A compilation of information and links regarding assorted subjects: politics, religion, science, computers, health, movies, music... essentially whatever I'm reading about, working on or experiencing in life.
The Obama administration, the mainstream media and Democrats more generally vastly underestimate the potency of the photos and videos showing our Navy sailors on their knees with hands behind their heads as they are taken into custody by the Iranians. It is the perfect embodiment of what many Americans see as the humiliation suffered by the United States under this president as our adversities defy us and take advantage at every turn. To then have the utterly tone-deaf Secretary of State John Kerry insist that we did not apologize, but then publicly thank Iran, is even worse. And to top it off, we have film of our sailors held captive, compelled to apologize. The sole female sailor apparently was compelled to don a head covering.
This, according to President Obama and Hillary Clinton, is what a successful Iran policy looks like. No wonder Donald Trump, who speaks to the rage Americans feel about our declining respect in the world, is striking a chord.
[...]
The White House won’t dream of making a fuss, not when it so desperately wants to lift sanctions on Iran and push forward on the Iran nuclear deal, the very deal that has emboldened Iran to engage in stunts like this one. Oh, the administration is going to be “looking into the videos and would respond if the U.S. determined that the sailors were treated inappropriately.” Don’t hold your breath.
This is a propaganda bonanza for Tehran, one that it will exploit to the hilt to make clear to its allies and those it seeks to intimidate that the United States is weak, unreliable and useless. It furthers their ambitions in the region and demoralizes those resisting Iranian aggression. For countries and individuals on the fence (e.g. the Sunni tribes), the message is clear: You really want to stick your neck out for the Americans?
Bizarrely, Kerry thinks this shows how terrific our new relationship with Iran is because, you know, we got our people back. By continuing to act in effect as a PR flack for Tehran, Kerry invites further aggression and endangers our own troops and those of our allies. Be prepared to see Iran’s conduct become infinitely more audacious once it has pocketed more than $100 billion in sanctions relief. [...]
Read the whole thing for links and more. And get used to it. It's the Democrats Foreign Policy, and it's not going to change anytime soon.
...and therefore probably worth doing. And with Russia involving itself so directly in the Syrian conflict, it would be difficult to try to achieve anything there without talking to them.
An Obama administration debate about whether to engage Vladimir Putin or treat him like a pariah has tilted in the engagement camp’s favor—even as critics and some officials worry that it’s become too easy for the Russian president to get a stature-enhancing meeting with U.S. leaders.
When Secretary of State John Kerry heads to Moscow on Tuesday for a planned sit-down with Putin, it will be his second visit to see the Russian leader since May. It also follows three face-to-face encounters between Putin and President Barack Obama since late September. Some critics of engagement fear that Putin has, in effect, used his military intervention in Syria to win a seat at the diplomatic table, while others doubt that the increased dialogue is achieving anything.
“The skeptics are still skeptical,” said Evelyn Farkas, who departed as the Pentagon’s top official for Russia and Ukraine this fall and pushed for a generally harder line on Moscow than the White House has adopted. “You don't have any results yet for the engagement people.”
For now, sources say, Obama and Kerry in particular believe the costs of interacting with Putin are relatively low and that discussion—whose tone a senior administration official described as “not warm but not hostile,” and “businesslike”—is more likely than a freeze-out to yield progress on disputes over a peace deal for Syria and Russian aggression in Ukraine. [...]
Will anything good come of it? Who knows. Something may come of it, or it may all come to nothing. Time will tell.
[...] In May 2015, a group of global leaders known as the Elders visited Moscow, where we had detailed discussions with the American ambassador, former President Mikhail S. Gorbachev, former Prime Minister Yevgeny M. Primakov, Foreign Minister Sergey V. Lavrov and representatives of international think tanks, including the Moscow branch of the Carnegie Center.
They pointed out the longstanding partnership between Russia and the Assad regime and the great threat of the Islamic State to Russia, where an estimated 14 percent of its population are Sunni Muslims. Later, I questioned President Putin about his support for Mr. Assad, and about his two sessions that year with representatives of factions from Syria. He replied that little progress had been made, and he thought that the only real chance of ending the conflict was for the United States and Russia to be joined by Iran, Turkey and Saudi Arabia in preparing a comprehensive peace proposal. He believed that all factions in Syria, except the Islamic State, would accept almost any plan endorsed strongly by these five, with Iran and Russia supporting Mr. Assad and the other three backing the opposition. With his approval, I relayed this suggestion to Washington.
For the past three years, the Carter Center has been working with Syrians across political divides, armed opposition group leaders and diplomats from the United Nations and Europe to find a political path for ending the conflict. This effort has been based on data-driven research about the Syrian catastrophe that the center has conducted, which reveals the location of different factions and clearly shows that neither side in Syria can prevail militarily.
The recent decision by Russia to support the Assad regime with airstrikes and other military forces has intensified the fighting, raised the level of armaments and may increase the flow of refugees to neighboring countries and Europe. At the same time, it has helped to clarify the choice between a political process in which the Assad regime assumes a role and more war in which the Islamic State becomes an even greater threat to world peace. With these clear alternatives, the five nations mentioned above could formulate a unanimous proposal. Unfortunately, differences among them persist.
[...]
The involvement of Russia and Iran is essential. Mr. Assad’s only concession in four years of war was giving up chemical weapons, and he did so only under pressure from Russia and Iran. Similarly, he will not end the war by accepting concessions imposed by the West, but is likely to do so if urged by his allies.
Mr. Assad’s governing authority could then be ended in an orderly process, an acceptable government established in Syria, and a concerted effort could then be made to stamp out the threat of the Islamic State. [...]
I'm not a Jimmy Carter fan. But if you read the whole thing, for the full context, it actually makes sense. Even a broken clock is right twice a day. Carter may be right about this. It should be seriously considered.
[...] And yet, it is hard to escape the impression that Putin has been playing his weak hand better than Obama has played his strong one. These perceptions arise in part because Obama inherited several foreign-policy debacles, and it’s hard to abandon a bunch of failed projects without being accused of retreating. Obama’s main mistake was not going far enough to liquidate the unsound positions bequeathed by his predecessor: He should have gotten out of Afghanistan faster and never done regime change in Libya at all. By contrast, Putin looks successful at first glance because Russia is playing a more active role than it did back when it was largely prostrate. Given where Russia was in 1995 or even 2000, there was nowhere to go but up.
But Putin has also done one thing right: He has pursued simple objectives that were fairly easy to achieve and that played to Russia’s modest strengths. In Ukraine, he had one overriding goal: to prevent that country from moving closer to the EU, eventually becoming a full member, and then joining NATO. He wasn’t interested in trying to reincorporate all of Ukraine or turn it into a clone of Russia, and the “frozen conflict” that now exists there is sufficient to achieve his core goal. This essentially negative objective was not that hard to accomplish because Ukraine was corrupt, internally divided, and right next door to Russia. These features made it easy for Putin to use a modest degree of force and hard for anyone else to respond without starting a cycle of escalation they could not win.
