exchange, are going to have that same leverage. That will help lower their costs.
And for a lot of small businesses, it's not just a matter of giving health insurance to your employees; it's also just being able to buy health insurance for yourself. That will cut down on small businesses' costs and they'll be able to, again, invest more in their business.
MR. GROVE: A lot of Americans saw what happened on Wall Street this past year, and they wrote in saying, when are we going to get our bailout? Here is Frederick from Florida, who submitted the number one video question in the financial reform category.
Q "Mr. President, my name is Frederick from South Florida. I have a question about your HAMP program and why the banks are reluctant to modify loans for homeowners who can afford to stay in their homes. Now, the taxpayers bailed them out. They refuse to help us out. And I would like to know what say you, Mr. President?"
THE PRESIDENT: Well, look, this is something that we've been dealing with since the beginning of this financial crisis. We set up a program for loan modification that so far about
4 million people have taken advantage of across the country. You've got about 800,000 people who've gotten loan modifications that are saving them an average of $550. And so these are not insignificant savings. We've been able to get that done.
The problem is, is the number of people whose mortgages are underwater where they actually have a home value that's now less than their mortgage is a lot bigger than that. And you saw declining values all across the country.
So the amount of money that we've been able to get into this program has not met the entire need. We're now pushing the banks as hard as we can to make sure that not only do they do the most with the resources that we've been giving them, but that they also do a much better job of customer service with people who are coming to them. I get letters all the time of people who've gone through all kinds of hoops, filled out forms; the bank doesn't call them back, or after they've gone through a trial period, the bank says, well, we now think we shouldn't give you a home modification.
What we're trying to do is to increase transparency and force all the banks to tell us exactly what are you doing with your customers who want to stay in their homes, can't afford to pay a mortgage, but need something a little bit more limited.
And I'm hopeful that we're going to continue to see more and more people take advantage of it. But I want to be honest, given the magnitude of the housing problem out there, that there are still going to be pockets of areas where the housing values have dropped so much that it is still going to be tough for a lot of people, and we're just going to have to work our way through this as the economy improves.
MR. GROVE: Mr. President, let's lighten things up for a minute. We got a lot of people just submitting their ideas to you -- ideas for how to make the country better. They wanted to hear what you thought about them.
Let's play sort of a faster round of a thing we'll call "Good idea, bad idea." I'll show you an idea. You say whether you think it's good or bad, and maybe just a few sentences about what you think about it.
First one comes from Aloha Tony, your home state of Hawaii. He says, "Mr. President, our deficit is higher than ever at $12 trillion. Will you consider allowing the private sector to buy and take over the most troubled government-run agencies such as the U.S. Postal Service?"
THE PRESIDENT: Bad idea most of the time. There are examples where privatization makes sense, where people can do things much more efficiently. But oftentimes what you see is companies want to buy those parts of a government-run op that are profitable, and they don't want to do anything else.
So, for example, the U.S. Postal Service, everybody would love to have that high-end part of the business that FedEx and UPS are already in, business to business you make a lot of money. But do they want to deliver that postcard to a remote area somewhere in rural America that is a money loser? Well, the U.S. Post Office provides universal service. Those companies would not want to provide universal service. So you've got to make sure that you look carefully at what privatization proposals are out there.
MR. GROVE: So bad idea most of the time?
THE PRESIDENT: Most of the time.
MR. GROVE: Most of the time. Next idea is a video.
Q "My car insurance company will allow me to take driver's ed classes to reduce my monthly premiums. Could we do the same thing for health insurance -- take class in cooking, nutrition, stress management, communication, parenting, stopping smoking, maybe even exercise classes -- and get a reduction on our monthly premiums?"
THE PRESIDENT: Well, I think the idea is a good one, and that is that if people are being healthy, that they should be able to get some incentives for that. And a lot of companies are starting to do that. We probably don't want the insurance companies, though, making those decisions because insurance companies have every incentive to take the youngest, healthiest people and insure them, since they're less likely to pay out, and then leave older, sicker individuals out of their insurance pools. So it's important in any health care program to make sure that the young and the healthy and the older and the sicker are in a single pool.
But what we should encourage are individual companies who provide incentives for wellness programs, smoking cessation programs, they're going to get a workout once in a while -- those things are something we should encourage. And the First Lady, Michelle Obama, she's really focusing right now on childhood wellness, healthy eating, getting exercise. That's a campaign that she is going to be pushing all year long.
MR. GROVE: Let's get one more idea in here. This next one comes from JLevers in Dover, Delaware, who writes: "Do you think it would be worth looking at placing solar panels in all federal, state, and school buildings as a way to cut energy costs and put that budget money to better use?"
THE PRESIDENT: Good idea. And we want to do everything we can to encourage clean energy. And I have instructed the Department of Energy to make sure that our federal operations are employing the best possible clean energy technology, alternative energy technology. And what we're seeing is more and more companies realize this is a win-win for them. Not only is what they're doing environmentally sound, but it also over the long term saves money for them.
MR. GROVE: Great. Well, let's move back to the questions. And I got to tell you, the number one question that came in, in the jobs and economy category had to do with the Internet. And it came from James Earlywine in Indianapolis. He said: "An open Internet is a powerful engine for economic growth and new jobs. Letting large companies block and fill their online content services would stifle needed growth. What is your commitment to keeping Internet open and neutral in America?"
