My Beauty Best Teacher

Earlier last week I was critical of Obama's response to Tunisia's revolution, where it appeared that rather than take an active role in events, Obama's administration simply sat on the sidelines and tried to figure out where Tunisia was (I'm kidding- I heard that he had a 40 minute briefing on Tunisia after the revolution broke out- I'm sure he learned about it then). He is dangerously incompetent, especially on important world events that our President is supposed to be the primary actor on in our political system. The revolution in Tunisia though was just the start of something bigger, something that the Iranian Revolution of 1979 has taught us will have repercussions lasting decades, and that is the revolution that is taking place right now in Egypt.

For the past couple days I have been trying to get a handle on events there, much like our President, and like usual, my reactions have mirrored Obama's. First I first supported the young revolutionaries against the bad dictator, while Obama supported the bad dictator. But now I support the bad dictator over the evil militant terrorist groups who want to take power in Egypt, while Obama now supports the evil militant terrorist groups (he supports them by not saying anything bad about them while saying bad stuff about Mubarak- that's an upgrade over his usual 'voting present' by showing support for the bad guys). Obama is dangerously incompetent again and once again, anyone who voted for him or his party made our nation and world a worse place by doing so.

The best article that I have found to help me get a handle on what is going on in Egypt appeared today in the Jerusalum Post by Caroline Glick called Our World: Clueless in Washington. I am going to pass on some of the better parts of it to you to help you too understand a little bit better what is going on in Egypt...

The Egyptian multitudes on the streets of Cairo are a stunning sight. With their banners calling for freedom and an end to the reign of President Hosni Mubarak the story these images tell is a simple one as old as time.


On the one hand we have the young, dispossessed and weak protesters. And on the other we have the old, corrupt and tyrannical Mubarak. Hans Christian Andersen taught us who to support when we were wee tots.

But does his wisdom apply in this case?

Certainly it is true that the regime is populated by old men. Mubarak is 82 years old. It is also true that his regime is corrupt and tyrannical. Since the Muslim Brotherhood spinoff Islamic Jihad terror group murdered Mubarak’s predecessor president Anwar Sadat in 1981, Egypt has been governed by emergency laws that ban democratic freedoms. Mubarak has consistently rejected US pressure to ease regime repression and enact liberal reforms in governance.

This reality has led many American commentators across the political spectrum to side enthusiastically with the rioters. A prestigious working group on Egypt formed in recent months by Middle East experts from Left and Right issued a statement over the weekend calling for the Obama administration to dump Mubarak and withdraw its support for the Egyptian regime. It recommended further that the administration force Mubarak to abdicate and his regime to fall by suspending all economic and military assistance to Egypt for the duration.

The blue ribbon panel’s recommendations were applauded by its members’ many friends across the political spectrum. For instance, the conservative Weekly Standard’s editor William Kristol praised the panel on Sunday and wrote, “It’s time for the US government to take an active role… to bring about a South Korea/Philippines/Chile-like transition in Egypt, from an American-supported dictatorship to an American-supported and popularly legitimate liberal democracy.”

The problem with this recommendation is that it is based entirely on the nature of Mubarak’s regime. If the regime was the biggest problem, then certainly removing US support for it would make sense. However, the character of the protesters is not liberal.

Indeed, their character is a bigger problem than the character of the regime they seek to overthrow.

According to a Pew opinion survey of Egyptians from June 2010, 59 percent said they back Islamists. Only 27% said they back modernizers. Half of Egyptians support Hamas. Thirty percent support Hizbullah and 20% support al Qaida. Moreover, 95% of them would welcome Islamic influence over their politics. When this preference is translated into actual government policy, it is clear that the Islam they support is the al Qaida Salafist version.

Eighty two percent of Egyptians support executing adulterers by stoning, 77% support whipping and cutting the hands off thieves. 84% support executing any Muslim who changes his religion.

When given the opportunity, the crowds on the street are not shy about showing what motivates them. They attack Mubarak and his new Vice President Omar Suleiman as American puppets and Zionist agents. The US, protesters told CNN’s Nick Robertson, is controlled by Israel. They hate and want to destroy Israel. That is why they hate Mubarak and Suleiman.

WHAT ALL of this makes clear is that if the regime falls, the successor regime will not be a liberal democracy. Mubarak’s military authoritarianism will be replaced by Islamic totalitarianism. The US’s greatest Arab ally will become its greatest enemy. Israel’s peace partner will again become its gravest foe.

