Admiration...

... for the young students and other supporters (more of freedom itself -- for the first time in many of their lives -- than specifically) of Moussavi in Iran. This is courage and patriotism if I've ever seen it.
Things are getting dangerous over there and the supreme leader (whose names says it all) isn't giving an inch, yet the movement persists. What happens tomorrow will be pivotal.
For diplomatic reasons, the U.S., particularly at the administration level, is understandably cautious. If the new administration learned anything from the past administration's mistakes in Iraq (or Palestine), it's not to meddle directly in other countries' elections. And all we can do as citizens is assist in providing the protesters an international voice via reporting and technology, and wish them the best, which doesn't seem like enough. It's hard to just watch.

Weekly Schiefferism

OK, yeah, I like Bob Schieffer. Here's yet another of his quotable "final thoughts," from Sunday on "Face the Nation":

Finally today, it is an example I have cited many times over the years, that Hubert Humphrey once said the 1964 Civil Rights Act was America's single most effective foreign policy initiative.

It had nothing to do with foreign policy, but it told the world who we were and what we stood for and that our system was about fairness and equal treatment, and that it worked.

I thought about that when Barack Obama announced that torture would never be part of our national policy. America has always been the most successful when it is leading by example, when we have practiced what we have preached.

America's weapons did not win the Cold War. They kept the Soviet Union at bay. The war was won when the people on the other side looked across the Iron Curtain, saw a better way of life there, realized their system of government could not give it to them, and so the walls came down.

With a simple declaration, President Obama told the world our system of government is so strong, we don't need to torture people to survive. That is the way of those who would destroy us. But that is not us. We have found a better way.

That is what our message to the world must be. More importantly, that is what we want our children to know. When we are admired and respected by others, we are far more secure than any weapon can ever make us.

Another one of those botched German-English translations?

Jelly doughnuts aside, it happened with Maliki, but then there was a third language involved there.
No, I'm guessing Angela knew exactly what she was saying ;)

Asked at a news conference on Wednesday what she thought of Obama, Merkel responded: "I would say that he is well-equipped -- physically, mentally and politically."

And apparently, Dubya's grand tradition of banal workplace sexual harassment of fellow world leaders may well continue into the next administration, if she has her way:

"That's not really up to me," she joked. "But I wouldn't resist."

However, she's retained enough sense of her gravitas as a chancellor to end on a coy note regarding Obama's Berlin speech:

"Maybe I'll turn on the television."

I bet she will.

But then, so will we all (OK, most of us, anyway.)

He's No Jelly Doughnut

Obama's speech in Berlin (the Big Three may as well admit this is why they came along, not for that "historic" Middle East leg of the itinerary.)
But I don't blame them. This is what we've all been looking forward to, a (would-be, soon-to-be, we hope) president we can be proud of, touching down on the Continent, where our old friends have been so disapproving of us lately. I can't imagine why.
And, no, Kennedy never really said that, either.

More from Zimbabwe's Sokwanele blog

Enough with the patronizing either/or, says this understandably highly annoyed blogger.

I love seeing dichotomies smashed.

Mugabe's Calling Card

Rare, moving, and quite disturbing hidden-camera reporting from within Zimbabwe, with transcript, from Australia's SBS Dateline.

It's both inspiring and tragic what risks people will take just to place a vote. These are people who know the meaning of democracy, and want it desperately, and yet it is being brutally withheld from them.

Isn't there anything the international community can do to support these people?

An Inside View from Zimbabwe...

... on the day democracy finally died there (if it wasn't dead already.)

from Sokwanele blog, which has been faithfully chronicling the whole catastrophic implosion of the country, including the gruesome violence of the past days.

Here's the AP story.

Bush and Putin: One Last Soulful Glance...

So maybe Bush didn't get what he came to Russia for (an agreement on missile defense) but at least he and Vlad shared one last walk along the beach...

Someone named Rice talking sense on foreign policy.

No, it's not Condi. It's Susan, Obama's senior foreign policy adviser.

And, no, don't take this to mean I'm jumping on the Obama bandwagon just yet. Hillary has one last shot next Tuesday, and there's a chance she'll pull it off. I put my vote and a relatively generous amount of hard-earned money into her quest, and so I'm sticking with her as long as Tina "Bitch is the new black!" Fey is ;)

But I thought it was about time someone pointed out succinctly, as Ms. Rice does here, how ridiculous this "we won't negotiate with these guys until we retroactively win the negotiations" policy has been.

from Tucker Carlson's show on MSNBC today

RICE: This notion of George Bush's -- and it's really unique to him -- that somehow we are rewarding our adversaries by sitting down and engaging in tough-minded, well-prepared negotiations is one of the many products of his failed presidency.

If John McCain wants to take his foreign policy advice from the most disastrous president in our lifetime, that's his prerogative, but Barack Obama is not going to do that.

CARLSON: But doesn't a meeting with the American head of state have value? It's a commodity. It's worth something.

RICE: No, it's a means to an end.

CARLSON: But isn't it also worth something?

RICE: It is a means to an end, Tucker.