THE PRESIDENT: Well, I'm a big believer in net neutrality. I campaigned on this. I continue to be a strong supporter of it. My FCC Chairman, Julius Genachowski, has indicated that he shares the view that we've got to keep the Internet open; that we don't want to create a bunch of gateways that prevent somebody who doesn't have a lot of money but has a good idea from being able to start their next YouTube or their next Google on the Internet. So this is something we're committed to.
We're getting pushback, obviously, from some of the bigger carriers who would like to be able to charge more fees and extract more money from wealthier customers. But we think that runs counter to the whole spirit of openness that has made the Internet such a powerful engine for not only economic growth, but also for the generation of ideas and creativity.
MR. GROVE: Well, to get good jobs I think many Americans realize they need a higher education, but college tuition costs are so high. Here is a video question from Saginaw, Michigan:
Q "Dear President Obama, as a college student who has 14 credits and three part-time jobs, I'm just wondering what are your plans for -- plans to lower college tuition costs? I know we're in a struggling economy right now, but any little bit that you can help would be appreciated. Thank you. God bless. Bye."
THE PRESIDENT: Well, John is right that college tuition costs are just crushing on a lot of folks. And this is something that I remember from my own experience, because Michelle and I, we had college loans we kept on paying off for a decade after we had graduated from law school.
We've already done a huge amount to increase Pell Grants, to help increase the accessibility of college loans and grants at the college level. But we want to do more. And so we've put forward an initiative that is being debated in Congress -- and we hope to get passed this year -- where if you have student loans, that you will not have to pay more than 10 percent of your income on those loans; that after 20 years they'll be forgiven; and if you've gone into public service, they'll be forgiven after 10 years. That would provide a huge amount of relief for people.
We still need to expand more the Pell Grant program and make it both accessible to more people and raise the amount of tuition.
In order to pay for this -- the best part of this is we can actually figure out how to pay for it, because right now you've got a lot of banks and financial service companies who are still middlemen in the federally guaranteed loan programs. And if we can cut those middlemen out, then you've got several billion dollars that you can invest in the programs that I just described.
This is something that I've made a top priority. I want us to once again have the highest college graduation rates of any country in the world by 2020. We can get that done. But this is legislation that needs to pass.
And the last point I would make, colleges and universities also, though, have to figure out how can they cut their costs, because even if we're putting more and more loans in, more and more money for loans, if the inflation in higher education keeps on skyrocketing, over time it's still going to gobble up all that extra money and we'll be right back where we started. So we've got to show more restraint at the college and university level in terms of ever-escalating costs.
MR. GROVE: Well, let's back up a bit just from the specifics of education policy and ask a more fundamental question, which comes from Sean in Ohio.
Q "Mr. President, what do you want public education to help students become? Should they be good workers? Innovative thinkers? Something else? As a math teacher, I want to know what you think it means to be an educated person."
THE PRESIDENT: Well, I think obviously there's a huge economic component to being well educated. We know that if you've got a college education, you are going to make multiples of what you would make as a high school graduate, much less a high school dropout over the course of a lifetime. But it's absolutely true that a high-quality education is not just a matter of being a good worker; it's also a matter of being a good citizen, it's also a matter of being able to think critically, evaluate the world around you, make sure that you can process all the information that's coming at us in a way that helps you make decisions about your own life but also helps you participate in the life of the country.
And I'm a big believer that the most important thing that a kid can learn in school is how to learn and how to think. If Malia and Sasha, my two daughters, are asking questions, know how to poke holes in an argument, know how to make an argument themselves, know how to evaluate a complicated bunch of data, then I figure that they're going to be okay regardless of the career path that they're in. And I think that that requires more than just rote learning -- although it certainly requires good habits and discipline in school -- it also requires that in the classroom they're getting the kind of creative teaching that's so important.
And that's why our administration has initiated something called Race to the Top, where my Secretary of Education, Arne Duncan, has helped to design a competition among states so that they can foster the kinds of excellence in learning everywhere. Not just in some schools, not just in some states, but in every school in every state. If states want money, we're going to reward excellence, and we will show them what has been proven to work in terms of encouraging the kind of critical thinking that all of our children need.
MR. GROVE: Mr. President, the number two category after jobs and economy that people submitted to was national security and foreign policy. And the number one question came from concernedconservative in Georgia, who asked about your plans for the war on terror. And then Sean from Pennsylvania followed it up with: "Dear President Obama, if we remove our troops from the war on terror, how will you continue to combat the threat of terrorism?"
THE PRESIDENT: Well, first of all, I think it's important to understand that we are at war against a very specific group -- al Qaeda and its extremist allies that have metastasized around the globe, that would attack us, attack our allies, attack bases and embassies around the world, and most sadly, attack innocent people regardless of their backgrounds, regardless of their religions. Al Qaeda is probably the biggest killer of innocent Muslims of any entity out there.
And so that is our target and that is our focus. Now, they employ terrorist tactics, but we need to be clear about who our target is.
And we have to fight them on all fronts. We have to fight them in very concrete ways in Afghanistan and along the border regions of Pakistan where they are still holed up. They have spread to places like Yemen and Somalia, and we are working internationally with partners to try to limit their scope of operations and dismantle them in those regions.
