The Victorious Opposition

Thousands of protesters formed a human chain in Dresden on Saturday, determined to stop neo-Nazis from exploiting the German city’s painful history on the 65th anniversary of its deadly Allied bombing in World War II.

I say “ironically” because the anti-Nazi protestors don’t seem to be strangers to Brownshirt tactics themselves:

There were some minor skirmishes, with some barricades set ablaze but quickly extinguished, and a car flipped over. A busload of far-right supporters was turned back after its headlights and windows were smashed.

Police reported some minor injuries, including people hit by rocks, but said the opposing sides were largely kept separated.

Several uniformed Nazi Party members were forced to jump off a bridge and into a river after two Caucasian men dressed like “Hasidic diamond merchants” driving in a 1974 Dodge Monaco plowed their vehicle toward them.

I probably added that last sentence.

Another ironic aspect of this is that the Nazis were the ones responsible for Dresden being destroyed in the first place thanks to their hero’s reckless aggression.  Not being content with having started the war and waged terror bombing of London with relish, they now want to wear the victim mantle?  Fuck ‘em. 

OK, the images were not of Naomi Watts ( that’s the only Aussie babe I could think of), more like Asian porn? I can’t tell.

But this is just too good for words and it begs the question ,“What was this guy thinking?”. There is clearly at least two women working on the floor in close proximity (that I counted) which would be fast tracking their butts right to H.R. if they saw any of this. Aside from goofing off at work, fostering a hostile work environment ( I believe that is the correct parlance ) is something management every where goes ballistic over.

And how about that ,“Oh, shit” look we get at the end?

I see ‘roo poaching in this guy’s future.

I can understand if he was ogling naked pics of Chris Bath…...............crikey!!!!!

If this is the rule and not the exception, we got big problems. You would think that with our far superior training and a nationalistic bent to fight for the betterment of their country, that the Afghan Army should be putting the fear of Allah into A.Q., and not the other way around.

But today, they are far from ready. Even the best Afghan units lack training, discipline and adequate reinforcements. In one new unit in Baghlan Province, soldiers have been found cowering ditches rather than fight. Others routinely steal U.S.-supplied fuel, equipment and weapons. And a few are suspected of collaborating with the Taliban against the Americans.

“I do not feel I am a mentor here,” said Capt. Jason Douthwaite, a logistics officer with the 73rd Troop Command of the Ohio National Guard who has tried to stop rampant pilfering by the Afghan soldiers his unit is training. “I feel like I am an investigating officer. It’s not, ‘Let me teach you your job.’ It’s more like, ‘How much did you steal from the American government today?’ ”

If any of this is even remotely accurate, than a preconditioned time line for withdrawal of troops is the least of our problems.

Afghanistan has proven to be rotten from the head, all the way done. Sometimes I think organizing a viable and effective government in Somalia would be easier.

Rondeaux predicted that properly training and equipping an Afghan security force of 400,000 will take at least another five years.

Well that just ain’t going to happen. Given the eight years that America has spent trying to get the Afghan Army up to speed, not only in continuing to smack the Taliban around, but in providing a combat ready security force for it’s own people, a 5 year target down the road seems inconceivable, not only to the president but to the American people.

McCrystal has got to know what caliber of soldiers he has to work with. It’s great that roads are being built, and women now have the right to vote and attend university, but even the South Vietnamese showed some nationalistic fervor in fighting for their own country.

Our trainers find themselves in a situation worse than teaching summer school. With loyalties all over the map, giving some of these guys live ammo, even behind friendly lines, is certainly worthy of combat pay.

As surges go, this one really is pretty much the last hoorah.

Last spring we discussed the case of Geert Wilders, the Dutch Member of Parliament who was invited to give a speech at the UK House of Lords by a UK MP and was denied entrance by the UK Home Office. He appealed that decision, and earlier this week that order was overturned:

Far-right Dutch MP Geert Wilders has won an appeal against a Home Office decision barring his entry to the UK.