What has most confounded Israeli officials and commentators alike has not been the strength of the anti-regime protests, but the American response to them. Outside the far Left, commentators from all major newspapers, radio and television stations have variously characterized the US response to events in Egypt as irrational, irresponsible, catastrophic, stupid, blind, treacherous, and terrifying.

They have pointed out that the Obama administration’s behavior – as well as that of many of its prominent conservative critics – is liable to have disastrous consequences for the US’s other authoritarian Arab allies, for Israel and for the US itself.

The question most Israelis are asking is why are the Americans behaving so destructively? Why are President Barack Obama and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton charting a course that will necessarily lead to the transformation of Egypt into the first Salafist Islamic theocracy? And why are conservative commentators and Republican politicians urging them to be even more outspoken in their support for the rioters in the streets?

Does the US not understand what will happen in the region as a result of its actions? Does the US really fail to understand what will happen to its strategic interests in the Middle East if the Muslim Brotherhood either forms the next regime or is the power behind the throne of the next regime in Cairo?...

...As Prof. Barry Rubin wrote this week, “There is no good policy for the United States regarding the uprising in Egypt but the Obama administration may be adopting something close to the worst option.”
 
Unfortunately, given the cluelessness of the US foreign policy debate, this situation is only likely to grow worse.

Two more years remain in President Obama's term of office. Hopefully voters in America will wake up and realize how dangerously incompetent his administration has been and how destructive the impulse to take a flier on this unknown was.

Climate change (global warming) is caused by the sun. This may be a shock to you, but strangely enough, the same sun that causes the earth to grow warmer in the summer and colder in the winter also has long-term variations that cause long-term variations in the global temperature. Oh, I know what you are thinking "Humans are causing global warming by driving SUV's and being evil towards Mother Earth and the solution is to adopt Communism." But the truth of the matter is that humans and our actions are probably one of the smallest variables involved in 'climate change'. That doesn't mean that we can pollute as much as we want, but it does mean that most of what environmentalists say and do and believe isn't right either.

It's pretty simple once you become educated. Here is an article from Dr. Harrison “Jack” Schmitt, former US Senator from New Mexico, a geologist, and a former Apollo Astronaut (read his book Return to the Moon: Exploration, Enterprise, and Energy in the Human Settlement of Space), that was found in the The Science and Environmental Policy Project weekly newsletter:

THE CENTRAL ROLE OF THE SUN IN CLIMATE CHANGE
Policy makers at the head of government in the United States and elsewhere apparently want to believe, and to have others believe, that human use of fossil fuels accelerates global warming. They pursue this quest in order to impose ever greater and clearly unconstitutional control on the economy and personal liberty in the name of a hypothetically omnipotent government. There exists no true concern by the President or Congressional Leadership about the true effects of climate change - only a poorly concealed, ideologically driven attempt to use conjured up threats of catastrophic consequences as a lever to gain authoritarian control of society.

There has been an absolute natural increase in global surface temperature of half a degree Centigrade per 100 years (0.9 degrees Fahrenheit) over the last three and a half centuries. Observational climate data and objective interpretations of those data strongly indicate that nature, not human activity, exerts the primary influence on this current long term warming and on all global climate variations. Human influence through use of fossil fuels has been and remains minor if even detectable. Claims to the contrary only find support in highly questionable climate models that fail repeatedly against the reality of nature. What, then, stimulates historically and geologically observed, sometimes slow and sometimes radical, changes in climate?

The primary alternative hypothesis to human-caused global warming is natural climate change driven by the Sun. Unfortunately, the "human-caused global warming" or “carbon dioxide forcing” hypothesis has become embedded in the minds of otherwise strong teams of observational scientists and their publication outlets. They cannot entertain any other alternative to enhance and amplify variations in the natural heating of the Earth by the Sun - nor can they prove their own hypothesis of human-caused global warming.

As many scientists have documented, the position and orientation of the Earth in its orbit around the sun, and the Sun’s variable influence and activity, determine weather and climate. Seasons vary because of changing solar energy input in annual response to the varying orientation of Earth’s Northern and Southern Hemispheres. Indeed, the Earth’s 23-degree inclination to the rays from the Sun and its annual orbit around that star guarantee large seasonal changes away from the equator. Further, variations in solar radiation received by the Earth correlate with short-term variations in Earth’s weather, based on the slow movement of loops called "Rossby waves" in atmospheric jet streams.

Observations by astronomers over the centuries, as well as studies of tree rings,stalagmite layers, and other pre-historic and geological records, have defined an 11-year sunspot cycle superposed on a number of longer climate cycles. Much modern research documents that the sunspot cycle also correlates with variations in stratospheric winds13 and ozone production, cosmic ray flux, ionospheretroposphere interactions, and the global electrical circuit that exists between the ionosphere and the Earth's surface.