But we also have to battle them with ideas. We have to help work with the overwhelming majority of Muslims who reject senseless violence of this sort, and to work to provide different pathways and different alternatives for people expressing whatever policy differences that they may have. And I think we haven't done as good of a job on that front.
We have to project economically, working in country like a Yemen, that is extraordinarily poor, to make sure that young people there have opportunity. The same is true in a place like Pakistan.
So we want to use all of our national power to deal with the problem of these extremist organizations. But part of that does involve applications of military power. And that's why, although it is the hardest decision that a Commander-in-Chief can make to send our troops into battle, I thought it was very important to make sure that we had an additional 30,000 troops in Afghanistan to help train Afghan forces so that they can start providing more effective security for their own country in dealing with the Taliban, and ultimately allow us to remove our troops but still have a secure partner there that's not going to be able to use that region as a platform to attack the United States.
MR. GROVE: Well, another central issue in the war on terror now is Guantanamo, and a lot of users wrote in about this. Oh, actually, you know what, I think we're going to -- well, how about I come later -- I think that question is actually about Sudan, which you didn't actually address in your State of the Union, but it was actually the number one voted question, and it's a video from the EnoughProject here in D.C.
Q "President Obama, more than 3 million Darfuris fear returning home because of instability. Many fear that Sudan may be on the brink of war. What will you do to galvanize the international community to ensure that widespread violence does not occur in Sudan this year?"
THE PRESIDENT: Well, the situation in Sudan has been heartbreaking but also extremely difficult, and something that we started working on the day that I came into office. Our first task was, at that time, making sure that people who were in refugee camps in Darfur had access to basic water, food, other necessities of life. And this was after the Sudanese government in Khartoum had kicked out a whole bunch of nongovernmental organizations that were providing assistance there. We were able to get that assistance back in to help at least initially stabilize the situation.
The next step in the challenge is to broker a lasting peace agreement between rebels who are still in the Darfur region and this government. And I've got a special envoy who has been very active in trying to bring together the international community to get that deal brokered.
Part of what makes it complicated is you also have a conflict historically between northern Sudan and southern Sudan. They finally reached a agreement after a lot of work. But the Sudanese now -- the southern Sudanese now have an option where they may be seeking to secede from all of Sudan. That's another potential conflict that could create additional millions of refugees.
And so what we are doing is try to work with not only the regional powers but the United Nations and other countries that have shown a great interest in this to see if we can broker a series of agreements that would stabilize the country, and then allow the refugees who are in Darfur to start moving back to their historic lands.
Sadly, because of the genocide that took place earlier, a lot of those villages are now destroyed. And so thinking about how to resettle these populations in places that are viable economically, that have the resources to support populations, is a long-term development challenge that the international community is going to have to support.
We continue to put pressure on the Sudanese government. If they are not cooperative in these efforts, then it is going to be appropriate for us to conclude that engagement doesn't work, and we're going to have to apply additional pressure on Sudan in order to achieve our objectives. But my hope is, is that we can broker agreements with all the parties involved to deal with what has been enormous human tragedy in that region.
MR. GROVE: The question we missed from the deck, but it was about Guantanamo, and essentially he was just saying why is it taking so long to close down Guantanamo?
THE PRESIDENT: Well, it's pretty straightforward. Number one, you've got a whole bunch of individuals in Guantanamo, some of whom are very dangerous, some of whom were low-level fighters, some of whom the courts have determined should never have been put there in the first place. We've had to evaluate each of those cases, hundreds of cases, one by one, to determine what these various categories are, and do it in a way that stands up to our standards of due process and legal scrutiny.
Then we've got to figure out, if we're closing Guantanamo, where are we going to put them? And we have proposed that there are a number of options on the continental United States where you could hold these people as trials either in military commissions or in Article 3 courts are pending. But unfortunately, there has been a lot of political resistance, and, frankly, some of it just politically motivated -- some of it people being legitimately scared about, well, if we've got somebody who we've been told is a terrorist in our backyard, will that make us a target?
One of the things that we've had to try to communicate to the country at large is that, historically, we've tried a lot of terrorists in our courts; we have them in our federal prisons; they've never escaped. And these folks are no different. But it's been one of those things that's been subject to a lot of, in some cases, pretty rank politics.
And we've got to work through that process because Congress ultimately controls the purse strings in creating new facilities. If Congress makes a decision that they are going to try to block the opening of a new facility, it potentially constrains what our administration can do. And so this is something that we've got to work through both in Congress but also with public opinion so that people understand that ultimately this is the right thing to do. By closing Guantanamo, we can regain the moral high ground in the battle against these terrorist organizations.
There's been no bigger propaganda weapon for many of these extremists than pointing to Guantanamo and saying that we don't live up to our own ideals. And that's something that I strongly believe we have to resist, even if it has some costs to it, and even if it's not always the most politically popular thing to do.
MR. GROVE: Mr. President, we don't have much time left, but I want to make sure we get to the issue of energy, the environment. One of the rare moments where you were able to get applause from your friends on the Republican side of the aisle in Congress the other night was when you mentioned nuclear energy. And just today your budget announced tripling the loan guarantees for nuclear reactors. A lot of people had questions about just how this would work and why you did that.
Q "President Obama, record numbers of young people elected you in support of a clean energy future. If money is tight, why do you propose wasting billions in expensive nuclear, dirty coal, and offshore drilling? We need to ramp up efficiency, wind and solar, that are all economically sustainable and create clean and safe jobs for our generation."