The Asylum and Immigration Tribunal ruling overturns a government decision that led to Mr Wilders being turned back at Heathrow in February.

The Freedom Party leader, who has been accused of Islamophobia, planned a UK visit next week, his solicitor said.

The Home Office said it was disappointed, and would decide in “due course” whether to fight the ruling.

A spokesman said: “We are disappointed by the court’s decision. The government opposes extremism in all its forms.”

“The decision to refuse Wilders admission was taken on the basis that his presence could have inflamed tensions between our communities and have led to inter-faith violence. We still maintain this view.”

I continue to be baffled by the concept that “freedom of speech” is interpreted as “freedom from being offended” in so many parts of the world. Honestly, I think I have more respect for governments that are unapologetic about their censorship than this “politically correct” model of “freedom of speech”. There’s a huge difference between debating controversial topics and incitement/“fighting words” (which most people, and courts, agree are valid exceptions to the 1st Amendment).

N.B. Some people may see a conflict between what I’m expressing here and my comments about the “hate crimes” bill. I see a fundamental, categorical difference between criminalizing speech and taking speech into account as part of motive-based enhancement for an underlying crime, and hence, for me, there is zero conflict.

H/T: Religion Clause

Is it just me, or do other people think that maybe, just maybe, you should actually do something before you’re awarded a Nobel Prize?

The Norwegian Nobel Committee has decided that the Nobel Peace Prize for 2009 is to be awarded to President Barack Obama for his extraordinary efforts to strengthen international diplomacy and cooperation between peoples. The Committee has attached special importance to Obama’s vision of and work for a world without nuclear weapons.

...

Only very rarely has a person to the same extent as Obama captured the world’s attention and given its people hope for a better future. His diplomacy is founded in the concept that those who are to lead the world must do so on the basis of values and attitudes that are shared by the majority of the world’s population.

Now, unlike most people here, I think Obama is striking the right tone in international politics, and rejection of the “with us or against us” mentality of the previous administration is praise-worthy.

But he hasn’t actually accomplished anything yet. There are a few positive signs, a few negative signs, a ton of ambiguity, and actually nothing done yet.

Which is OK. Anyone who expects (non-crisis) concrete things in international diplomacy in 8 months is delusional. It’s going to take a couple of years for any of this to come to fruition (or failure). I’m certainly willing to give him a couple of years.

But what the hell is the Nobel committee thinking?

Update: Oh, this is rich. The deadline for nominations for the Nobel Peace Prize is February 1. So Obama was nominated for this prize about 10 days into the job. You have got to be kidding me.

Later this month, a rare event in international politics occurs: heads of state will gather for a summit-level meeting of the United Nations Security Council.  Set to begin on September 24th, it will be only the fifth such meeting in the history of the Council.  And, it will be the first-ever time the Council is chaired by the President of the United States.  In a press release, Ambassador Rice stated the purpose of the meeting:

The session will focus on nuclear nonproliferation and nuclear disarmament broadly, and not on any particular countries. Key areas to be highlighted will include arms control and nuclear disarmament, strengthening the NPT regime, and denying and disrupting trafficking in and the securing of nuclear materials. We are consulting with colleagues on a potential product for that session, and will keep you posted as that evolves.

Is this a cause for concern?  It damn well could be.  Consider that the President will be leading a summit of global heads of state in the part of the UN whose actions are binding (well, sort-of), and with the tide of the Senate in his favor, the two-thirds majority requirement to approve the treaty to make it “the supreme law of the land” would only take a handful of weak Republicans.  Considering the President’s own stated views on nuclear disarmament, we need to keep an eye on this.  Let me remind you of his views in his own words:

Note that he would ban production of fissile materials, which will, over time, mean that our nuclear capability either degrades or down-sizes.  He advocates dramatic decreases in our nuclear arsenal because he thinks it will “avoid giving countries like Iran and North Korea an excuse.”  He blatantly ignores the fact that the world works on cold calculation, not the kind of fuzzy moral leadership he advocates.  Emerging nuclear powers won’t be swayed to give up their programs out of some moral obligation based on America’s supposed “leadership” in nuclear disarmament, in fact, they’re more likely to pursue such programs knowing the US is less of a factor. 