Correlations of records of seasonal changes, solar activity cycles, and local and regional rainfall oscillations all confirm that in some way radiation emanating from the Sun drives changes in weather and climate. Solar interplanetary magnetic fields, whose polarity varies every 22 years or twice the sunspot cycle, may play an additional role as their strength varies directly with increases and decreases in numbers of sunspots.

As a further natural demonstration of the importance of the Sun in determining climate variation, the well-documented solar shielding effects of atmospheric ash and aerosols from volcanic eruptions document the tie between solar irradiance and at least short-term climate swings. Particularly illustrative have been eruptions such as Huaynaputina (1600), Tambora (1815), Krakatoa (1883), and Pinatubo (1991).

More broadly, geological and planetological observations show that major perturbations in climate relate to the position and orientation of the Earth in its orbit around the Sun. For example, as Serbian mathematician Milutin Milankovic pointed out in 1941, as have many others since, initiation of the major ice ages on Earth correlate with a 23,000-year precession cycle, a 41,000-year obliquity cycle, and a 100,000-year eccentricity cycle in the position of the Earth relative to the Sun. Cyclic variations measured in oxygen isotope ratios that correlate with the growth of ice sheets and biogeochemical responses closely reflect the 23,000-year precession cycle. Also, a half-precession cycle appears to be related to the dynamics of the East African Equatorial monsoon. In addition, the 41,000-year obliquity cycle shows strongly in North American marine depositional records.

Climate cycles related to internal solar activity are superposed on long-term orbital cycles. For example, the Medieval Warm Period (800-1300) and the Little Ice Age (1400-1900) correlate, respectively, with very active and very passive periods of recorded sunspot activity. As a fairly recent example of solar influence on climate, the Little Ice Age occurred during a 500-year long sequence of three deep reductions in sunspot frequency. The coldest temperatures came during the last of these minima, a 70- year period of exceptionally few sunspots (the Maunder Minimum). The Medieval Warm Period, (when the Vikings colonized Greenland, glaciers retreated, and farmers could at least survive) also correlates to repeated multi-century long, high sunspot frequency. Since the end of the early 1900s, peak values in sunspot activity rose steadily until 1960, leveling off at higher than normal values until apparently starting to fall about 2000.

The 11-year sunspot cycle repetitions are superposed on a number of long-term cycles of past highs and lows in solar activity. For example, the Gleissberg cycle has imprecisely defined periods of 90±30 years in length. More energetic sunspot activity in the Gleissberg cycle may correlate with temporary decades of warming, such as in the 1930s and 1990s with the reverse being true in the 1810s and 1910s. Analyses of tree rings, lake levels, cave deposits, tree ring variations in cosmic ray-produced isotopes (14C and 10Be), and oxygen isotope ratios record what appear to be other long period solar cycles, specifically, 2400, 1500 years, 200, as well as the Gleissberg cycle.

Many advocates of human-caused global warming agree that solar cycles show correlations with regional climate variations; but, absent a proven amplification mechanism to enhance small solar energy (irradiance) variations, they reject nature in favor of fossil fuel burning. These reviews all document broadly accepted relationships of weather and climate with many different repetition cycles in solar activity, ranging from significant but random solar flares affecting jet stream tracks, to the 11-year sunspot cycle, to the long-term Milankovic orbital repetitions discussed above.

Specifically with respect to the last 120 years, the correlation of measured solar energy input variations with global surface temperature and sea surface temperature is very strong. The statistical correlation of solar irradiance with air temperature has been about 79%. In contrast, during the last 50 years, the correlation of measured carbon dioxide increases with global surface temperature has been only about 22%. This directly contradicts the assumption that carbon dioxide has had a large influence on climate in the last 50 years.

Since the end of the last Ice Age 10,000 years ago, the increase in total energy from the Sun has been about 0.6 watts per square meter, an increase of less than 0.05% over an average total of about 1367 watts per square meter. On shorter time scales, total variations reach about 3 watts per square meter, or 0.22% from the average. Considering the actual amount of possible atmospheric heating (30% ofincoming solar energy is reflected to space), this variation results in a third to a half a degree Centigrade(0.6 to 0.9 degree Fahrenheit) global temperature change over seven years, that is, a half solar cycle.

Various natural mechanisms for visible, infrared, and UV light reflection, adsorption, emission, and water vapor feedback determine the net solar heating effect on the Earth. Global atmospheric circulation moderates the short-term solar energy inputs, particularly upward convection of oceanic heat and water vapor in the large scale equatorial Hadley Cells that span latitudes from 30ºS to 30ºN . Ocean circulation overall moderates the long-term transfer of solar energy around the globe.