THE PRESIDENT: Well, you're not going to get any argument from me about the need to create clean energy jobs. I think this is going to be the driver of our economy over the long term. And that's why we put in record amounts of money for solar and wind and biodiesel and all the other alternative clean energy sources that are out there.
In the meantime, though, unfortunately, no matter how fast we ramp up those energy sources, we're still going to have enormous energy needs that will be unmet by alternative energy.
And the question then is, where will that come from?
Nuclear energy has the advantage of not emitting greenhouse gases. For those who are concerned about climate change, we have to recognize that countries like Japan and France and others have been much more aggressive in their nuclear industry and much more successful in having that a larger part of their portfolio, without incident, without accidents. We're mindful of the concerns about storage, of spent fuel, and concerns about security, but we still think it's the right thing to do if we're serious about dealing with climate change.
With respect to clean coal technology, it is not possible at this point to completely eliminate coal from the menu of our energy options. And if we are ever going to deal with climate change in a serious way, where we know China and India are going to be greatly reliant on coal, we've got to start developing clean coal technologies that can sequester the harmful emissions, because otherwise -- countries like China and India are not going to stop using coal -- we'll still have those same problems but we won't have the technology to make sure that it doesn't harm the environment over the long term.
So I know that there's some skepticism about whether there is such a thing as clean coal technology. What is true is right now that we don't have all the technology to prevent greenhouse gas emissions from coal-fired power plants, but the technology is close and it makes sense for us to make that investment now, not only because it will be good for America but it will also ultimately be good internationally. We can license and export that technology in ways that help other countries use a better form of energy that's going to be helpful to the climate change issue.
MR. GROVE: Mr. President, I think we're out of time, but I know a lot of people really enjoyed the opportunity to ask questions of you in this way, and we'd love to do this again with you some time.
THE PRESIDENT: You know, this was terrific. And I just want to thank everybody who submitted questions, whether via e-mail or over the Internet. And I hope we get a chance to do this on a more regular basis, because it gives me great access to all the people out there with wonderful ideas. And even if you didn't make your question, even if it wasn't on this show, we appreciate your submission, and hopefully we'll catch you next time.
MR. GROVE: Great. Thanks, Mr. President.
THE PRESIDENT: All right, thank you, appreciate it.
jueves, 28 de enero de 2010
PRESIDENTE OBAMA DE ESTADOS UNIDOS CONTRA CORRUPCION EN GUINEA
CONGRESO DE LOS ESTADOS UNIDOS 27 DE ENERO DE 2010
EL PRESIDENTE DE ESTADOS UNIDOS DE AMERICA , EN SU DISCURSO DIRIGIDO A LA NACION AMERICANA HABLO CONTRA LA CORRUPCION EN GUINEA, QUE LE QUITA OPORTUNIDADES DE TRABAJO A LOS GUINEANOS.
EL PRESIDENTE DE ESTADOS UNIDOS DE AMERICA , EN SU DISCURSO DIRIGIDO A LA NACION AMERICANA HABLO CONTRA LA CORRUPCION EN GUINEA, QUE LE QUITA OPORTUNIDADES DE TRABAJO A LOS GUINEANOS.
martes, 26 de enero de 2010
MARGARET THATCHER Y GALTIERI - GUERRA DE MALVINAS
MARGARET THATCHER Y GALTIERI:
DOS PERSONAJES Y TRES FRASES QUE CAMBIARON LA HISTORIA DE UN PAIS, Y DE UN CONTINENTE
DOS PERSONAJES Y TRES FRASES QUE CAMBIARON LA HISTORIA DE UN PAIS, Y DE UN CONTINENTE
lunes, 25 de enero de 2010
Margaret Thatcher Joint Press Conference with President Bush (Iraqi invasion of Kuwait)
The channel "eljuristapuntonet is grateful to the Margaret Thatcher Foundation, the video that is on its website
El canal "eljuristapuntonet" agradece a la Fundacion Margaret Thatcher, el video que está en su página de internet
1990 Aug 2 Th
Margaret Thatcher
Joint Press Conference with President Bush (Iraqi invasion of Kuwait)
President Bush
Let me first welcome Prime Minister Thatcher back to the United States. It is a very timely visit and as you can well imagine we have been exchanging views on the Iraq/Kuwait situation. Not surprisingly I find myself very much in accord with the views of the Prime Minister.
I reported to her on contacts that I have had since I left Washington, personal contacts with King Hussein , President Mubarak of Egypt, President Sallah of Yemen, a long conversation just now. I can tell you that Jim Baker has been in close touch with the Soviet leadership and indeed the last plan was for him to stop in Moscow on his way back here.
We are concerned about the situation but I find that Prime Minister Thatcher and I are looking at it on exactly the same wavelength: concern about this naked aggression, condemning it and hoping that a peaceful solution will be found that will result in the restoration of the Kuwaiti leaders to their rightful place and prior to that a withdrawal of Iraqi forces.
Prime Minister, welcome to Colorado and the United States and if you would care to say a word on that we can take the questions.[fo 1]
Prime Minister
Thank you, [ George Bush ] Mr President, and thank you for the welcome.
