This ain't Hell, but you can see it from here

Category: Foreign Policy

  • Is this one of the industrialized nations we should emmulate?

    I’m just wondering because I’m always hearing about how far we are behind the “industrialized world” in so many things. Maybe we need more of this in Congress. We haven’t been treated to a spectacle like this since Preston Brooks caned Charles Sumner on the Senate floor in 1856.

  • The stone age scourge

    I read this yesterday at Best of the Web and the Jerusalem Post. Now it’s made it’s way to Fox News. I’ll admit that it sounded a bit far-fetched that J-Post can’t find but one witness to this, but it’s becoming news, nonetheless;

    He said he had been a highly regarded member of the force, and had so “impressed my superiors” that, at 18, “I was given the ‘honor’ to temporarily marry young girls before they were sentenced to death.”

    In the Islamic Republic it is illegal to execute a young woman, regardless of her crime, if she is a virgin, he explained. Therefore a “wedding” ceremony is conducted the night before the execution: The young girl is forced to have sexual intercourse with a prison guard – essentially raped by her “husband.”

    “I regret that, even though the marriages were legal,” he said.

    Why the regret, if the marriages were “legal?”

    “Because,” he went on, “I could tell that the girls were more afraid of their ‘wedding’ night than of the execution that awaited them in the morning. And they would always fight back, so we would have to put sleeping pills in their food. By morning the girls would have an empty expression; it seemed like they were ready or wanted to die.

    You probably ought to read the rest of the report, if you think you can stomach it. Both Best of the Web and Fox News link to J-Post.

    I really don’t know what I can add to the story except that I shudder at the thought that these folks could have nuclear weapons within the next few months.

  • Obama sends wrong message to Chavez

    In the past, the messages that the US has sent to foreign governments has caused many of our foreign policy problems. Who can forget Saddam Hussein thinking he had Ambassador April Catherine Glaspie’s tacit approval for an invasion of Kuwait? The reason the Soviets thought they could invade Afghanistan was because they knew Jimmy Carter would do nothing (boy, he fooled them – he boycotted the Moscow Olympics. That taught ’em.)

    Now, by coming down on the wrong side of the Honduras problem, Obama could be giving Chavez clearance to forcibly re-install ousted president Manuel Zelaya. Mary Anastasia O’Grady writes today in the Wall Street Journal;

    At issue is Mr. Chávez’s determination to restore deposed Honduran president Manuel Zelaya to power through multilateral pressure. His phone call to a State Department official showed that his campaign was not going well and that he thought he could get U.S. help.

    This is not good news for the region. The Venezuelan may feel that his aims have enough support from the U.S. and the Organization of American States (OAS) that he would be justified in forcing Mr. Zelaya on Honduras by supporting a violent overthrow of the current government. That he has reason to harbor such a view is yet another sign that the Obama administration is on the wrong side of history.

    In the three weeks since the Honduran Congress moved to defend the country’s constitution by relieving Mr. Zelaya of his presidential duties, it has become clear that his arrest was both lawful and a necessary precaution against violence.

    The Obama Administration has ignored the fact that Zelaya’s removal was required by the Honduran Constitution. In fact, under the Honduran Constitution, Zelaya’s loss of his Honduran citizenship was required. Continuing to call this a coup, only lends a violent return of Zelaya legitimacy.

    The Obama Administration has refused to acknowledge the discovery of computer files in Honduras that held the pre-ordained outcome of Zelaya’s illegal referendum (reported to us by Alberto de la Cruz at Babalu Blog on Saturday) intentionally ignoring the fact that the whole world has been set up by the amateurs of the Bolivarian Revolution.

    Fausta writes this morning that Zelaya has shifted his ultimatum date to July 24th – enough time for Chavez to position Venezuelan troops in Nicaragua to force the return of Zelaya.

  • Zelaya gives talks until midnight

    Things are heating up in central America over former President Zelaya’s ouster. The deposed politico, from the safety of Nicaragua, has declared that at midnight he’ll steal into Honduras to continue his fight against the Constitutional government in Honduras. This from Fausta’s Blog;

    Sounds to me he’s saying he’ll be leading a battle… mañana. We’ll see what the weekend brings. The negotiations are scheduled to resume today.

    From Alberto de la Cruz at Babalu Blog, it seems that the referendum Zelaya was booted for inciting had the fix in;
    (more…)

  • Honduras teeters on violence

    Yesterday, de facto Honduran President Roberto Micheletti offered to step down to keep the peace there (according to New America Media);

    President Roberto Micheletti said Wednesday for the first time that he is prepared to step down if it will return peace to Honduras, but on the condition that ousted President Manuel Zelaya does not return to office, reports La Opinión. Meanwhile, the government Wednesday night re-instituted a curfew that it had lifted over the weekend in an attempt to quell national unrest.

    Compare that to Manuel Zelaya’s threat to conduct “the final battle” for his return to power in the Central American nation;

    Patricia Rodas, foreign minister of Zelaya’s toppled government, says Zelaya is en route to Honduras but she did not provide details as to where he plans to set up the alternative seat of government. Zelaya himself will announce it when he deems appropriate.

    One is willing to resolve the situation while the other side is willing to spill Honduran blood. Nicaraguans are against Daniel Ortega‘s attempts to interfere in their neighbor’s politics.