So here the President is, chairing a council of heads of state, talking about nuclear disarmament.  What will the President do?  His own stated views of what should be done, notably US disarmament, have massive implications, and threaten the very structure of the defense of the free world.  Think of the nations whose security is guaranteed by our nuclear forces, thus not needing to employ their own weapons programs—free, prosperous nations like Japan, South Korea, and many of the nations of NATO.  The global economy and our very way of life depend on the security of free nations, which is why we have historically maintained such an arsenal.

It’s a sad trend that is often attributed to the left, but the right sure has its isolationist elements that could give a damn about employing American resources to defend free people abroad.  The President apparently doesn’t realize that American strategic dominance has been the global protector of free people.  Our massive stockpile ensures we will always have the advantage over any foe of our way of life that challenges it.  President Obama’s naive vision of a nuclear-free world won’t “make the world safe for democracy,” it will make it far more dangerous and unpredictable.

First, the George Will column that has conservatives in an uproar:

Mullen speaks of combating Afghanistan’s “culture of poverty.” But that took decades in just a few square miles of the South Bronx. Gen. Stanley McChrystal, the U.S. commander in Afghanistan, thinks jobs programs and local government services might entice many “accidental guerrillas” to leave the Taliban. But before launching New Deal 2.0 in Afghanistan, the Obama administration should ask itself: If U.S. forces are there to prevent reestablishment of al-Qaeda bases—evidently there are none now—must there be nation-building invasions of Somalia, Yemen and other sovereignty vacuums?

U.S. forces are being increased by 21,000, to 68,000, bringing the coalition total to 110,000. About 9,000 are from Britain, where support for the war is waning. Counterinsurgency theory concerning the time and the ratio of forces required to protect the population indicates that, nationwide, Afghanistan would need hundreds of thousands of coalition troops, perhaps for a decade or more. That is inconceivable.

So, instead, forces should be substantially reduced to serve a comprehensively revised policy: America should do only what can be done from offshore, using intelligence, drones, cruise missiles, airstrikes and small, potent Special Forces units, concentrating on the porous 1,500-mile border with Pakistan, a nation that actually matters.

Genius, said de Gaulle, recalling Bismarck’s decision to halt German forces short of Paris in 1870, sometimes consists of knowing when to stop. Genius is not required to recognize that in Afghanistan, when means now, before more American valor, such as Allen’s, is squandered.

Let me say that I am not a big fan of George Will.  I disagreed with him on Iraq and I think it would be easy to dismiss him now on the same grounds—which many of my fellow conservatives seem to be doing now.  Be that as it may, one editorialist who I do highly respect on these matters, Ralph Peters, has been saying the same thing for some time now.  In his most recent article:

As Post readers know, I believe that our present approach to Afghanistan is wrongheaded. And more troops aren’t the answer—we should maintain a smaller, ruthless force on the ground that concentrates strictly on killing our enemies.

...

Meanwhile, Iraq—which genuinely matters—goes ignored. Make no mistake: Obama’s made Afghanistan the real “war of choice.”

Yet Afghanistan is worthless. Worthless. Repairing Afghan irrigation ditches has zero effect on al Qaeda’s will to win. Killing terrorists is the only thing that works. And there isn’t a single al Qaeda terrorist left in Afghanistan.

As for all those dire warnings that we mustn’t allow Afghanistan to become a terrorist haven again, that’s why we should maintain a compact, lethal force on the ground that backs our national interests—not a predatory Afghan government that’s turned out to be the Taliban’s best friend.

Instead, we’re squandering blood and treasure to prop up a fantastically corrupt government in Kabul that’s despised by the population. We’ve allowed the Taliban to dominate the information war by bowing to their exaggerated or fabricated claims—seconded by the unscrupulous Karzai government—about civilian casualties from our air attacks.