We have of course been discussing the main question, as the President indicated. Iraq has violated and taken over the territory of a country which is a full member of the United Nations. That is totally unacceptable and if it were allowed to endure then there would be many other small countries that could never feel safe.
The Security Council acted swiftly last night under United States leadership, well supported by the votes of fourteen members of the Security Council, and rightly demanded the withdrawal of Iraqi troops.
If that withdrawal is not swiftly forthcoming we have to consider the next step. The next step would be further consideration by the Security Council of possible measures under Chapter 7.
The fundamental question is this: whether the nations of the world have the collective will effectively to see that Security Council Resolution is upheld, whether they have the collective will effectively to do anything which the Security Council further agrees to see that Iraq withdraws and that the government of Kuwait is restored to Kuwait.
None of us can do it separately, we need a collective and effective will of the nations belonging to the United Nations, first the Security Council and then the support of all the others to make it effective.[fo 2]
Question
Mr President, when Kuwaiti shipping was in danger in the Gulf war you put those ships under American flag. Now Kuwait itself has been invaded the Kuwaiti Ambassador says that they are desperate for help and that American intervention is of paramount importance. Will you answer that call and how will you?
President Bush
I answer that we are considering what the next steps by the United States should be, just as we strongly support what Prime Minister said about collective action in the United Nations.
Question
Are you still not contemplating military intervention?
President Bush
No, I mentioned at the time we were going to discuss different options which I did after that first press conference this morning and we are not ruling any options in but we are not ruling any options out. And so that is about where we are right now. We had thorough briefings, you know who was at the meeting today, by General Powell , General Schwarzkopf and others. But I think it would be inappropriate to discuss options.
Question
What are the chances of US/Soviet cooperation in restoring peace to the Gulf?[fo 3]
President Bush
I would say they are very good, I reported to Prime Minister Thatcher on a conversation that I had with Jim Baker on the plane flying out here and I think you could say that he would not be stopping in Moscow unless there would be a good degree of cooperation between the Soviet Union and the United States. But again, the Soviet Union is a member of the United Nations, they voted with the United Kingdom and with the United States, and so I think there is a good level of cooperation with the Soviets and hopefully with other Permanent Members and hopefully with the rest of the members of the Security Council.
Question
We understand that the Soviets have announced that they are cutting off arms shipments to the Iraqis. Are the French, which is the other big arms supplier to Baghdad, also planning to cut off arms shipments?
President Bush
I have not talked today. I believe you had contact, Prime Minister, at some level with the French government but I cannot answer that question.
Prime Minister
We had contact, Douglas Hurd I believe, had contact with Mr Dumas , this was about the Security Council Resolution which France of course fully supported.[fo 4]
Question
Is not Saddam Hussein at the root of this problem, has he not replaced Gaddafi as the bad boy of the region, would you like to see him removed and what can you do about it?
President Bush
I would like to see him withdraw his troops and the restoration of the legal government in Kuwait to their rightful place and that is the step that should be taken. I might say that I am somewhat heartened by the conversations I had with Mubarak and with King Hussein , Mr Sallah , all of whom I consider friends of the United States, and all of them who are trying to engage in what they call an Arab answer to the question, working diligently behind the scenes to come to an agreement that would satisfy the United Nations and the rest of the world. So there are collective efforts beginning to be undertaken by these worthy countries and let us hope that they result in a satisfactory resolution of this international crisis.
Question
But Saddam Hussein has been the source of the most recent mischief in the region, nuclear triggers, missiles, the big gun, as Prime Minister Thatcher knows about, is he going to be a constant source of problems in that region?
President Bush
Should he behave in this way he is going to be a constant source. We find his behaviour intolerable in this instance and so do the rest of the United Nations countries that met last night and[fo 5] reaction around the world is unanimous in being condemnatory so that speaks for itself.
Question
Prime Minister, is there any action short of military intervention that Britain or the other United Nations states could take that would be effective against Iraq?
Prime Minister
Yes of course, yes of course there is. You know the whole Chapter 7 measures and that of course obviously we are in consultation now as to which measures we could all agree on so that the Security Council would vote them and then they would become mandatory. The question then is whether you can make them effective over the rest of the nations and obviously the fourteen could not do it on their own and so there will be a good deal of negotiation as to what to put in for the next Security Council Resolution if Iraq does not withdraw.
Question
But are you confident that you would be able to mobilise that kind of international support?
Prime Minister
I believe that further Chapter 7 measures would have a good chance of getting through, we certainly would support them.
President Bush
May I add to that the United States has demonstrated its[fo 6] interest in that by the action that I took this morning by Executive Order, you know cutting off imports from Iraq to this country.
Question
Can I ask both of you to answer this, how does the fact that they apparently now have chemical weapons affect your decision-making and narrow your options?
Prime Minister
I do not think it affects it at all. What has happened is a total violation of international law. You cannot have a situation where one country marches in and takes over another country which is a member of the United Nations. I do not think the particular weapons they have affects that fundamental position.
Question
But does it not affect what action we can take?
Prime Minister
No, I do not think it necessarily affects what actions we can take.
President Bush
I would agree with that assessment.