    Fidel Castro demands that the US withdraw their troops from Honduras;

    “The only correct decision at this moment is to demand the U.S. authorities stop interfering and providing military assistance to coup leaders and withdraw their troops from Honduras,” Cuban media reported citing Castro as saying in his article.

    He added that “the civil coup in Honduras has created a really complicated situation in Latin America, which cannot be resolved by traps, cunning and lies.”

    “New details of U.S. involvement [in the coup] emerge daily and it [the coup] will result in a broad resonance across the whole Latin America,” the 82-year-old former Cuban leader said.

    US involvement in the coup was to prevent it for over a week, until Hondurans decided to stop listening. Zelaya admitted as much the first week. The only “new details” are coming from motor-mouth dictator Hugo Chavez (who also admits to daily cocaine use). You’d think Castro would know better since there have been thousands of American troops stationed at Guantanamo,Cuba for nearly a century with no adverse effect on Cuba’s government.

  • Morales; US military behind Honduran coup

    Hugo Chavez’ poodle, Evo Morales, the President of Bolivia charged the US military with leading the removal of Honduran President Zelaya from his bed chambers two weeks ago, parroting the official Bolivarian party line from Chavez;

    “I have first-hand information that the empire, through the U.S. Southern Command, made the coup d’etat in Honduras,” President Morales said during a visit to the Uruguayan capital Montevideo.

    The coup that saw Honduran President Manuel Zelaya swept up by the military on June 28 in his pajamas and expelled from the country “is an aggression, a provocation of the empire,” he added.

    “Maybe I do not know Obama, but the imperial structure remains in force.”

    Meanwhile Chavez has ramped up his anti-US rhetoric warning that he has information on other planned coups in the region in EL Salvador, Nicaragua and Guatemala. All of that gladhanding and smooching Obama did with Chavez got him this statement (quoted by El Universal);

    “Obama is not going to trick us with an ambiguous discourse or with a smile (…) Zelaya will return to his country (…) The process of change in Latin America is not going to stop, President Obama. You can send the Fourth Fleet and the Sixth Fleet, but changes will not end.”

    The commie Chavez worshipers at Venezuelanalysis provide us with this quote from Hugo;

    “Don’t deceive the world with a discourse that contradicts your actions,” he warned Obama, “demonstrate that it’s true that you are disposed to confront the imperialist hawks, if not, its better that you go away, because you will end up worse than Bush.”

    This is the result of hugging dictators and thugs. The more Obama lets them bully him, the more they’ll bully him.

  • Clinton to NY; Drop Dead

    New York State propelled Hillary Clinton into politics by forsaking every other qualified New Yorker for a Semate seat. The former First Lady, who had never lived in the State before her election, repaid those folks today.

    Six months into her tenure as secretary of state she has suddenly exempted diplomats from paying some property taxes here.

    “It is totally unfair,” [NYC Mayor Michael] Bloomberg said.

    The mayor said it’s not only a double cross but a double flip flop. As New York’s junior senator, Clinton fought to make diplomats pay up. And he said her reversal changes a longstanding policy.

    “Since 1873 they’ve been saying this is taxable,” Bloomberg said.

    What’s more, the mayor predicted that — freed of paying property taxes — some governments would see it as a business opportunity to buy up properties and make money renting them out.

    “It’s just patently unfair to New Yorkers and Americans and it contravenes established policy for 130-odd years and it just doesn’t make sense,” Bloomberg said.

    Again, with the Obama Administration, Americans, who are looking at higher taxes, take a back seat while the clowns in Washington suck up at light speed.

  • More Carter Culture in the White House

    This morning the Washington Post, eager to rewrite history and trumpet Our Lord, Barack Obama in article they titled “In West Wing: Grueling Schedules, Bleary Eyes“, all they did for me was recall the Carter years;

    All West Wings face fatigue at some point, but the Obama team has had a particularly frenetic start, the result of inheriting the worse economic crisis since the Great Depression and the team’s own seemingly chaotic drive to push an agenda that includes the creation of a new health insurance system, auto bailouts, Middle East peace, nuclear nonproliferation, two wars and education reform.

    Political Washington has long fostered a workaholic culture, the expectation that the rewards of service on the big stage of national government come with 18-hour, on-call days. But even the most hardy of Obama’s staff members are beginning to recognize the toll that the pace is taking.

    We heard the same stories from the Carter Administration. Jimmy Carter and his staff worked endless hours spinning their wheels and coming up with idiot speeches and proposals that they never implemented. I guess it’s hard work trying to change our political system into something it wasn’t designed to be – a support group for morons.

    I also like how the Post blames the Bush Administration for Obama’s dilemma. We’ll probably hear that right up until the 2012 election – that’s why the Justice Department will be focusing on phony torture orders and phony “secret programs” just to keep the Evil Bush Administration (TM) in our collective consciousness as the culprit of all of our woes.

    See, here’s some advice for the Obama Administration if they want to get some rest – stop what you’re doing. You’re working too hard AGAINST the American people which is why you’re meeting stiff resistance for your idiot proposals. Try focusing on ONE thing at a time instead of trying to cram 100 years of European-style liberalism down our throats in one big gulp.

    Oh, and Washington Post, we’re on to you – you stop, too.