Putin’s goals in Syria are equally simple, realistic, and aligned with Russia’s limited means. He wants to preserve the Assad regime as a meaningful political entity so that it remains an avenue of Russian influence and a part of any future political settlement. He’s not trying to conquer Syria, restore the Alawites to full control over the entire country, defeat the Islamic State, or eliminate all Iranian influence. And he’s certainly not pursuing some sort of quixotic dream of building democracy there. A limited deployment of Russian airpower and a handful of “volunteers” may suffice to keep Assad from being defeated, especially if the United States and others eventually adopt a more realistic approach to the conflict as well.
By contrast, U.S. goals toward both of these conflicts have been a combination of wishful thinking and strategic contradictions. In Ukraine, a familiar alliance of neocon fantasists (e.g., Assistant Secretary of State Victoria Nuland) and liberal internationalists convinced themselves that the EU Accession Agreement was a purely benign act whose virtues and alleged neutrality no one could possibly misconstrue. As a result, they were completely blindsided when Moscow kept using the realpolitik playbook and saw the whole matter very differently. (There was an element of hypocrisy and blindness here, too; Russia was simply acting the same way the United States has long acted when dealing with the Western Hemisphere, but somehow U.S. officials managed to ignore the clear warnings that Moscow had given.) Moreover, the core Western objective — creating a well-functioning democratic Ukrainian state — was a laudable but hugely demanding task from the very beginning, whereas Putin’s far more limited goal — keeping Ukraine out of NATO — was comparatively easy.
Needless to say, U.S. policy in Syria has been even more muddled. Since the uprising first began, Washington has been vainly trying to achieve a series of difficult and incompatible goals. It says, “Assad must go,” but it doesn’t want any jihadi groups (i.e., the only people who are really fighting Assad) to replace him. It wants to “degrade and destroy ISIS,” but it also wants to make sure anti-Islamic State groups like al-Nusra Front don’t succeed. It is relying on Kurdish fighters to help deal with the Islamic State, but it wants Turkey to help, too, and Turkey opposes any steps that might stoke the fires of Kurdish nationalism. So the United States has been searching in vain for “politically correct” Syrian rebels — those ever-elusive “moderates” — and it has yet to find more than a handful. And apart from wanting Assad gone, the long-term U.S. vision for Syria’s future was never clear. Given all this muddled direction, is it any wonder Putin’s actions look bold and decisive while Obama’s seem confused?
This difference is partly structural: Because Russia is much weaker than the United States (and destined to grow even weaker over time), it has to play its remaining cards carefully and pursue only vital objectives that are achievable at modest cost. The United States has vastly more resources to throw at global problems, and its favorable geopolitical position allows it to avoid most of the repercussions of its mistakes. Add to that the tendency of both neoconservatives and liberal internationalists to believe that spreading the gospel of “freedom” around the world is necessary, easy to do, and won’t generate unintended consequences or serious resistance, and you have a recipe for an overly ambitious yet under-resourced set of policy initiatives. Needless to say, this is the perfect recipe for recurring failure. [...]
Having a strong hand is not perhaps as important as playing well the hand you have. *
[...] It is now several weeks since Russia let it be known that it would reinforce its long-standing support of Bashar al-Assad with new military commitments. First came the materiél. Bombing runs began a week ago. On Monday, a senior military official in Moscow announced that Russian troops are to join the fight against the Islamic State.
We are always encouraged to find anything Putin does devious and the outcome of hidden motives and some obscure agenda having to do with his pouting ambition to be seen as a first-rank world leader. From the government-supervised New York Times on down, this is what you read in the newspapers and hear on the radio and television broadcasts. I urge readers to pay no attention to this stuff. It is all about Washington’s agenda to obscure.
Russia’s favored strategy in Syria has long been very clear. It is a question of distinguishing the primary and secondary contradictions, as the Marxists say. The Assad regime is to be kept in place so as to preserve those political institutions still functioning as the basis of a reconstructed national government. Once the threat of Islamic terror is defeated, a political transition into a post-Assad reconstruction can be negotiated.
For a time it appeared that Washington was prepared to buy into this set of expedients. This impression derived from the very frequent contacts between John Kerry and Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov, with whom the American secretary of state has often worked closely.
Then came the fateful encounter between Obama and Putin at the U.N. Obama spoke first, Putin afterward. Then the two met privately.
A few days ago a source in Moscow with good lines into Kremlin thinking wrote a long note on the Obama-Putin encounter in New York. Here is some of what this source said:
The meeting with Obama in New York did not go well. It was extremely contentious, and Obama did not engage. Putin made the case that the important first priority had to be to eliminate Daesh [the Islamic State], and that after more than a year of the U.S. campaign there has been no significant success. Indeed, the contrary is the case.
Putin’s point was that air power alone will not succeed, and that now the only real boots on the ground are the Kurds and the armies of Syria and its supporters—Hezbollah and some Iranians, but the Iranians troops involved in the struggle with Daesh are operating mostly in Iraq.
Putin proposed creating a coalition, the equivalent of the anti-Hitler alliance, to focus on Daesh, and then focusing in Round 2 on the transition of Syria into a form of decentralized federation of highly autonomous regions—Kurdish, Sunni, Alawite-Christian and a few others—which all work together now.
Putin had been led to believe through the Lavrov /Kerry channel… that there would be a broader agreement to work together. So he was surprised that Obama did not seize the opportunity to engage the battle in a coordinated way…. In the end they agreed only on coordination between the two militaries to avoid running into each other.
Putin left New York with the view that it is now much more important to support the government in Syria than he had thought before he went, because he came convinced that the U.S., left to its present course, is going to create another Libya, this time in Syria. Israel has a similar view, as does Egypt, Iran, and, increasingly, countries in Europe. With Daesh already so deeply implanted, this would lead to vast crisis—military, political, economic, humanitarian—that would spread across all of the Middle East, into the Caucasus and across North Africa, with millions of refugees….
There are four things to say about this account straight off the top. One, the subtext is that Putin reached the point in New York when he effectively threw up his hands and said, “I’m fed up.” Two, Obama went into that meeting more or less befuddled as to what to say. In a word, he was outclassed.
Three, the strategy Putin presented to Obama is clear, logical, lawful and has a good chance of working. In other words, it is everything the Obama administration’s is not, Kerry’s efforts to work with Lavrov notwithstanding.
Four and most important, the history books may well conclude that the U.N. on Sept. 27 was the very place and the very day the U.S. ceded the initiative to Russia on the Syria crisis. This is my read as of now, although in circumstances this kinetic it is too perilous to anticipate what may come next.
The American press has been slightly berserk subsequent to the U.N. encounter, putting more spin on the new Russian policy than a gyroscope has in space. Putin is weak and desperate, he is making Syria more violent, Russian jets are bombing CIA-backed “moderates” and not ISIS, this is Russia’s second Afghanistan, nothing can work so long as Assad remains in power.