Question
Mr President, what do the Arab leaders that you talked to ask the United States to do, did they ask you to restrain yourself or to become militarily involved and have you contacted Israel?[fo 7]
President Bush
We have had contact with Israel, yes, I have not personally but we have. And they ask for restraint, they ask for a short period of time in which to have this Arab solution evolve and be placed into effect and they are concerned obviously with this naked aggression. But it was more along that line—let us try now as neighbours and Arabs to resolve this. And I made clear to them that it had gone beyond simply a regional dispute because of the naked aggression that violates the United Nations Charter.
Question
And what did Israel say it would do at this point?
President Bush
I would have to think back to the details of it but offering cooperation I think was about where I would leave it.
Question
We are hearing reports now that some of the Americans, particularly in the oil-fields, may have been rounded up by Iraqi troops, do you have anything to add to that, how does that affect your reaction?
President Bush
I do not have anything on that right now and secondly it would affect the United States in a very dramatic way because I view a fundamental responsibility of my Presidency as protecting American citizens and if they are threatened or harmed or put into harms way,[fo 8] I have certain responsibilities. But I had not heard that, Charles , and I hope that is not correct.
Question
May I also ask about British citizens, any word, are they safe?
Prime Minister
We have some British citizens in Kuwait. You probably know that there was a British Airways flight there on its way to Africa and the passengers there are now in a hotel in Kuwait. So we have some there and of course we have a number of other British citizens in Kuwait and we too are concerned for their safety.
Question
Mr President, some of the smaller nations in the Persian Gulf, Bahrain, the Emirates and the others, obviously have reason to worry about what has happened here, what can the United States and Great Britain say to those countries and those people who are feeling very concerned today?
President Bush
The United States can say that we are very much concerned for your safety and this naked aggression would understandably shake them to the core. And so what we are trying to do is have collective action that will reverse this action out and to make very clear that we are totally in accord with their desire to see the Iraqis withdraw, ceasefire, withdraw and restitution of the Kuwaiti government. And that would be the most reassuring thing of all for[fo 9] these countries who, whether it is true or not, feel threatened by this action.
Question
At the risk of being hypothetical, if Iraq does not move out quickly and has gained a foothold among the smaller Gulf nations, what can the United States and other nations do militarily?
President Bush
We have many options and it is too hypothetical indeed for me to comment on them and I refer that also to the Prime Minister.
Prime Minister
That is precisely why you are looking at the next stage in the Security Council and what other measures can be put into action mandatorily and why the very nations to whom you refer, we should also need their cooperation in putting other actions into effect.
Question
Mr President, have you despatched the USS Independent to the region and have you heard from Saudi Arabia?
President Bush
I would not discuss the movement of any US forces and no I have not yet heard from Saudi Arabia but I have a call to King Fahd and I was supposed to have taken that call before now but it has been delayed by a few minutes and so I hope before I leave here I will talk to him, I think it is very important I do talk to him, and I leave it there.[fo 10]
Question
What do you expect him to say?
President Bush
That is too hypothetical too, I know he will be expressing the same kind of concern that we feel.
Question
Prime Minister, the President and the Executive ordered this morning, established a US embargo on trade with Iraq. When you mention Chapter 7 measures would you support in the Security Council the call for an international embargo on Iraqi oil?
Prime Minister
We are prepared to support in the Security Council those measures which collectively we can agree to and which collectively we can make effective—those are the two tests. We have already frozen all Kuwaiti assets, the Kuwaitis have very considerable assets and it is important that those do not fall into Iraqi hands. Iraq, we believe, has only very small assets and rather a lot of debts so the position is rather different with her.
El canal "eljuristapuntonet" agradece a la Fundacion Margaret Thatcher, el video que está en su página de internet
1990 Aug 2 Th
Margaret Thatcher
Joint Press Conference with President Bush (Iraqi invasion of Kuwait)
President Bush
Let me first welcome Prime Minister Thatcher back to the United States. It is a very timely visit and as you can well imagine we have been exchanging views on the Iraq/Kuwait situation. Not surprisingly I find myself very much in accord with the views of the Prime Minister.
I reported to her on contacts that I have had since I left Washington, personal contacts with King Hussein , President Mubarak of Egypt, President Sallah of Yemen, a long conversation just now. I can tell you that Jim Baker has been in close touch with the Soviet leadership and indeed the last plan was for him to stop in Moscow on his way back here.
We are concerned about the situation but I find that Prime Minister Thatcher and I are looking at it on exactly the same wavelength: concern about this naked aggression, condemning it and hoping that a peaceful solution will be found that will result in the restoration of the Kuwaiti leaders to their rightful place and prior to that a withdrawal of Iraqi forces.
Prime Minister, welcome to Colorado and the United States and if you would care to say a word on that we can take the questions.[fo 1]
Prime Minister
Thank you, [ George Bush ] Mr President, and thank you for the welcome.
We have of course been discussing the main question, as the President indicated. Iraq has violated and taken over the territory of a country which is a full member of the United Nations. That is totally unacceptable and if it were allowed to endure then there would be many other small countries that could never feel safe.
The Security Council acted swiftly last night under United States leadership, well supported by the votes of fourteen members of the Security Council, and rightly demanded the withdrawal of Iraqi troops.
If that withdrawal is not swiftly forthcoming we have to consider the next step. The next step would be further consideration by the Security Council of possible measures under Chapter 7.
The fundamental question is this: whether the nations of the world have the collective will effectively to see that Security Council Resolution is upheld, whether they have the collective will effectively to do anything which the Security Council further agrees to see that Iraq withdraws and that the government of Kuwait is restored to Kuwait.
