Firmly detached from reality, Hillary Clinton called the President pathetic for “begging” for lower oil prices among the OPEC nations last week. (Breitbart link);
Category: Foreign Policy
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Speaking from a position of strength
In this morning’s Washington Times, Jon Ward reports from Abu Dhabai in his article “Bush Tries To Rally Iran Foes“;
President Bush yesterday appealed to the broader Middle East to unite against Iran and al Qaeda, and sought to reassure Arab countries that the U.S. will not abandon them if they do so.
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Chavez; Venezuelan Mugabe
Photo from ReutersRiding a recent wave of popularity because of his involvement in securing the release of two hostages from terrorist Columbian narco-thugs FARC, and decked out in his finest finery and blingiest bling, Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez hinted that he’ll try to have term limits eradicated once again, according to the Miami Herald; (more…)
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The lights come on for professor
The Miami Herald carries a story about an anthropology professor, Katherine Herschfeld, who believed the hype about the Cuban healthcare system until she had it foisted upon her during a bout with dengue fever; (more…)
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Blackwater rescues US citizens in Kenya
Photos from WOOD TV8
In the Washington Times this morning Jerry Seper writes the story destined to be the most ignored story in the media today;
Three young women have returned home to Michigan after being rescued from an orphanage in a remote village of strife-torn Kenya by Blackwater Worldwide.
Yep, those border-line terrorists (um, sarcasm, folks) of Blackwater acting completely out of character (more sarcasm) stopped murdering innocent civilians (more sarcasm, in case you haven’t noticed a pattern yet) long enough to stage a rescue mission;
“I knew the girls were in incredible danger, and I was calling anyone and everyone I could trying to get help but without success,” Mr. VanderMey said. “Then Erik Prince called, asked about the situation and said he was going to do what he could to get my girls out of harm’s way.
“It wasn’t the image that most people have of Blackwater,” he said. “But I can assure you these are dedicated men, professionals who know how to help people in times like this.’ ”
Blackwater spokeswoman Anne E. Tyrrell said the “best thing” about being a company owned, managed and staffed almost entirely by U.S. military veterans and former law-enforcement agents “is that it puts us in a position to help people who need it most.
“These are three incredible girls who went to Kenya to help and ended up needing help,” she said. “We are delighted they are safe and at home with their families.”
My personal thanks to my fellow veterans in Blackwater for the countless other lives they’ve saved in addition to these. If all of their stories were told, maybe the country would have another opinion of them.
For more information on the situation in Kenya, I always check out Baldilocks first.
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Chavez the facist
Jewish Venezuelans are worried about the Venezuelan government, according to an article in the Miami Herald this morning;
Venezuelan government intelligence services twice have raided the country’s most important Jewish center in a vague, ultimately unsuccessful search for weapons. Publications of the government’s cultural ministry run articles entitled ”the Jewish Question,” along with a Jewish star superimposed over a swastika.
“The Jewish Question” for Pete’s sake. I guess we can assume that Chavez will begin to blame the Jews for all of the poverty in Venezuela and send his chavistas into the streets for Noche de Cristal, a tropical version of Kristal Nacht.
The government-controlled press even gets in on the fun;
One 2006 article in El Diario de Caracas debates whether it will be necessary to ”expel [the Jews] from the country.” Another article in the Diario, VEA accuses Jews of being involved in the murder of a government prosecutor.
What about the other 12,000 murders in Venezuela last year? Did the Jews commit those, too? I think it’s instructive to see how Chavez shifts blame around to every group without a little introspective look at his own leadership. His cabinet “shake-up” presents no chance for change in Venezuela. According to Daniel, of Venezuela News and Views, “there is nothing “new” in this cabinet“. The Devil’s Excrement writes that Chavez has finally taken notice of his murder rate;
First of all, last Sunday, in his Sunday variety shows, Hugo Chavez mentioned for the first time the crime problem. Yes, after exactly 86,452 homicides since Hugo Chavez took over, he mentioned a problem as important as that for the first time. Here is a guy that has found time to call Bush the devil, spent weeks and resources on rescuing Colombian hostages and has traveled all over the world “solving” the world’s problems, and he finally dared mentioned the problem that is the number one concern of all Venezuelans: Crime.