Evidence for the existence, if not the nature, of a means for amplifying solar energy-solar magnetic field interactions with Earth comes from the oceans. Determination of the total contribution of the oceans to heating of the atmosphere, using three independent observational measures of oceanic heat flux, shows that the oceans' heat contribution to be five to seven times larger than variations in total solar energy input.

Additional support that an amplification mechanism exists comes from recent observational data on variations in stratospheric water vapor concentrations over three decades. These data suggest that decreases in water vapor have contributed to amplified sea surface cooling since 2000 while increases between 1980 and 2000 accented surface warming. This relationship may correspond with stratospheric cooling and lower water retention due to lower than average solar energy input since 2000.

Climate change driven by the Sun constitutes a strongly competitive, purely scientific hypothesis to the climate modeling-political hypothesis of human-caused global warming advocated by climate modelers and their acolytes in the science, media, and political establishments. Solar influence ranges from significant but random solar flares affecting jet stream tracks, to the 11-year sunspot cycle, to the 22- year magnetic cycle, up to the long-term Milankovic orbital repetitions discussed above. The current decade or longer period of cold winters in the northern United States and Europe coincide with a relatively prolonged reduction in sunspot activity below even the norm for a minimum in the 11-year cycle.

Actual observations show that climate varies in response to natural forces and that human burning of fossil fuels has had negligible effect over the last 100 years. Lets us hope that State and national policy makers taking office in 2011 and 2013 will understand the facts about natural climate change and the fictions about human influence on change before taking enormous constitutional and economic risks - and before liberty and incomes suffer further erosion.

This is the whole article, although I have edited off the footnotes which document the research. You can believe this sort of logic, or buy into the pseudo-religion backed by computer modeling produced by the Al Gore's of the world.

Bombastic Element on art ecosystems and markets in China and South Africa:

It is apparent South Africa, in terms of the push-pull tensions of its post-Apartheid society and emerging middle class, occupies a unique nexus of culture and politics that's boon for artists and art consumption...while in China It is very simple. You have a society [exemplified by] rapid consumerism and a system that's authoritarian. The 2 co-habit, mingle, co-exist in each other...

More here

In Pambazuka Ronald Elly Wanda makes a case for re-instituting the indigenous institution of traditional jurisprudence:

Ronald Elly Wanda

Since flag independence in the 1960s, African governments have been in a rush to normalise authoritarian rule and human rights abuses under the auspices of maendeleo (development) and economic growth. A short stroll in any African village today confirms that the globalised Western culture of justice delivery or innovation that most African leaders seem to trust has not improved the well-being of our local communities or delivered justice for them. On the contrary, it has often blocked viable indigenous innovation of cultures and suffocated African justice. Here in East Africa, cultures of innovation have largely accrued from the jua kali (informal), and not the formal sector. Indigenous cultural innovations have also been at the centre of development in most highly indebted poor countries (HIPC), such as in Uganda or its slightly richer sister Kenya, notably because of wanainchi (citizens) exceptionally limited access to capital.
As such, when it comes to delivering justice in Africa, we ought to revise our priorities by doing away with existing preconceived ideas that might have worked within the European cultural setting. They have clearly not worked in the face of the socio-cultural heritages of African societies, and neither has the opposite, the Africanisation of Western concepts of justice delivery.

More here

Tesfaye Habisso writes in Friends of Ethiopia:

It must also be understood by all that elections alone will not produce democracy and do not necessarily bring about democratic culture. Authoritarian traditions take a long time to wash away. Creating a democracy in poverty -stricken and illiterate societies such as ours itself takes a long time and exacts huge costs, and is often accompanied by violence, disorder, and a period of uncertainty, even chaos. After all, democracies do not at a stroke make societies more civil and stable; they require strong civil institutions and a long period of time. It is only those who are committed to the values of democracy, rule of law, civil liberties and are prepared for the long-haul, and support less than perfect results as long as the efforts are sincere, who will succeed in realizing democracy and development, peace and stability

.More here

Caudillo is a Spanish word that describes a leader who attempts to lead his state in an authoritarian way. Sometimes it is translated as strongman, and it refers primarily to charismatic populist leaders 'of the people' who keeps power by relying on personality cults, securing support from key power blocs in society, and controlling the structure of the government through the distribution of government jobs. A few examples of powerful Caudillos include Juan Manuel de Rosas of Argentina, Antonio López de Santa Anna of Mexico, José Rafael Carrera of Guatemala, Rafael Trujillo of the Dominican Republic, or even the Spanish ruler Francisco Franco, who used from 1936 the title "Caudillo de España" (echoing other titles for charismatic strongmen who rule a nation like "Führer" and "Il Duce").