“Putin stupidly went into Syria looking for a cheap sugar high to show his people that Russia is still a world power,” Tom Friedman, a standout in this line, wrote in the Times last week. “Watch him become public enemy No. 1 in the Sunni Muslim world. ‘Yo, Vladimir, how’s that working for you?’”
I read all this with a mirror: It is nothing more than a reflection of how far below its knees the Obama administration’s pants have just fallen. Who went stupidly into Syria, Tom? Yo, Tom, your lump-them-together prejudices are showing: Most of “the Sunni Muslim world” is as appalled by the Islamic State as the non-Sunni Muslim world.
*
What a weird sensation it is to agree with Charles Krauthammer, one of the Washington’s Post’s too-numerous right-wing opinion-page writers. It is like traveling in a strange, badly run country where something always seems about to go wrong.
“If it had the wit, the Obama administration would be not angered, but appropriately humiliated,” Krauthammer wrote in last Thursday’s paper. “President Obama has, once again, been totally outmaneuvered by Vladimir Putin.”
It is a lot better than Tom Friedman’s driveling defense of the president. Somewhere, at least, a spade is still a spade. But with this observation the common ground with Krauthammer begins and ends. Obama has got it radically wrong in Syria—and indeed across the Middle East—but not in the ways we are encouraged to think. Where lie the errors, then? [...]
The author of the article has a great deal more to say. He clearly isn't on the side of American Foreign Policy regarding Syria (or much else). But many of the questions posited are worth asking. What are we doing in Syria?
IF indeed the above plan was proposed to Obama by Putin, I have to say, it makes more sense to me than supporting small Sunni groups against Assad. The sooner the war there ends, the better. If then Syria transitions "into a form of decentralized federation of highly autonomous regions", that might well stem the flow of refugees, and stabilize the region.
It sounds like a plan. Have we anything better to offer? I'm just askin'.
It sounds more realistic and plausible than what's being said by our Bagdad Bob President. The only thing I can say in defense of Obama is, I wasn't at the meeting with Putin, and I don't know what was said. But if it was as described as above, I would have to wonder if it indeed was a missed opportunity.
Maybe. We have goals in common on that and other issues, and despite harsh anti-American rhetoric from the Iranian Government, the people of that country are often well disposed toward Americans:
Since the Iranian revolution and hostage crisis of 1979, Iran has had antagonistic relations with the U.S. and other Western nations, with little official communication between heads of state, fierce rhetoric on opposing sides, and increasing sanctions.
Given this history, it's not surprising that many Westerners fail to appreciate ways in which Iran is a relatively advanced and even liberal state.
It certainly took me by surprise when I traveled there last year. [...]
Read the whole thing, for photos, embedded links and more.
[...] Seidman looks at the world through the framework of “freedom from” and “freedom to.” In recent years, he argues, “more people than ever have secured their ‘freedom from’ different autocrats in different countries.” Ukrainians, Tunisians, Egyptians, Iraqis, Libyans, Yemenis to name a few. “But so few are getting the freedom we truly cherish,” he adds. “And that is not just ‘freedom from.’ It is ‘freedom to.’ ”
“Freedom to” is the freedom to live your life, speak your mind, start your own political party, build your own business, vote for any candidate, pursue happiness, and be yourself, whatever your sexual, religious or political orientation.
“Protecting and enabling all of those freedoms,” says Seidman, “requires the kind of laws, rules, norms, mutual trust and institutions that can only be built upon shared values and by people who believe they are on a journey of progress and prosperity together.”
Such values-based legal systems and institutions are just what so many societies have failed to build after overthrowing their autocrats. That’s why the world today can be divided into three kinds of spaces: countries with what Seidman calls “sustainable order,” or order based on shared values, stable institutions and consensual politics; countries with imposed order — or order based on an iron-fisted, top-down leadership, or propped-up by oil money, or combinations of both, but no real shared values or institutions; and, finally, whole regions of disorder, such as Iraq, Syria, Central America and growing swaths of Central and North Africa, where there is neither an iron fist from above nor shared values from below to hold states together anymore.
Imposed order, says Seidman, “depends on having power over people and formal authority to coerce allegiance and compel obedience,” but both are much harder to sustain today in an age of increasingly empowered, informed and connected citizens and employees who can easily connect and collaborate to cast off authority they deem illegitimate.
“Exerting formal power over people,” he adds, “is getting more and more elusive and expensive” — either in the number of people you have to kill or jail or the amount of money you have to spend to anesthetize your people into submission or indifference — “and ultimately it is not sustainable.” The only power that will be sustainable in a world where more people have “freedom from,” argues Seidman, “is power based on leading in a two-way conversation with people, power that is built on moral authority that inspires constructive citizenship and creates the context for ‘freedom to.’ ”
But because generating such sustainable leadership and institutions is hard and takes time, we have a lot more disorderly vacuums in the world today — where people have won “freedom from” without building “freedom to.”
The biggest challenge for the world of order today is collaborating to contain these vacuums and fill them with order. That is what President Obama is trying to do in Iraq, by demanding Iraqis build a sustainable inclusive government in tandem with any U.S. military action against the jihadists there. Otherwise, there will never be self-sustaining order there, and they will never be truly free.
But containing and shrinking the world of disorder is a huge task, precisely because it involves so much nation-building — beyond the capacity of any one country. Which leads to the second disturbing trend today: how weak or disjointed the whole world of order is. The European Union is mired in an economic/unemployment slump. China behaves like it’s on another planet, content to be a free-rider on the international system. And Russia’s president, Vladimir Putin, is playing out some paranoid czarist fantasy in Ukraine, while the jihadist world of disorder encroaches from the south.
Now add a third trend, and you can really get worried: America is the tent pole holding up the whole world of order. But our inability to agree on policies that would ensure our long-term economic vitality — an immigration bill that would ease the way for energetic and talented immigrants; a revenue-neutral carbon tax that would replace income and corporate taxes; and government borrowing at these low rates to rebuild our infrastructure and create jobs, while gradually phasing in long-term fiscal rebalancing — is the definition of shortsighted.
“If we can’t do the hard work of building alliances at home,” says David Rothkopf, author of the upcoming book “National Insecurity: American Leadership in an Age of Fear,” “we are never going to have the strength or ability to build them around the world.” [...]
How ironic. "Nation Building" was supposed to be one of President Bush's mistakes, according to Democrats. Is it now coming back into fashion, because a Democrat is in the Whitehouse?
This article does say nation building is beyond the capacity of any one country to do. OK then, who does it? The U.N., which has never been able to do it? And perhaps more importantly, who pays for it, in a world where national budgets are already severely over-extended?
The article does a good job of identifying problems, but solutions are more elusive. And don't get me started on his wish-list for putting our own house in order. If it were that simple, we'd be doing it. But that's a whole another article, or at least way more than a few comments that I could make here.