I’m sure the murder rate will fall now that it’s caught the attention of Chavez, but if I were a Venezuelan Jew, I’d be stretched out on Panama’s Playa Coronado while Chavez cleans up the streets.
Pravda reports on Chevez’ latest interview with airhead Naomi Campbell;
Campbell and Chavez did not talk about politics only. The model asked the Venezuelan president to name the most stylish world leader. Chavez chose Cuba’s Fidel Castro. “Fidel, of course! His uniform is impeccable. His boots are polished, his beard is elegant,” Chavez said.
Well, Castro can afford the best mortician in Cuba to do him up, I suppose. I’ll bet Christina Kirschner is a little jealous. The stubby little mariposa must have all of his mirrors covered in the palace;
Campbell asked if Chavez would appear topless in photos as Russian President Vladimir Putin has done. “Why not ?” he said. ” Touch my muscles !”
And of course, what article about the Hollywood knuckleheads and Chavez would be complete without the knuckleheads’ expert political analysis of Chavez;
“I found him to be fearless, but not threatening or unreasonable,” she wrote. “I hope Venezuela’s relations with America will improve in the immediate future.”
I hope Chavez’ relations with his own people improve in the immediate future.
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Iran’s Hormuz feint not out of character (Updated)
Image from the Wall Street Journal
The Wall Street Journal reported this morning that the Pentagon released a video of the the Islamic Republic’s feint against US warships in the Gulf of Hormuz;
Tehran acknowledged that the boats were Iranian and denied that its sailors had behaved recklessly.
Iran seemed certain to dominate Mr. Bush’s coming meetings with Mideast leaders even before the confrontation, because every nation on Mr. Bush’s itinerary — from Israel to Sunni Arab powers Egypt and Saudi Arabia — is alarmed by Iran’s rising influence over the region.
Many of the countries, most notably Israel, also worry that the Bush administration may be adopting a softer line toward Iran after the release of an U.S. intelligence estimate that concluded Tehran had halted its nuclear-weapons program.
It is unclear if the latest incident will reassure the Israeli and Arab leaders or alarm them further, since the U.S. sailors — while warning the Iranians that they would take “defensive measures” if the small boats didn’t turn around — allowed the Iranians to pull within a few hundred yards of the U.S. warships.
Gateway Pundit has the video, still shots and narrative. The Islamic Republic denies anything out of the ordinary happened (Associated Press link);
Defense Minister Mostafa Mohammad Najjar called Western news reports that the boats threatened to blow up the U.S. warships “mischief.”
“(Iranian) navy units … asked them to identify themselves. They responded accordingly and continued their path,” the official IRNA news agency quoted Najjar as saying.
He said the encounter was normal.
“The identification of vessels passing through the Strait of Hormuz by Iranian navy units is a natural occurrence,” IRNA quoted Najjar as saying. “Islamic Republic of Iran navy units always put questions to passing vessels and warships at the Strait of Hormuz and they need to identify themselves. This is in accordance with the normal procedures.”
Persian language blogger Haji Washington (translation by Kamanzir the Archer) speculates that it was a tacit Iranian endorsement for the Clinton New Hampshire campaign;
If the US is telling the truth and if IRGC vessels have gotten close to the American ships, without any legitimate reason, I would argue that the IRGC likes to see Hillary Clinton as the next president of the united states of America. But why do I say so?
When Clinton voted in the senate for the recognition of the IRGC as a terrorist organization, Obama criticized her for helping those who like to start the war. The same criticism was made by Edwards and had a great impact on increasing the popularity of Obama against Clinton,. Now that Obama has won Iowa and is leading with his 39% popularity, as opposed to Clinton’s 29%, and is going to win in New Hampshire on Thursday, this report can be the winning card for Clinton.