The Taliban wants to deny us the use of our airpower—and we fell for it. Unable to think beyond the last century’s counterinsurgency theories, McChrystal severely restricted air and indirect fire support to our troops.

I don’t usually like to base my posts off of editorials, but I’m finding the viewpoint that these two are advancing to be incredibly seductive.  Particularly because of a point that Peters makes elsewhere in his article about the nightmare of increased logistics that comes with more troops that would be at the mercy of Russian manipulation and Pakistani instability.

Obama campaigned on an Afghan surge and at the time, I agreed with him.  Unfortunately, it’s becoming clearer and clearer that Afghanistan may not be worth “fixing” (how do you fix what never really worked?) and it may not even be possible to create anything resembling a real nation.  I really believe that it’s time we adopt a “less is more” strategy.

At a private lunch held on August 21, one day after the election, Holbrooke reportedly pressed Karzai on widespread state-engineered ballot-rigging alleged by his primary opponent, former foreign minister Abdullah Abdullah.

Holbrooke is said to have twice proposed holding a second run-off election after he expressed concern over voter fraud allegations. Karzai reacted “very angrily” to the suggestion and the meeting ended shortly after.

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Karzai enjoyed a warm relationship with former President George W. Bush, but relations are believed to have since cooled under President Barack Obama.

Understand that I don’t consider Karzai to be anything more than a two-faced, weak head of state in a completely hopeless backassward “country”.  Still, I have to wonder why it is that the very essence of Obama’s foreign policy that the leaders of allied and other friendly nations are perpetually shat upon while he won’t even say “boo” to hostiles like Ahmadinejad.

Could we just once maybe try unclenching our own fist toward people who don’t hate us yet?

Fox News

Wanna get your very own Kim Jong Il mousepad? Or maybe a T-shirt. Or a coffee mug. The “Korea Friendship Association” has set up its own shop at CafePress, and apparently the good folks that run the site weren’t aware of the connection:

The North Korean government starves their own people, imprisons American journalists, and has recently stepped up production of nuclear weapons. The North Korean regime also appears to be involved in selling souvenirs through the California-based personalized gift seller CafePress.com.

The Korean Friendship Association, a state-run organization dedicated to “defend[ing] the independence and socialist construction” of North Korea has a CafePress shop where they sell mousepads, t-shirts, hoodies, trucker hats, pins, and other items emblazoned with propaganda posters and insignias glorifying the government.

...

When we asked CafePress about the store, the company’s PR Director Marc Cowlin wrote us an email saying “I can confirm that checks are not sent to North Korea or any government agency.” If the KFA has been transacting with CafePress via a middleman with an address outside of North Korea it is conceivable the company may have been unaware they were working with a representative of the North Korean government. Cowlin also told WebNewser that he forwarded our questions “directly to the owner of the shop,” thanked us for bringing the matter to his attention, and added that “we’ve sent the information on to our content usage team for review — they will determine if it is in violation of our policies or law.”

As of this writing, the Treasury Department has not responded to our request for a comment on this story.

One of the “interesting” problems of virtual business is not really knowing who you’re doing business with. This appears to be the current version of our trade embargo with North Korea (PDF file), and it doesn’t look like there’s anything here that CafePress could remotely be in violation of, as it appears we’re only restricting imports from North Korea, and everything you get from CafePress is handled by their supply chain directly.

Anyhow, I thought this was interesting.

The U.S. is considering adding North Korea back to a list of state sponsors of terrorism, Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton said in an interview broadcast Sunday after President Barack Obama pledged “a very hard look” at tougher measures because of the North’s nuclear stance.

The Bush administration agreed to remove North Korea from the U.S. list of terrorist states after the North said it would dismantle its nuclear weapons facilities. It later refused to go forward with the dismantlement.

Really?  The Bush Administration actually applied some of that diplomacy stuff and unclenched its fist toward a dictatorial regime believed to be developing nuclear and missile technology by removing them from the State Sponsor of Terrorism list as a gesture of cooperation and in return, that regime reneged on the agreement within a matter of months.  Seriously?  Golly, I wonder how such a thing would be relevant to anything the Obama Administration is dealing with now. 