One thing seems certain. The "world of sustainable order" has got it's work cut out for it.
WASHINGTON: The US official who was expelled in a tit-for-tat diplomatic battle over Devyani Khobragade was nearing the end of his posting in India, scheduled to leave New Delhi in February. But in their three years in India, Wayne May, who headed the US embassy's security team in New Delhi, and his wife Alicia Muller May, who worked as the embassy's community liaison officer, revealed conflicting impulses and contradictory outlook towards the people and country they served in.
On the one hand, it was evidently their bleeding heart concern for housekeeper Sangeeta Richard, whose in-laws worked with them and a succession of US embassy officials, that led them to "rescue" the nanny's husband and children from the strong-arm tactics of the Indian judicial and police system that diplomat Devyani Khobragade unleashed on them after Sangeeta fell out with her. On the other hand, their facetious comments about a stereotypical India abounding in chaos and filth, which some might see as offensive, shows them as the archetypal "ugly Americans".
They laid out their opinions and views quite guilelessly on social media through photographs and comments that were quickly seized on and distributed by bloggers and trolls ever sensitive to any perceived insult of India. Although the comments are often flippant, the kind many people make on social media without fear of consequence, they sound extremely offensive now given the fraught context of the diplomatic spat. Their profiles, pictures and comments were removed and their social media presence sanitized soon after they were discovered, but not before the online warriors had saved and uploaded them on other social media sites, portraying them as "racist American diplomats". [...]
You can read the rest of the article, to see the offensive facebook posts. They might have been insensitive, in the strictest sense, but they were also truthful. I think many Americans do find India to be a place of contradictions.
I found it interesting how the article kinda glosses over the "the strong-arm tactics of the Indian judicial and police system", and the way it puts the word "rescue" in quotes, and then proceeds to hype the facebook comments. But honestly, which is more serious: Comments on a facebook page, or Human Trafficking?
All the articles I've read in the Indian press, seem to completely ignore the accusations against Devyani Khobragade. Are they really so unimportant and irrelevant?
It's not like she and her family are squeaky clean. It seems there is some scandal in India, regarding politics and realestate.
I don't know if the accusations made against her in New York are true, but a trial would have revealed that, but she didn't stick around to defend herself. Was she mistreated? That would have been explored/exposed in a trial also, but she left. Was it because she didn't want the truth to be revealed? Perhaps she would have been exonerated from some charges, but not others, and chose not to risk that?
I can't help but wonder if this really is more about something going on between the India and USA governments, some sort of power play, and this incident is just a symptom of something larger that we're not hearing about? Is there any foundation to the charges against Khobragade? Why, or why not? Real journalists might ask questions like these, but there don't seem to be any anymore, anywhere. Instead, we get the tit-for-tat stuff, because it sells newspapers, I guess. It seems their newspapers are just as rubbishy as ours. More hype than content.
Claim Against Indian Diplomat Has Echoes of Previous Cases
NYC unionized workers take the side of the maid. At the end of the article, local Indian merchants in NYC are quoted, saying the maid should have been grateful, because she would have been treated much worse in India.
Since she claims she was forced to work from 6am to llpm everyday, without being paid, with only two hours off on Sunday to go to church, I guess that "Worse in India" must be really, really bad.
Devyani Khobragade incident
Wikipedia provides it's version of the facts. Which seems more or less what I've read elsewhere.
(CNN) -- Some of the bravest, noblest women and men I have met are members of the United States armed forces. To them, military intervention is not about winning a debate on television or sounding smart on Twitter. With the United Nations ruling out support for military options to stop the bloodbath in Homs in Syria, leading U.S. commentators are calling for NATO and the Arab League to intervene militarily.
In reality, this would mean the United States would once again carry the heavy burden of war. In NATO's recent operation in Libya, the United States provided 75% of the reconnaissance data, surveillance, intelligence and refueling planes. Syria is not Libya, and NATO without the United States is not up to the job.
The Arab League is no match for a brutal Syrian regime backed by Russia, China and Iran.
In essence, therefore, we must stop pretending about NATO or the Arab League intervening and accept that it is not "international intervention," but U.S. military intervention that is being sought in yet another Muslim-majority country. The Muslim dimension is important because the lessons of Lebanon, Iraq, Palestine and Afghanistan are that, invariably, intervention leads to occupation, which leads to varying degrees of Islamist radicalization.
Whatever the motivations to advance U.S. military intervention, we need to address the following questions before contemplating placing U.S. armed forces in harm's way again, and demanding the U.S. taxpayer foot the bill. [...]
The author goes on to spell it out. He has spent time living in Syria, and has many good insights, on both Syria and the larger picture.
[...] Individual states in the Arab League have called for al-Assad to step down, but the organization as a whole has failed to table a similar resolution -- and Phillips says that is unlikely to change anytime soon.
"While it seems likely there is going to be some internal negotiation (on a resolution) taking place, it certainly seems very unlikely Lebanon or Iraq -- states who are allied effectively to Iran and Syria -- will ever join calls for Assad to stand down," said Phillips.
Will the international community intervene like it did in Libya?
Nothing will happen in terms of military intervention in Syria unless Russia changes its current stance, according to Phillips.
"Russia have said quite clearly that they're not going to support anything that would risk al-Assad being forced from power," Phillips told CNN.
"If Russia gave the same kind of green light for Syria that it did for Libya, there's every possibility that you'd see military intervention, probably coming out of Turkey," Phillips said. "But Turkey have said they're highly reluctant to intervene unless they have NATO or U.N. backing."
Is the opposition united against the al-Assad regime?
The longer the fighting goes on in Syria, activists and Western diplomats say, the more radicalized the revolution is becoming.
Fringe elements of Muslim extremist groups are moving in and sectarian rifts are widening as feelings of despair descend on some flashpoint Syrian cities.
While the besieged city of Homs has traditionally been a place of religious tolerance, "there is a real sense now that that is changing and being manipulated by people on both sides" of the conflict, according to Phillips.
President al-Assad belongs to the Alawite Muslim sect while Sunni Muslims form the majority in Syria.
"The older Sunni merchant class that feel the city is theirs rightfully are now turning on the Alawites, who they see as these recent migrants that don't actually belong in the city," said Phillips.
Many Christians have fled to Damascus as communities begin to divide on sectarian lines. Salafists -- Islamic radicals, many of whom have brought terror tactics honed in neighboring Iraq -- are moving into Homs.
Hard-liners inside and outside the country are already jockeying for post-al-Assad power, while the Alawite community fears the prospect of persecution if the government falls.
"The regime is trying to persuade the Alawites that if they abandon the government, they will be wiped out in the dog-eat-dog aftermath," Phillips said.
[...] Fundamentally, the argument over Syria reflects a deeper divide between those who would use the Security Council to confront nations over how their governments treat civilians, versus those who consider that it has no role whatsoever in settling domestic disputes. Syria is the latest example in an argument that stretches back through all recent conflicts.