I do hope that Clinton’s aides do not get the point.
The Islamic Republic has a history of tempting the Great Satan for political advantage. It was a few months short of twenty years ago that the Iranians flew an Airbus 300 at the USS Vincennes and disregarded warnings to avoid the heavily armed Navy craft. 300 Iranian civilians were killed in that accident (BBC link);
However, [then-Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff William Crowe] said, the Airbus was four miles west of the usual commercial airline route and the pilot ignored repeated radio warnings from the Vincennes to change course.
Less than an hour before the shooting down of the passenger jet, he added, the Vincennes was engaged in a gun battle with three Iranian gunboats after a helicopter from the Vincennes was fired on.
Given the mileage the mullahs got over the accident twenty years ago, I don’t blame the Navy crews for holding their fire this last weekend – they showed remarkable restraint. I’m sure the pucker factor was at critical levels, but their restraint snatched another small victory from the Islamic Republic.
Update: Kamangir the Archer translates a rather nuanced denial from the Islamic Republic that those are IRGC boats (after admitting that they were IRGC boats).
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Euro-clowns and US politics
Last Friday, GI Jane at The Foxhole wrote about a European lady in the “Die Staandard” who declared that Europeans should be allowed to choose our president in the next election with this specious reasoning;
American presidential elections are not “home affairs.†American decisions have repercussions all over the globe. The American mortgage crisis affects banks in Europe. The insatiable American demand for oil makes the Arabian sheiks rich. The American refusal to care for the environment causes the North Pole ice to melt and coastal areas in Asia to flood. A weakened dollar and an immense budget deficit affect the global economy.
Well, aside from the fact that we have a Constitution that precludes non-citizens from voting, there are cases like this story in the International Herald Tribune proclaiming German support for Barack Obama, which is all well and good, except for their reasoning;
An editorial in the Frankfurter Rundschau went one historic president better with a headline that read simply: “Lincoln, Kennedy, Obama,” adding that “hope and optimism” are “the source of the nation’s strength.”
Obama’s newfound popularity among Germans underscores not only the breadth of his appeal but also the opportunity he might have as president – though he is still far from the White House, much less his party’s nomination – to mend fences abroad as well as at home.
“There are similarities between JFK’s time and today,” said Karsten Rossow, 49, of Berlin, who was visiting the small Kennedy Museum by the Brandenburg Gate on a dark, snowy afternoon Sunday with his wife. “People are ready for the politics of change.”
The Germans like Kennedy because he said “Ich bin ein Berliner” – that’s sweet except that the whole reason the Soviets built the wall around Berlin and across Europe was they knew Kennedy and the West were so weak, they wouldn’t stop the Soviets from erecting that 30-year scar that imprisoned half of the European world.
But the Germans don’t stop at the comparison of Obama to Kennedy – they have another reason for supporting him – he’s Black;
Despite the fact that Obama is not associated with Europe in general or Germany in particular, he has “a cultural record that the rest of the field does not have, a better international and intercultural record,” von Marschall said.
His race also plays well here, according to Uwe Andersen, a professor of political science at Ruhr University in Bochum: “In Germany, there is great sympathy first for Native Americans and second for black Americans.”
You’d think the Germans would be a bit more sympathetic to Jews, the French and Eastern Europe since they’re so sympathetic to Indians and Blacks. What the Germans did to Europe from the Franco-Prussian War until 1945 should give them more shame than what they think happened to Blacks and Indians in the US two centuries ago.
But having said all that, I hope this serves as a reminder to Europeans as to why we don’t allow the effete snobs of Europe to choose our President. Maybe if they put a little effort into reforming the UN that might wean them off of wanting to tell us how to vote.
Update: Welcome Flopping Aces and Sparks from the Anvil readers. Thanks for hooking me up, Wordsmith.