Turns out those Axis of Evil guys might really be a problem and not just the result of America’s injustice toward the brown people of the world.  Who knew (besides our own Rich Taylor)?

In related news, Hillary is claiming that she is satisfied that Obama can handle the “3AM phone call” in response to an international crisis.  Truthfully, I never thought either one of them could be counted on in the event of such a call and the fact that the entirety of our response to NK’s provocative acts is that the Administration is only considering putting them back on the SST list really drives it home.

CBS News

It must be a slow news day when typical European squabbles get any ink. Much like the USA/Canada dynamic, where each likes to tweak the other one’s nose if given the opportunity, that England/France dynamic has given the rest of the world some great entertainment over the last 1000 years. It seems like the only time they ever get along is when they can find a mutual rival, someone they can both fight. And, it is this antagonism that went a long way in securing America’s independence from King George III. But WW2 was their group hug moment, when each not only pledged valuable lives and treasure, but fought and risked side by side. With that in mind, stuff like this leaves the rest of us scratching our head.

A diplomatic tiff over Queen Elizabeth II’s omission from the guest list for this week’s D-Day commemorations has reopened a divide over who should share credit for the World War II defeat of Nazi Germany.

Britons are grumbling that the nation does not get its due—either from its wartime ally, the United States, or from the French whom it helped to liberate.

Hey pal, leave us out of this, Normandy is in France last time I checked, so, any perusal of the guest list for any shindigs they want to host really does not fall to our purview of responsibilities.

But those limey’s are not rolling over on this one.

BESIDES creating a cross-Channel spat by failing to invite the Queen to D-Day commemorations in Normandy this week, Nicolas Sarkozy, the French president, has angered political rivals at home by keeping them off the guest list.

Opposition politicians accused Sarkozy of trying to steal the show at a D-Day ceremony in Normandy next weekend with Barack Obama, the American president.

“D-Day belongs to everyone,” said Daniel Cohn-Bendit, an MEP. “It is not the property of Nicolas Sarkozy and Carla Bruni,” he added, referring to the president’s wife, a singer and former top model, who is expected to attend the event with Michelle Obama, the American first lady.

Is this what its come down to, indignation because the wives will be attending?

I’m wondering if this is just a tempest in a teapot or are feathers really ruffled, and was there really a concerted effort to slight the English and minimize their role in the fighting.

Since this is not a celebration of the actual victory of the war but only of the Normandy landing and its significance, could not more effort have been made in including those nations and those armies that actually participated (and suffered casualties), after all, although the war was global in impact, there were only a handful of nations that “hit the beaches” that day.

More than 60,0000 British troops landed on June 6, 1944, alongside 73,000 Americans, more than 20,000 Canadians and a small number of Free French commandos. The total includes more than 130,000 soldiers who came ashore at five Normandy beaches and 23,000 airborne troops. Many of the ships and planes that supported the landing force were British, too.

Hmm, I’d say the Brits got both hands dirty on this one. But other nations took part as well.

Free French forces and Poland also participated in the battle after the assault phase, and there were also contingents from Belgium, Czechoslovakia, Greece, the Netherlands, and Norway.

But back to this particular row. I’m not sure where the f—k up lies.

The British wanted to be associated with this ceremony and they are naturally welcome,” said Luc Chatel, the government spokesman. “But it is not up to France to designate British representation,” he added, implying it had been up to Brown to invite the Queen.

Oh hog swallop, it’s not like this the first time the French have hosted a D Day commemorative celebration, where did they send all the other invitations in the prior years? And it sounds like the only reason Brown is going is because he asked for an invitation. Was the French going to exclude Britain altogether?

I don’t get it, I thought with the “Age of Obama” awashing the world with a sense of kinship, all the antagonisms, squabbles, and disputes around the world would disappear. “The One” was going to usher in a new world order, free of strife and controversy. Somebody is not paying attention to the script.