Russia, backed discreetly by China and India, rejects the idea that the world organization can interfere in the domestic politics of any country to force a leadership change. They all feel that they were duped into supporting a no-fly zone over Libya, which was promoted as a means to protect civilians last March. Instead, they said, NATO used it as a license to help overthrow the Libyan leader, Col. Muammar el-Qaddafi.
The Russian envoy, Vitaly I. Churkin, adopted a “where will it all end” argument, telling reporters that the Security Council cannot prescribe ready recipes for the outcome of a domestic political process.
“Once you start, it is difficult to stop,” he said, adding that pretty soon the Council would start pronouncing “what king needs to resign, or what prime minister needs to step down.”
To a certain extent, the Arab League and the much of the world were ready to dump the eccentric Colonel Qaddafi because he had made many enemies. Mr. Assad, despite hostile relations with some neighbors and the West, continues to have a strong ally in Russia, yet analysts described Moscow as preoccupied with leadership change.
“That the Morocco resolution ‘calls for’ Assad to step aside is their worst example and fear,” said George Lopez, a professor at the University of Notre Dame’s Kroc Institute for International Peace Studies and a sometime adviser to the United Nations. “If today it is Assad, tomorrow Putin? They worry.” [...]
[...] It was always in Russia that Obama threatened to do most damage and, as Nile Gardiner has rightly pointed out, these forebodings have been fulfilled. His supposed missile deal with Vladimir Putin (let’s cut straight to the organ-grinder and by-pass Medvedev, the monkey) is very satisfactory to Russian ambitions and realpolitik.
The nuclear power balance, as at 2007, was a Russian superiority of 2,146 land-launched nuclear warheads to 1,600 US; this was counterbalanced by a US superiority of 3,168 sea-launched US warheads to 1,392 Russian and 1,098 air-launched US warheads to 624 Russian. What should also be factored in is the leaking, deteriorating, rust-bucket condition of some of Russia’s deterrent ordnance, although it has already decommissioned the most basket-case Soviet weaponry. The bottom line, however, is that it is Russia which is now in the lead in ICBM development, not America.
For America voluntarily to reduce its nuclear superiority is madness.Bien-pensant talk of a nuclear-free world displays total stupidity in a global situation where nuclear weaponry is proliferating, not receding. There is even a nuclear bomb in Pakistan, which is teetering on the brink of failed statehood at the hands of Islamist insurgents. Is this a time for America to disarm, to “sell the store” as one trenchant right-wing commentator has already described Obama’s posturing in Moscow?
[...]
It seems certain Obama will sacrifice the anti-missile shield in Europe that would have been our defence against a nuclear Iran after the ayatollahs, with Russian help, emerge as potential vapourising agents of the infidel. The interceptor missiles do not even carry warheads: they rely on an impact at 14,900mph to destroy any incoming missile, so Russian hysteria about this “threat” is synthetic. [...]
Well, the Europeans insisted that we must elect Obama. They wanted him, and now they've got him. Now they want to cry about it? Too bad.
I could almost laugh about it, except when one considers what an Iran with nukes could do to the USA. Thanks to EMP pulses and the earth's magnetic field, they wouldn't even have to land a single bomb on American soil, to deliver a devastating strike against us.
Russia and Iran have much in common. Neither has real elections, or an actually functioning democracy. But then that's not a problem for the American Democrat party these days. Ironically, our "Democrats" aren't all that interested in supporting real democracy, at home or abroad.
Obama tells us it was an unprecedented accomplishment at the NATO summit to receive a pledge for 5,000 more NATO troops to Afghanistan. Golly, he hadn't even asked for them and this really wasn't a pledging session. Baloney. His administration has been pressing for more combat troops for some time now. The amazing NATO pledges are not for combat troops. Some of those troops will be there only for temporary security duty during the Afghan elections. Some troops included in the promised new total are actually part of a contingent already in Afghanistan. NATO countries did pledge $100 million to fund the Afghan army, but I'll believe it when I see it.
Obama is attempting to inflate the significance of getting a commitment to, dare I say it, distract from its meager content. I respect every member of the NATO military who serves in Afghanistan in any capacity and thank them for their service. The painful reality is NATO effectively tossed some coins at Obama as much as to say, "Here, that's all you're going to get now stop bothering me." The much vaunted agreement to the strategy is an acknowledgment that it's important not to lose in Afghanistan. Europe wishes us well in accomplishing that, but holds back on helping. [...]
There's more. When you look at the facts, I don't think this trip has been nearly as successful as the media hype keeps telling us it is.
We've made many concessions, and don't have much to show for it. Unless you think that having Europe "like" us more is important. Yeah, right. Everyone loves a sucker; so easy to take advantage of, and walk all over. That's why I've always preferred respect over popularity.
Terrorists with nukes are bad enough. But what about bombs, nuclear and non-nuclear, that create an Electromagnetic pulse (EMP)?
I had mentioned in my earlier post the American Starfish Prime 1.44 megaton nuclear test explosion in 1962, in space above the earth's atmosphere, and it's EMP effect on Hawaii. That same year, the Soviets did a similar test over Kazakhstan. Their bomb was only 300 kilotons, about one fifth the size of the Starfish Prime bomb, yet the EMP damage was more extensive. Why? Because they did it above a heavily populated area, and because it was also in the northern hemisphere where the Earth's magnetic field was very strong, which amplified the EMP effects, giving the smaller explosion a much stronger EMP!
An atomic bomb detonated high in or above the Earth's atmosphere could be used in a northern location to take advantage of the strength of the Earth's magnetic field to amplify the effect and spread it southward. The diagram below illustrates what such an EMP spread pattern might look like:
The above diagram shows us something called the Compton effect. The scenario it illustrates in this particular picture, is similar to one I read about recently in the September 2008 issue of Hillsdale college's Imprimis:
[...] Consider Iran. President Ahmadinejad and his Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) have control of key strategic parts of the Iranian government, and the IRGC is capable of operating as a terrorist training unit both inside and outside of Iran (witness Iran’s support of Hezbollah in Lebanon and its backing of lethal attacks on Americans in Iraq). For the past decade, Iran—with the assistance of Russia, China, and North Korea—has been developing missile technology. It is believed that the Iranians have produced hundreds of Shahab-3 missiles. This is not the most sophisticated missile in the world, but it is capable of carrying a payload to Israel or—if launched from a ship—to an American city.
The current controversy over Iran’s nuclear production is really about whether it can produce an industrial infrastructure that would be capable of producing nuclear warheads. It has sought nuclear capability since the time of the Shah, as most nations do, since nuclear weapons bestow on a country great military and political power. Even a fully democratic and pro-western Iran would want such weapons.
Mr. Ahmadinejad said in 2005: “Is it possible for us to witness a world without America and Zionism? But you had best know that this slogan and this goal are attainable, and surely can be achieved.” What about this do we not get?