None of us can do it separately, we need a collective and effective will of the nations belonging to the United Nations, first the Security Council and then the support of all the others to make it effective.[fo 2]
Question
Mr President, when Kuwaiti shipping was in danger in the Gulf war you put those ships under American flag. Now Kuwait itself has been invaded the Kuwaiti Ambassador says that they are desperate for help and that American intervention is of paramount importance. Will you answer that call and how will you?
President Bush
I answer that we are considering what the next steps by the United States should be, just as we strongly support what Prime Minister said about collective action in the United Nations.
Question
Are you still not contemplating military intervention?
President Bush
No, I mentioned at the time we were going to discuss different options which I did after that first press conference this morning and we are not ruling any options in but we are not ruling any options out. And so that is about where we are right now. We had thorough briefings, you know who was at the meeting today, by General Powell , General Schwarzkopf and others. But I think it would be inappropriate to discuss options.
Question
What are the chances of US/Soviet cooperation in restoring peace to the Gulf?[fo 3]
President Bush
I would say they are very good, I reported to Prime Minister Thatcher on a conversation that I had with Jim Baker on the plane flying out here and I think you could say that he would not be stopping in Moscow unless there would be a good degree of cooperation between the Soviet Union and the United States. But again, the Soviet Union is a member of the United Nations, they voted with the United Kingdom and with the United States, and so I think there is a good level of cooperation with the Soviets and hopefully with other Permanent Members and hopefully with the rest of the members of the Security Council.
Question
We understand that the Soviets have announced that they are cutting off arms shipments to the Iraqis. Are the French, which is the other big arms supplier to Baghdad, also planning to cut off arms shipments?
President Bush
I have not talked today. I believe you had contact, Prime Minister, at some level with the French government but I cannot answer that question.
Prime Minister
We had contact, Douglas Hurd I believe, had contact with Mr Dumas , this was about the Security Council Resolution which France of course fully supported.[fo 4]
Question
Is not Saddam Hussein at the root of this problem, has he not replaced Gaddafi as the bad boy of the region, would you like to see him removed and what can you do about it?
President Bush
I would like to see him withdraw his troops and the restoration of the legal government in Kuwait to their rightful place and that is the step that should be taken. I might say that I am somewhat heartened by the conversations I had with Mubarak and with King Hussein , Mr Sallah , all of whom I consider friends of the United States, and all of them who are trying to engage in what they call an Arab answer to the question, working diligently behind the scenes to come to an agreement that would satisfy the United Nations and the rest of the world. So there are collective efforts beginning to be undertaken by these worthy countries and let us hope that they result in a satisfactory resolution of this international crisis.
Question
But Saddam Hussein has been the source of the most recent mischief in the region, nuclear triggers, missiles, the big gun, as Prime Minister Thatcher knows about, is he going to be a constant source of problems in that region?
President Bush
Should he behave in this way he is going to be a constant source. We find his behaviour intolerable in this instance and so do the rest of the United Nations countries that met last night and[fo 5] reaction around the world is unanimous in being condemnatory so that speaks for itself.
Question
Prime Minister, is there any action short of military intervention that Britain or the other United Nations states could take that would be effective against Iraq?
Prime Minister
Yes of course, yes of course there is. You know the whole Chapter 7 measures and that of course obviously we are in consultation now as to which measures we could all agree on so that the Security Council would vote them and then they would become mandatory. The question then is whether you can make them effective over the rest of the nations and obviously the fourteen could not do it on their own and so there will be a good deal of negotiation as to what to put in for the next Security Council Resolution if Iraq does not withdraw.
Question
But are you confident that you would be able to mobilise that kind of international support?
Prime Minister
I believe that further Chapter 7 measures would have a good chance of getting through, we certainly would support them.
President Bush
May I add to that the United States has demonstrated its[fo 6] interest in that by the action that I took this morning by Executive Order, you know cutting off imports from Iraq to this country.
Question
Can I ask both of you to answer this, how does the fact that they apparently now have chemical weapons affect your decision-making and narrow your options?
Prime Minister
I do not think it affects it at all. What has happened is a total violation of international law. You cannot have a situation where one country marches in and takes over another country which is a member of the United Nations. I do not think the particular weapons they have affects that fundamental position.
Question
But does it not affect what action we can take?
Prime Minister
No, I do not think it necessarily affects what actions we can take.
President Bush
I would agree with that assessment.
Question
Mr President, what do the Arab leaders that you talked to ask the United States to do, did they ask you to restrain yourself or to become militarily involved and have you contacted Israel?[fo 7]
President Bush
We have had contact with Israel, yes, I have not personally but we have. And they ask for restraint, they ask for a short period of time in which to have this Arab solution evolve and be placed into effect and they are concerned obviously with this naked aggression. But it was more along that line—let us try now as neighbours and Arabs to resolve this. And I made clear to them that it had gone beyond simply a regional dispute because of the naked aggression that violates the United Nations Charter.
Question
And what did Israel say it would do at this point?
President Bush
I would have to think back to the details of it but offering cooperation I think was about where I would leave it.
Question
We are hearing reports now that some of the Americans, particularly in the oil-fields, may have been rounded up by Iraqi troops, do you have anything to add to that, how does that affect your reaction?