Body counts are back,nans playing cards (for now), in an attempt to add some palitability to a long protracted war, the military thinks sentiments at home can be swayed by simple arithmetic.

Body counts are back, reigniting the decades-old debate about whether victory in war can be judged by measuring the stack of enemy dead.

In recent months, the U.S. command in Afghanistan has begun publicizing every single enemy fighter killed in combat, the most detailed body counts the military has released since the practice fell into disrepute during the Vietnam War.

The practice has revealed deep divides in military circles over the value of keeping such a score in a war being waged not over turf, but over the allegiance of the Afghan people. Does it buck up the troops and the home front to let them know the enemy is suffering, too? Or does the focus on killing distract from the goals of generating legitimacy and economic development?

American commanders have detailed nearly 2,000 insurgent deaths in Afghanistan over the past 14 months. U.S. officers say they’ve embraced body counts to undermine insurgent propaganda, and stiffen the resolve of the American public.

The issue of insurgent deaths in a non conventional conflict like the global WoT in general, and Afghanistan in particular is problematic, for a number of reasons. Aerial droning a “safe house” where a suspected AQ leader is holed up does not lend itself to accurate body counts. Some innocents are always sacrificed in the process, who among the dead were AQ and who were not? The locals (especially if they harbor any sympathies for the insurgents) will always exaggerate or create specious claims regarding casualties.

Does Mohamed, the driver of Mr. AQ bigshot, get lumped into the body count, or Amir, the neighbor, who was outside his house at the time and also got taken out? We have no uniforms, no groups with weapons that would indicate actual fighters, and no score card to identify who is who.

Still, the practice has led the U.S. into an impasse with military allies, who don’t release body counts for fear it would prove politically unpalatable at home and counterproductive in Afghanistan.

“Recording an ongoing body count is hardly going to endear us to the people of Afghanistan,” says British Royal Navy Capt. Mark Durkin, spokesman for the 42-nation, NATO-led International Security Assistance Force in Afghanistan, or ISAF.

Aside from the practice not being accurate and only intended to shape political support at home, I have to side with the Limey on this one.

I admit that when I read a story emanating out of Afghanistan where it is reported that so many insurgents were killed in a particular attack, it provides the intended response from me, that we are killing bad guys so we are winning. Some skepticism is always baked into the cake, that a certain amount of literary license is assumed, and that the exact figures are always dubious, but a win is a win, so I am easily sated. No doubt this is the motivation behind these stories, a disgruntled populace at home can torpedo a war effort quicker than you can say Curtis Lemay.

But the war in Afghanistan was never about numbers. This is not a war where all we have to do is kill all the AQ members and then we can come home. Much like Iraq, there will always be Iranian inspired or funded malcontents who will make mischief to destabilize the democracies in place, so we will never “win”. The idea is to stabilize the existing governments of the two nations so that they can fend for themselves, to value their own freedom and sovereignty enough that they will fight to preserve it, to take the fight to AQ, the Taliban, and insurgency in general because it is in their best interest to do so.

Afghanistan (and Pakistan for that matter) will be on the front burner for a long time to come, and the military knows what can happen when the folks back home turn disaffected and skeptical.

North Korea successfully set off a Hiroshima-scale nuclear explosion:

North Korea said it conducted its first nuclear test in three years and also launched three short- range missiles, acts President Barack Obama said constitute a “threat to international peace and security.”

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Russia’s Defense Ministry said the underground detonation occurred at 9:54 a.m. in the northern city of Kilchu and had a yield of between 10 and 20 kilotons. If verified, the result would dwarf that of North Korea’s first nuclear blast in October 2006, which had a yield of less than one kiloton, according to the office of the U.S. Director of National Intelligence.

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North Korea also fired three short-range missiles, one around noon and two more later in the day, an official with South Korea’s Joint Chiefs of Staff said, speaking on condition of anonymity. The first had a range of about 130 kilometers, Yonhap News said, quoting an unidentified diplomatic source. The second two were fired as a warning to U.S. spy planes monitoring the nuclear test site, the news service said.