Consider this scenario: An ordinary-looking freighter ship heading toward New York City or Los Angeles launches a missile from its hull or from a canister lowered into the sea. The missile hits a densely populated area and a million people are incinerated. The ship is sunk and no one claims responsibility. There is no firm evidence as to who sponsored the attack, and thus no one against whom to launch a counterstrike.
But as terrible as that scenario sounds, consider a second one: Let us say the freighter ship launches a nuclear-armed Shahab-3 missile off the coast of the U.S. and it explodes 300 miles over Chicago, creating an electromagnetic pulse. Gamma rays scatter in what is called the Compton effect, and three separate pulses disable consumer electronics, some automobiles, and, most importantly, the hundreds of large transformers that distribute power throughout the U.S. All of our lights, refrigerators, TVs and radios stop running. We have no communication. This is what is referred to as an EMP attack, and such an attack would effectively throw America back into the early nineteenth century. Perhaps hundreds of millions of us will die from lack of food and water and as a result of social breakdown.
Opponents of missile defense call such scenarios far fetched, on the basis that the U.S. would launch a nuclear attack against whatever nation attacks us. That is, they continue to rely on the doctrine of mutually-assured destruction that our leaders prior to Reagan relied on during the Cold War. But in my scenarios, we would not know who attacked us, so that doctrine is no help. And in any case, even if Iran could be identified as the attacker, who is to say that it wouldn’t gladly sacrifice itself to destroy the Great Satan? As the Ayatollah Khomeini said in 1979, during the American hostage crisis: “I say let [Iran] go up in smoke, provided Islam emerges triumphant in the world.”
I do not use the word “destroy” lightly: An EMP attack on the U.S. would mean the end of American civilization, and dropping nuclear weapons on or retaliating against whoever caused the attack will not bring our civilization back. Nor is this science fiction. Twice, in the Caspian Sea, the Iranians have tested their ability to launch ballistic missiles in a way to set off an EMP. And the congressionally-mandated EMP Commission, including some of America’s finest scientists, has released its findings and issued two separate reports, the most recent in July, describing the effects of such an attack on the U.S. [...]
It goes on to describe the steps we could take to protect ourselves from such an attack. And the reasons we are not taking them.
Both China and Russia see America as an obstacle to expanding their global influence. Both are working on and advancing space weapons that could be used against us. We could be working on space based missile defense systems, but we are told we must not, because it could "upset" China and Russia.
As if that is not bad enough, we have increased our own vulnerability needlessly. Computer chip Technology, which is highly vulnerable to EMP forces, has been incorporated into many items what previously worked fine without them.
Take automobiles, for instance. Cars made before 1985, that don't use computer chips, would be largely impervious to an EMP attack. Cars made after that date would be rendered useless. Cars don't conceptually NEED computer chips to function, but the way they are designed and made now, they depend on them. Computer chips are now even being incorporated into the most ordinary things, even light switches. They are in almost everything. It's become a needless liability of our own making.
And to be effective, an EMP attack doesn't even have to be as large scale as the attack pictured in the diagram. Even one attack on a city on our coastline, or on a city anywhere in the world, would create panic and instability in an already unstable global market place. Several attacks, even more so.
People often think our civilization could only end from a massive war. But in truth, it could be more like "Death by a thousand cuts". Multiple, continuous small EMP attacks could impair our ability to function normally, till we no longer can.
It should be obvious why it's important to curtail rogue states who are attempting to acquire these weapons, and the countries that support them. And there is so much more we could do to defend ourselves. But will we? Or are the majority of us going to keep living our lives like we're in some unreal TV drama, living and breathing BS, until one day the lights go out, perhaps for decades, and we have a very rude awakening?
Our President should take note of some relevant facts about Russia, such as Russia's quickly shifting demographics, that demonstrate that the country will soon have a Muslim majority, making it a Muslim nation. With access to all of Russia's weapons technology and resources.
Pakistan already has nuclear technology, and it is inevitable that other Muslim nations will obtain it as well. I don't say that all Muslim states with nuclear capabilities are a threat to us, but clearly some rogue states like Iran are not only a threat to us but to the stability of the Middle East. As this technological capability spreads throughout the world, we are going to need every advantage available to us to contain it among peaceful nations, and protect ourselves as much as is humanly possible.
Now is not the time to back down on missile defense systems. We should in fact, be doing every thing we can do develop it quickly. We should also be doing all we can to make our electrical infrastructure less vulnerable to EMP attacks.
I've said generally that foreign policy has not been a strong point for Democrats, and I can't say that I like what I've seen from them so far. But I live in hope. A strong Democrat that gets the job done on these issues? That would be A Change I Could Believe In. For all our sakes.
[...] The electromagnetic pulse was first observed during high-altitude nuclear weapon detonations.
Electromagnetic weapons are still mostly classified and research surrounding them is highly secret. Military speculators and experts generally think that E-bombs use explosively pumped flux compression generator technology as their power source, though a relatively small (10 kt) nuclear bomb, exploded between 30 and 300 miles in the atmosphere could send out enough power to damage electronics from coast to coast in the US. The US Army Corps of Engineers issued a publicly available pamphlet in the late 1990s that discusses in detail how to harden a facility against "HEMP" - high frequency electromagnetic pulse. It describes how water pipes, antennas, electrical lines, and windows allow EMP to enter a building.
According to some reports, the U.S. Navy used experimental E-bombs during the 1991 Gulf War. These bombs utilized warheads that converted the energy of conventional explosives into a pulse of radio energy.[2] CBS News also reported that the U.S. dropped an E-bomb on Iraqi TV during the 2003 invasion of Iraq, but this has not been confirmed.[3]
The Soviet Union conducted significant research into producing nuclear weapons specially designed for upper atmospheric detonations, a decision that was later followed by the United States and the United Kingdom. Only the Soviets ultimately produced any significant quantity of such warheads, most of which were disarmed following the Reagan-era arms talks. [citation needed] EMP-specialized nuclear weapon designs belong to the third generation of nuclear weapons. [...]
"Most" of them were disarmed? Have some been sold? Has the technology to build new ones been sold? Who would be interested in building and using new ones? Take a guess.
The effects of such devices are sometimes exaggerated and/or misrepresented in fiction and bad journalism. Much depends on the power of the the device, the type of bomb, it's altitude and it's location in the Earth's magnetic field.
Follow the link for a definition of EMP bombs, nuclear and non-nuclear, and the details of the effects of such devices.
Some videos on Youtube.com, parts 1 and 2. Both are about 7 minutes long:
This video has some startling information about EMPs. It seems that since the end of the Cold War, the US military has really slacked off on protecting military installations and equipment from EMP forces, and our society in general has become more reliant on highly vulnerable technologies.
The Russians had developed EMP bombs as small as a beer can. Not all of them have been accounted for since the demise of the USSR. Such devices could be used in a busy airport, to blind air traffic, or in the NYC stock exchange, causing trillions of dollars in losses. It's a new world with new threats, but are we keeping up?