First of all, these negotiations would be well-planned. But we're not going to take the view that the Bush administration has taken, that we're only going to negotiate with our adversaries after they do what it is we seek to accomplish in negotiations.

That's the position we've taken with Iran: we won't sit down and talk to you until you've ended and suspended your nuclear program, which is, of course, what we need them to do.

That's counterproductive. That ensures that we'll never have direct dialogue with Iran, whereas they're continuing their nuclear program unabated. We're having trouble getting sanctions, which we need to push forward on. And we are therefore losing, because time is on the Iranians' side.

Darfur: Out of the Headlines; Still Really Messed Up

U.N. special envoy to Darfur Jan Eliasson is taking questions, on PBS's NewsHour website, on the current situation there, which, after five years of unalleviated misery, isn't getting much better, and could get worse due to problems next door in Chad.
Answers will be posted on February 13.

But the undeniable Quote of the Year...

... had to come from the Canadian prime minister, Stephen Harper, in explaining why he met the Dalai Lama in his office despite Chinese pressure for heads of state to shun him:

"I don't know why I would sneak off to a hotel room just to meet the Dalai Lama. You know, he's not a call girl."

As I say, he's a respected international spiritual leader."

I'm a big admirer of the Dalai Lama and mean no disrespect, either, but this makes me laugh very hard every time I hear it. And we thought our president had a way with words.

On that note, happy holidays, everyone!

Thanks a lot, Sarah Khawad...

... secretary at Unity High School in Khartoum, obviously no fan of teddy bears or at least one of her colleagues. Now you have your 15 minutes of international fame.
People are silly.
Free the teddy bear lady! In the name of sanity.

Pakistan: Who Saw This Coming?

Just about everyone but the White House and the State Department, it looks like.

No, that's not fair... of course they saw it coming; they just didn't really have the time to spend on the fact that

• one of the world's eight nuclear powers,
• next door to India, a fellow nuclear power who's contributing greatly to the fight against the Taliban in Afghanistan, thus pissing off those in Pakistan who support the Taliban,
  
• ruled by a general who seized power in a coup,
• (and he's the good guy, if you don't count exiled former prime minister Benazir Bhutto, who can't even enter the country without an attempt on her life)
• a good proportion of whose people support the Taliban and view Osama bin Laden as a hero while burning George Bush in effigy (sure, he's not my favorite person, either, but he ranks a lot higher on my list than Osama... not saying much, I know)
• who most likely are sheltering bin Laden, if he's still alive, as well as other top Al Qaida leadership, not because Musharraf wants to, but because he can't control entire regions of his country,
• which recently have come to include his own capital.

So now Musharraf's declared martial law, and speculation is that it has more to do with an upcoming supreme court decision that would have prohibited him from being re-elected in January, than with any other of the overwhelming problems facing his country.

So far, all we've had is a "statement" from our secretary of state, the same person who threw around the term "mushroom cloud" back when it was oh-so-safely hypothetical...

Quote du Jour: Tony Blair on his hopes of personal redemption...

... and a salvaging of his legacy...
... or, more precisely, a peace deal between Olmert and Abbas.

from "Late Edition" this morning.

And so, for all sorts of reasons, strategic, tactical, immediate, long-term, we've got to just make this work. And however difficult it is for the leaders, in a way, this is the toughest option at one level for them but also the surest way to show people the leadership they want to have shown.

Burma: Maybe it's not over yet...

But if there's going to be any hope, these guys are going to need a little bit of support.
So where are all the Superpower friends of democracy and freedom now?

Related: U.S. Policy on Burma: A Point for Semantics; Now What?

And who else is doing a heckuva job?

No, I'm not going to trash FEMA again until their (earnest, at least) new leadership under David Paulison proves or disproves itself in response to the California wildfires.

This year's award has got to go to First Kuwaiti, for turning the (grandiose and ill-conceived, to begin with) U.S. embassy in Iraq into arguably the most disastrous construction project in the Mesopotamian region since the Tower of Babel. And yet we just awarded them another three contracts.

Related: Filipino "contractors" in Iraq: OK, this is bad...

U.S. Policy on Burma: A Point for Semantics; Now What?

The brutally repressive regime of the country referred to in English by the name Myanmar (its name in the Burmese language had never changed, according to the notes on etymology in the Wikipedia article) is still known as Burma (from Bama or Bamar) by the U.S., Canada, U.K., Ireland, and Australia. And for good reason, I think.
Colonial history aside, the name change was instituted by an illegitimate government that has been holding the democratically elected leader, Aung San Suu Kyi, under house arrest indefinitely.
The U.N. uses the name Myanmar.

But regardless of what you call it, a tragedy is unfolding there, while once again the world stands by and looks on sadly, as if there's nothing it can possibly do. Where's the sense of urgency that always seems (now that "radical Islamic regimes" and their oil have replaced Russia and the Red Scare as Bogeyman #1 on our radar) to surround crises in countries a bit to the west of Southeast Asia, a bit to the north of Africa?

Buddhist monks are being rounded up by the thousands, with possibly 200 or more protesters killed.