So my question is - now what? The UN Security Council is going to meet later today. And I’m sure they’ll strongly condemn the action. But, TBH, there’s absolutely nothing that the UN, the US or Japan can do about this. Sanctions do no good against a starving country. Military action will result in full-fledged war with South Korea - something we’re not able to deal with right now. I think the Chinese and/or Russians are going to have to take the lead on this, because the only threat that I believe will work is to convince them that they’ll either initiate or support US or UN action, not resist it. I can almost see the Russians taking this stance, but probably not. Nor the Chinese.

Tough guys like Gingrich are going to get all puffy in the face hyperventilating about Obama administration passivity, just like he was blustering about shooting down the NK ICBM test earlier. Which is all well and good for politics, but completely unrealistic as policy. Bush wouldn’t be going all military on their ass, either. He may have talked tougher than Obama will, but still - military action is unsustainable. Even a tactical strike on their facilities is pointless, as it will just trigger a full-scale Korean War 2.0.

So I ask you - now what?

Raul Castro dismissed Barack Obama’s policy changes toward Cuba as “achieving only the minimum,” and said Wednesday that it is up to the U.S. — not Cuba — to do more to improve relations.

The Cuban president suggested the communist government is not willing to appease Washington by embracing small political and social reforms on the island, saying in a speech before an international gathering of government ministers that “it is not Cuba who has to make gestures.”

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Raul’s comments Wednesday appeared to take a harder line on unilateral concessions to meet U.S. expectations, and echoed the words of Fidel, who has written in public essays that Obama’s policy changes did not go far enough because Washington’s 47-year-old trade embargo is still in place.

The younger Castro said that the U.S. steps were, “fine, positive but only achieve the minimum. The embargo remains intact.”

I previously discussed this here and still maintain that it is a failure of Candyass Diplomacy.  Obama can send as many nice words, flowers, chocolates, and DVD’s to Cuba as he sees fit to send, but the sorry truth is that negotiating with thug dictators from a position of weakness does not work.

I have to know, from those who supported or still support Obama: did you guys think it would really be that easy?  Did you think that we could put a (semi-) black guy in the White House who would start apologizing for America’s past evils, show the world that we mean nobody any harm, and the criminal dictators everywhere would respond by ending their tyrannical ways?  I mean, if there is one guy that Obama should be able to charm, it’s Fidel Castro; with their mutual hatred of the free market.

Castro and asshole dictators like him do not do the vicious things they do because America used nuclear weapons, mistreated Indians, or builds McDonald’s everywhere.  Those dictators do what they do to maintain power.  Blaming America is just a convenient way to shift the blame for failures of a Third World nation away from the corrupt tyrants in charge. 

Blaming America doesn’t really work for the Cuban people and when Obama runs around the globe apologizing for America, he does nothing more than feed into the belief that all troubles can be laid at our feet.  If Raul/Fidel Castro want the embargo lifted, let’s talk about freeing some political prisoners.  Sooner or later, Obama is going to have to demonstrate to guys like this that he isn’t going to be walked over.  The Castro’s clearly believe it to be the case.

Yahoo News

Thousands of Kenyan women are to go on a week-long sex strike in a bid to force an end to the country’s ongoing political bickering

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The move will attempt to succeed where other peace-building measures have failed to end months of deadlock which threaten to plunge the country into another explosive crisis.

It was announced by the Women’s Development Organisation, which plans to approach the wives of both President Mwai Kibaki and Raila Odinga, the prime minister, to take part.

The group will also pay prostitutes not to work.

God, there are so many directions to go with this story that I can’t even pick one.  I’m glad that this sort of thing hasn’t come to the US yet. 

First of all, it wouldn’t work since most members of our political class seem to screw everyone but their wives anyway.  Hell, can you imagine the hilarity that would have ensued if Hillary had threatened to quit humping Bill?  Second of all, I don’t even want to think about what awful policies our asshole policitians would come up with in a sex-deprived frenzy.  That’s probably how Prohibition came about, honestly.

Daily Telegraph