This 2nd video illustrates my point above, about modern automobiles. You get to see what happens to a modern car driven under an EMP pulse device, that simulates a high altitude pulse.
After the pulse, the car stops. It won't start. But it's battery is still working; the electric windows work, because they are simple motors. A few lights in the dashboard work, but everything else is dead, because they are needlessly tied into either transistors or computer chips. A vehicle that could be impervious is made unnecessarily vulnerable. Can't we change this?
TRIPOLI, Libya - The United States and Libya sealed a historic turnaround after decades of terrorist killings, American retaliation, suspicions and insults with Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice's peacemaking visit Friday with Moammar Gadhafi, Libya's mercurial strongman.
"The relationship has been moving in a good direction for a number of years now and I think tonight does mark a new phase," Rice said following a traditional Muslim dinner — the evening meal that breaks the day's fast observed during the holy month of Ramadan — at Gadhafi's official Bab el-Azizia residence. It is the same compound hit by U.S. airstrikes in 1986 in retaliation for a deadly Libyan-linked terrorist attack in Germany. The attack killed Gadhafi's baby daughter.
"We did talk about learning from the lessons of the past," Rice said. "We talked about the importance of moving forward. The United States, I've said many times, doesn't have any permanent enemies."
[...]
In an interview with Al-Jazeera television last year, Gadhafi spoke of Rice in most unusual terms, calling her "Leezza" and suggesting that she actually runs the Arab world with which he has had severe differences in the past.
"I support my darling black African woman," he said. "I admire and am very proud of the way she leans back and gives orders to the Arab leaders. ... Leezza, Leezza, Leezza. ... I love her very much. I admire her, and I'm proud of her, because she's a black woman of African origin."
Rice is the first secretary of state to visit Libya since John Foster Dulles in 1953 and the highest-ranking U.S. official to visit since then-Vice President Richard Nixon in 1957. [...]
Gadafi is such an odd guy. Read the whole article for details. Read the history of relations between Libya and the US since Gadafi has been in power. Yikes. For the longest time we officially considered him a dangerous terrorist. So why are we dealing with him now, at all? Take a guess:
[...] Rice's visit comes amid a surge in interest from U.S. companies, particularly in the energy sector, to do business in Libya, where European companies have had much greater access in recent years. Libya's proven oil reserves are the ninth largest in the world, close to 39 billion barrels, and vast areas remain unexplored for new deposits. [...]
Yet another reason to drill more at home, and work on developing alternative energy sources. I mean, I guess, Libya isn't now, among the worst nations we have to deal with. If we only ever dealt with people we thought were perfect, we'd have to stay at home. So Gadafi isn't the terrorist he once was, he's reformed? Ok, if he's not trying to kill us anymore, that is a good thing. But how long will that last? How long will HE last?
The less Middle Eastern oil we depend on, the better.
When I lived in San Francisco, people often scoffed at American patriotism and the notion of National pride, proclaiming themselves instead to be "A Citizen of the World". In my youth I thought that sounded high-minded and admirable. But as I learned more about the rest of the world, the appeal of such a notion lost it's glow. People all over the world clamor for a chance to become a citizen of the United States, for good reason.
Obviously it behooves us all to care about what happens in the world as a whole. Duh. But I don't have a vote in the world, and caring about the world globally doesn't, to me, mean having to preclude our national interests, or negating our patriotism or demeaning our national sovereignty.
Citizen of the World? When the rest of the world comes up to snuff, I'll consider it. Till then, at best it's a naive notion. At worst it's posturing. Those Americans who see themselves as citizens of the world first, perhaps should go live in the rest of it, without benefit of American citizenship, and see how they like it.
Senator Obama used the World Citizen shtick in his Berlin speech, and his policy statements were just as naive. From John Bolton in the L.A. Times:
[...] First, urging greater U.S.-European cooperation, Obama said, "The burdens of global citizenship continue to bind us together." Having earlier proclaimed himself "a fellow citizen of the world" with his German hosts, Obama explained that the fall of the Berlin Wall and the reunification of Europe proved "that there is no challenge too great for a world that stands as one."
Perhaps Obama needs a remedial course in Cold War history, but the Berlin Wall most certainly did not come down because "the world stood as one." The wall fell because of a decades-long, existential struggle against one of the greatest totalitarian ideologies mankind has ever faced. It was a struggle in which strong and determined U.S. leadership was constantly questioned, both in Europe and by substantial segments of the senator's own Democratic Party. In Germany in the later years of the Cold War, Ostpolitik -- "eastern politics," a policy of rapprochement rather than resistance -- continuously risked a split in the Western alliance and might have allowed communism to survive. The U.S. president who made the final successful assault on communism, Ronald Reagan, was derided by many in Europe as not very bright, too unilateralist and too provocative.
But there are larger implications to Obama's rediscovery of the "one world" concept, first announced in the U.S. by Wendell Willkie, the failed Republican 1940 presidential nominee, and subsequently buried by the Cold War's realities.
The successes Obama refers to in his speech -- the defeat of Nazism, the Berlin airlift and the collapse of communism -- were all gained by strong alliances defeating determined opponents of freedom, not by "one-worldism." Although the senator was trying to distinguish himself from perceptions of Bush administration policy within the Atlantic Alliance, he was in fact sketching out a post-alliance policy, perhaps one that would unfold in global organizations such as the United Nations. This is far-reaching indeed.
Second, Obama used the Berlin Wall metaphor to describe his foreign policy priorities as president: "The walls between old allies on either side of the Atlantic cannot stand. The walls between the countries with the most and those with the leastjavascript:void(0) cannot stand. The walls between races and tribes; natives and immigrants; Christian and Muslim and Jew cannot stand. These now are the walls we must tear down."
This is a confused, nearly incoherent compilation, to say the least, amalgamating tensions in the Atlantic Alliance with ancient historical conflicts. One hopes even Obama, inexperienced as he is, doesn't see all these "walls" as essentially the same in size and scope. But beyond the incoherence, there is a deeper problem, namely that "walls" exist not simply because of a lack of understanding about who is on the other side but because there are true differences in values and interests that lead to human conflict. The Berlin Wall itself was not built because of a failure of communication but because of the implacable hostility of communism toward freedom. The wall was a reflection of that reality, not an unfortunate mistake.
Tearing down the Berlin Wall was possible because one side -- our side -- defeated the other. Differences in levels of economic development, or the treatment of racial, immigration or religious questions, are not susceptible to the same analysis or solution. Even more basically, challenges to our very civilization, as the Cold War surely was, are not overcome by naively "tearing down walls" with our adversaries. [...]
Bold emphasis mine. Read the whole thing. Obama's policy points are feel-good fuzzy talk that just obscures facts and ignores history. It's what I've come to expect from most Democrats, especially on foreign policy issues. The speech doesn't surprise me, but it sure doesn't reassure me either.
John Bolton used to cut through the BS at the UN, which is why the Democrats would not allow him to stay. They prefer fuzzy talk.