This assessment by a Swedish diplomat is heartbreaking in its sense of hopelessness for the country's future:

Liselotte Agerlid, who is now in Thailand, said that the Burmese people now face possibly decades of repression. "The Burma revolt is over," she added.

"The military regime won and a new generation has been violently repressed and violently denied democracy. The people in the street were young people, monks and civilians who were not participating during the 1988 revolt.

"Now the military has cracked down the revolt, and the result may very well be that the regime will enjoy another 20 years of silence, ruling by fear."

So that's it? It's "over?" Just like with Tiananmen Square, only, without economic prosperity, even less hope?

And now let's welcome our very special guest, "a petty and cruel dictator."

I've always been a fan of dwelling comfortably with ambiguity, but Columbia University's president seemed to take it to an extreme today by inviting Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and then discussing him in the introduction pretty much like he wasn't in the room (he had a translator, you know.)

Given the quality of Ahmadinejad's public discourse thus far, just not inviting him would have been a pretty decent decision.

He did offer some historical perspectives that were of merit, like pointing out the hypocrisy of the U.S. with regard to the nuclear issue (to applause) and our tendency to keep memories of the hostage crisis alive while burying those of our complicity in several decades' worth of intervention in Iran, from coups to Saddam's eight-year war against them.

However -- and effusive, flowery language aside -- he also said a bunch of stuff that was frankly unbelievable (painting his nation as a gentle, peace-craving haven of democracy where the press is entirely free, Jews are beloved, and women enjoy dizzy heights of freedom) and some stuff that was just plain nutty, which inevitably casts a shadow of discredit on the entire speech, even the snippets which may have contributed in some small way to a dialog. He and his Western Hemisphere counterpart Chavez are pretty good at doing that.

The excerpt below is probably the nuttiest part (and no, Mr. President, they weren't laughing with you for your remark about living in a straights-only zone. You have your 10 percent non-straights like everyone else, unless you've executed them all out of existence, which is the question you dodged and haven't yet answered. And I'm not sure all of the women in your country consider being "exempt from many responsibilities" as a sign of respect. We tried that argument in the West during the Victorian days, and it didn't quite hold up.)

AHMADINEJAD (THROUGH TRANSLATOR): In Iran, we don't have homosexuals, like in your country.

(LAUGHTER)

We don't have that in our country.

(AUDIENCE BOOING)

AHMADINEJAD (THROUGH TRANSLATOR): In Iran, we do not have this phenomenon. I don't know who's told you that we have it.

(LAUGHTER)

But, as for women, maybe you think that being a woman is a crime. It's not a crime to be a woman.

Women are the best creatures created by God. They represent the kindness, the beauty that God instills in them. Women are respected in Iran. In Iran, every family who is given a girl is given -- in every Iranian family who has a girl, they are 10 times happier than having a son. Women are respected more than men are.

They are exempt from many responsibilities. Many of the legal responsibilities rest on the shoulders of men in our society because of the respect, culturally given, to women, to the future mothers.

New Sudan Sanctions: A Different Perspective

Not everyone agrees that the U.S.'s unilateral sanctions are the best approach. My sense remains that they are necessary, but the truth is, I don't have a clue what's actually going on over there, so how could I possibly say for certain?

This guy, the Sudanese ambassador, John Ukec Lueth, a former government dissident now representing the so-called unity government, spoke rather passionately to the National Press Club yesterday about his perspective:

We just want the people of the United States to know that their government is going the wrong way. The situation in Darfur is more complex. You know, don't run away with the issue of genocide. We do not like any woman to be raped. We do not like anybody to be killed. These are our brothers and sisters. We are more concerned about them than anybody who pretends to say that. If they have a fiduciary interest, they should stop that. They should think that, "These are our brothers. They are our brothers and our sisters."

And in the end, I was fighting the Sudanese government. I am back now. They embraced me, and we are trying to build a new Sudan. That's what we said. And as a result, leave the custody of our people in our hands. Leave the solutions of the problem in our hands and help us where we ask for.

We have asked for the African Union to come and help us. Let them come. We will determine on the ground how many troops we need. We will also provide them with what we have. And we will have the U.N. and the African Union, as well as the Europeans, to help us also.

We appreciate also the help that the United States has given us. They have spent $1.3 billion in Darfur and southern Sudan. We do not ignore that.

We must go on the right track. And this unilateral taking of decisions is not a good thing in diplomacy, in good neighborlihood. You know, even though a country is so small, like my country, it has its guts. It belongs -- it is -- we own that country. It is our home. And we cannot be overtrodden about it.

Anything else?

I appreciate you all coming. I am available any time. If you want to know more, I will give you more. I'm around here. I came here to do this. And I want people out there -- you are the medium for getting the truth out there. You know better of how things should be constructive and objective.

I believe most of you are objective. That's what made you come here this afternoon. And thank you for coming. Thank you very much.

The Cold War: We'll meet again, don't know where, don't know when...

Apparently, Putin has looked into GWB's soul and seen an imperialist aggressor. Or maybe he just wants an excuse to try out some new toys. Either way, it's not building a safer world for any of us.