President Bush
I do not have anything on that right now and secondly it would affect the United States in a very dramatic way because I view a fundamental responsibility of my Presidency as protecting American citizens and if they are threatened or harmed or put into harms way,[fo 8] I have certain responsibilities. But I had not heard that, Charles , and I hope that is not correct.
Question
May I also ask about British citizens, any word, are they safe?
Prime Minister
We have some British citizens in Kuwait. You probably know that there was a British Airways flight there on its way to Africa and the passengers there are now in a hotel in Kuwait. So we have some there and of course we have a number of other British citizens in Kuwait and we too are concerned for their safety.
Question
Mr President, some of the smaller nations in the Persian Gulf, Bahrain, the Emirates and the others, obviously have reason to worry about what has happened here, what can the United States and Great Britain say to those countries and those people who are feeling very concerned today?
President Bush
The United States can say that we are very much concerned for your safety and this naked aggression would understandably shake them to the core. And so what we are trying to do is have collective action that will reverse this action out and to make very clear that we are totally in accord with their desire to see the Iraqis withdraw, ceasefire, withdraw and restitution of the Kuwaiti government. And that would be the most reassuring thing of all for[fo 9] these countries who, whether it is true or not, feel threatened by this action.
Question
At the risk of being hypothetical, if Iraq does not move out quickly and has gained a foothold among the smaller Gulf nations, what can the United States and other nations do militarily?
President Bush
We have many options and it is too hypothetical indeed for me to comment on them and I refer that also to the Prime Minister.
Prime Minister
That is precisely why you are looking at the next stage in the Security Council and what other measures can be put into action mandatorily and why the very nations to whom you refer, we should also need their cooperation in putting other actions into effect.
Question
Mr President, have you despatched the USS Independent to the region and have you heard from Saudi Arabia?
President Bush
I would not discuss the movement of any US forces and no I have not yet heard from Saudi Arabia but I have a call to King Fahd and I was supposed to have taken that call before now but it has been delayed by a few minutes and so I hope before I leave here I will talk to him, I think it is very important I do talk to him, and I leave it there.[fo 10]
Question
What do you expect him to say?
President Bush
That is too hypothetical too, I know he will be expressing the same kind of concern that we feel.
Question
Prime Minister, the President and the Executive ordered this morning, established a US embargo on trade with Iraq. When you mention Chapter 7 measures would you support in the Security Council the call for an international embargo on Iraqi oil?
Prime Minister
We are prepared to support in the Security Council those measures which collectively we can agree to and which collectively we can make effective—those are the two tests. We have already frozen all Kuwaiti assets, the Kuwaitis have very considerable assets and it is important that those do not fall into Iraqi hands. Iraq, we believe, has only very small assets and rather a lot of debts so the position is rather different with her.
domingo, 24 de enero de 2010
PARTIT UNIÓ, PROGRÉS I DEMOCRÀCIA, MANIFESTA EN FAVOR DE eleccions lliures i democràtiques JUNTAMENT AMB EL GOVERN DE GUINEA EQUATORIAL A L'EXILI
TODO EL TEXTO DEL VIDEO EN CATALAN
El proper diumenge (29 Novembre 2009), es van a celebrar unes eleccions en Guinea Equatorial que no van a ser unes eleccions lliures perquè els falta l'element
essencial que té qualsevol decisió democràtica, que és l'existència d'alternatives
polítiques diferents del règim establert políticam
Només hi haurà un partit que realment podrà guanyar les eleccions,
que serà el partit del dictador Obiang, i això vicia de partida aquestes eleccions.
UNIÓ PROGRÉS I DEMOCRÀCIA ha participat juntament amb l'oposició Guineana a l'exili, aquí a Madrid, en una concentració que hem celebrat aquest matí
de dimecres, per denunciar aquest fet, per exigir eleccions democràtiques a Guinea,
i per demanar i exigir a les autoritats espanyoles i al Ministeri d'Afers Exteriors Espanyol, que prengui postura en favor de la democràcia, i en contra del dictador Obiang.
Aquest és el motiu de la nostra presència aquest matí, d'uns militants,
i una representació d'Unió Progrés i Democràcia, a la concentració que ha
celebrat l'Oposició Guineana a l'exili a Madrid
El proper diumenge (29 Novembre 2009), es van a celebrar unes eleccions en Guinea Equatorial que no van a ser unes eleccions lliures perquè els falta l'element
essencial que té qualsevol decisió democràtica, que és l'existència d'alternatives
polítiques diferents del règim establert políticam
Només hi haurà un partit que realment podrà guanyar les eleccions,
que serà el partit del dictador Obiang, i això vicia de partida aquestes eleccions.
UNIÓ PROGRÉS I DEMOCRÀCIA ha participat juntament amb l'oposició Guineana a l'exili, aquí a Madrid, en una concentració que hem celebrat aquest matí
de dimecres, per denunciar aquest fet, per exigir eleccions democràtiques a Guinea,
i per demanar i exigir a les autoritats espanyoles i al Ministeri d'Afers Exteriors Espanyol, que prengui postura en favor de la democràcia, i en contra del dictador Obiang.
Aquest és el motiu de la nostra presència aquest matí, d'uns militants,
i una representació d'Unió Progrés i Democràcia, a la concentració que ha
celebrat l'Oposició Guineana a l'exili a Madrid
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