In this opinion piece for the WSJ, Joe Lieberman talks about how the Democrats have gone from being a Party that loved and believed in a strong America that they were proud of, to the exact opposite today:
Joe begins the article talking about the Democrat party he grew up in, and gives a moving description of a party that was proud to be American and believed in a strong military and foreign policy. He explains how this began to unravel in the 1960's over the Vietnam war, and continued through the 70's.
He maintains that the party made a partial recovery beginning in the 1980's, as some in the Democrat party began to reclaim their party's lost tradition of principle and strength in the world. But when the Sept. 11th attacks happened, at the time when the country most needed to unite, the partisan politics of the leftists in the Democrat party tragically came forward to dominate once more:
[...] The attack on America by Islamist terrorists shook President Bush from the foreign policy course he was on. He saw September 11 for what it was: a direct ideological and military attack on us and our way of life. If the Democratic Party had stayed where it was in 2000, America could have confronted the terrorists with unity and strength in the years after 9/11.
Instead a debate soon began within the Democratic Party about how to respond to Mr. Bush. I felt strongly that Democrats should embrace the basic framework the president had advanced for the war on terror as our own, because it was our own. But that was not the choice most Democratic leaders made. When total victory did not come quickly in Iraq, the old voices of partisanship and peace at any price saw an opportunity to reassert themselves. By considering centrism to be collaboration with the enemy – not bin Laden, but Mr. Bush – activists have successfully pulled the Democratic Party further to the left than it has been at any point in the last 20 years.
Far too many Democratic leaders have kowtowed to these opinions rather than challenging them. That unfortunately includes Barack Obama, who, contrary to his rhetorical invocations of bipartisan change, has not been willing to stand up to his party's left wing on a single significant national security or international economic issue in this campaign.
In this, Sen. Obama stands in stark contrast to John McCain, who has shown the political courage throughout his career to do what he thinks is right – regardless of its popularity in his party or outside it.
John also understands something else that too many Democrats seem to have become confused about lately – the difference between America's friends and America's enemies. [...]
(bold emphasis mine) He goes onto to explain why Obama's foreign policy ideas are extremely dangerous and ill considered.
He also makes it clear that while the Democrat party is presently dominated by the far left, there are still many Democrats who love the Democrat party the way it used to be, and who are fighting to bring that party back. I think these are the Democrats who will vote for the most conservative Democrat available to them this fall: Republican John McCain!
Read the whole article. I believe it is in step with the times we live in.
An article from AJM (Alain-Jean Mairet) reveals the collaboration of Swiss Foreign Minister Micheline Calmy-Rey with Iran. When I first saw the photo above I had trouble grasping who or what that was on the left. But it is indeed Mme Calmy-Rey, looking like a mummy with tissue paper on her head and concluding a deal with the president of Iran to purchase cheap Iranian gas.
The American Embassy in Bern has expressed “disappointment” over the deal and has told the Swiss authorities that this type of agreement sends a “false message”, at the very moment when Tehran “continues to defy the Security Council resolutions ordering the suspension of programs for the enrichment of uranium.” [...]
What incredibly bad timing. See the full article for more information and a link to more photos of Calmy-Rey allowing herself to be shamelessly exploited by the Iranian media. She is a Swiss Socialist with a history of Islamophilia. I always wonder about women like her with their half-assed attempts at dhimmitude.
I mean really, who does she think she's kidding? As a foreign representative she could have chosen not to cover her head at all, and the Iranians would have accepted that. Just having her there giving them publicity lends them credibility they are desperate for.
But she chose to cover her head as an appeasement gesture by a non-muslim. But if she really wanted to comply, she would have to do much more. Look how she is dressed: her scarf is transparent, her hair is showing, she is wearing a tight fitting pants-suit with high heels. By the standards of the Iranian government, she is a WHORE. Iran has strict dress codes for women, that they enforce via police action, increasingly with violence.
If she were an Iranian woman, she could be arrested and beaten and thrown in jail. Of course as a diplomat she takes no such risk. She just makes it easier for the misogynists that brutalize women to continue doing so by lending them legitimacy.
John McCain's favorability rating has surged 11 percentage points this month to 67%. Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton trail McCain on this measure, at 62% and 53%, respectively.
You can follow the link to see Gallup's video report.
Hillary Clinton spent the St. Patrick’s Day weekend working the crowds at parades and giving speeches wearing a green scarf adorned with Irish clovers. Barack Obama spent the weekend with weak attempts to find the right set of words to get himself out of the corner he’s painted himself into by running as the candidate who transcends race while having spent the last twenty years attending a church that is astonishingly racist. I also imagine that he spent a large part of the weekend with spin doctors working on a speech he is to give tomorrow that is supposed to fix this entire situation for him. Words. Its all about words.
While the democrats were busily working on their respective campaigns, McCain made a surprise visit to Iraq. It is his eight trip there since the beginning of the war (did you know he’d been that many time? Right. I didn’t think so). He was traveling with fellow Senators Lindsey O. Graham (R-S.C.) and Sen. Joseph I. Lieberman (I-Conn.). While McCain visited Iraq and met with official there he stayed largely out of view. That doesn’t stop the leftists blogs from declaring that he was there for photo-ops and political gain.
In an earlier post I had a look at some of Obama's foreign connections, including an Irish woman who advises him on foreign policy issues. A further look at Obama's foreign connections and who he supports is also quite revealing. For example, look at who he supports in Kenya:
[...] Bin Obama's father was a Kenyan Muslim and guess which side Obama is backing. Do you remember when Atlas Shrugs posted this back in January and no one paid attention?
Raila Odinga has, in his own words, a 'close personal friendship' with Barrack Hussein Obama Junior. When Obama went to Kenya in August of 2006, he was hosted by Raila and spoke in praise of him at rallies in Nairobi: Obama's bias for his fellow Luo was so blatant that a Kenya government spokesman denounced Obama during his visit as Raila's ‘stooge.’
Yeah, burning Christian churches and promoting Sharia Law, two things every Democrat ought be supporting, don't you think? Obama apparently does, if we are to believe his endorsements.
And then there is the question of his connections with Columbia's FARC:
Considering Obama's position as a front runner in the Democrat Party, shouldn't we be hearing more about these things in the MSM?
Maybe we are just supposed to take Oprah's word for it that he's a good choice, because Oprah attends the same church Obama does. [CORRECTION: Oprah used to attend the church, but disassociated herself from it in recent years, according this article. But since she is familiar with the church, I can only wonder at her endorsement of Obama. See below.]
Actually, I don't see why an endorsement by Oprah Winfrey should be taken as such good thing. She has a history of being taken in by frauds and con-men... numerous guests on her talk show, the child molestation scandal at her girl's school in South Africa. Few would doubt her talents as a talk show host and Media Mogul. Yet it seems her judgment of people's character is less than perfect. I think it would be wise to view her endorsements with some skepticism.