Democratic President of the United States of America Barack Obama is attempting to be a caudillo.

Ben Stein in his article Our Caudillo President wrote (this is only part of the article):

We live in a Constitutional Republic. The President's job under the Constitution is to enforce the laws made by the elected Congress. His job is not to create new laws and enforce them all by himself. His job is as magistrate under the Constitution, not as Caudillo. He is not the law. He is supposed to enforce what Congress decides.

The BP behavior is reminiscent of how, immediately after assuming office, Mr. Obama, with no Congressional authority or administrative allowance, simply made a phone call to fire the head of GM. When I called the White House press office to ask under what law or regulation Mr. Obama was acting, I was told he did not need a law. If the government put a lot of money into GM, it could call the shots at GM, I was told. But under what authority, I asked. "None needed," was the final answer.

Without any new legislation, President Obama has used returned TARP money as a political slush fund to prop up favorite industries. This is the same problem: serious executive action without legislative authority.

The same goes for Mr. Obama's demand that BP pay the lost wages of oil and gas workers suspended from work because of the moratorium on Gulf of Mexico underseas drilling. There simply was no legislation allowing this kind of specific demand. Mr. Obama's demand was in the nature of a threat, more than a Constitutional act.

These are the acts of a big city boss or a third world dictator.

Ben Stein has picked up on Obama's style of leadership, which was on full display recently- Obama sits up all high and mighty and judges us, threatening people and companies he doesn't like, wags his finger at you, and then just does things, regardless of whether they are legal. And the Congress that is supposed to be providing oversight for him, supposed to be supervising his slush funds and unconstitutional grabs for power, is doing nothing to stop him or rein him in. Obama might be called a new type of Democrat, different from 'moderates' or 'blue dogs', but the moderates and blue dogs are doing nothing to restrain or restrict him, so what use are they.

The only solution that presents itself to prevent our nation from continuing down this strongman path to dictatorship and tyranny is to vote every single person out of office who is a Democrat, and to elect Republicans to replace them. Then, at least we have a shot of keeping this the nation of the free and the home of the brave.

Pop quiz for you. Who said the following statement- US President Barack Obama or Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao?

The complete formulation of our economic policy is to give full play to the basic role of market forces in allocating resources under the macroeconomic guidance and regulation of the government.

Who said this statement- the leader of a a Chinese authoritarian state that operates under principles of unlimited government and no constitutional checks or the President of the US government controlled and run by the Democrats? The idea is that capitalism and market forces are good, but need to be controlled and guided and regulated by government.

Time is up- it was the Chinese Premier! But that was a tough question, right? How about another?

Did this happen in Russia or America recently?

Imagine you're a senior executive at a large business. Hard at work in your office, you're informed that, for reasons unknown, your leader wants to talk to you. He tells you that you are charging too much for your product. You assure him that prices are determined by the market. Unimpressed, the leader demands you lower your prices. Days later, government agencies announce an investigation into the business practices in your industry.

Come on now... it's tough... but did this happen recently in Russia or America? In a former communist nation now run by a dictator who operates in an increasingly tyrannical manner, or did this happen in the good-old-USA? Which country has a leader who thinks it is the proper role of government to set how much businesses can charge for products and is willing to use the power of the state to attack industries that he doesn't like?

Time is up- it was Russia! Nothing like that would ever happen in our nation, would it? State-run capitalism? Nah!

In Aidwatch:

Is Ethiopia having a famine? As often is the case, there are two forces pulling in opposite directions that make it hard to answer the question...On the one hand, the authoritarian government wants to cover up any famine to mute criticism of its performance...On the other hand, NGOs have a well known tendency to cry wolf and exaggerate—to see famine where there is no famine—perhaps in order to raise more money for their own organization

More here

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• Let Food Range Free (my-beauty-best-teacher.blogspot.com)

Anna Nadgrodkiewicz  at CIPE highlights Richard Joseph's contentions on a "key weakness" of 'frontier Africa' one:

...that undermines not only political stability, but also sustained growth: the overwhelming power of the executive. Despite the introduction of formal elections, many African democracies persist in the old ways of seeing the government as a way of getting rich. Newly elected leaders tend to move toward accumulating more power and influence with the end result not much different from the personal rule of their authoritarian predecessors.

More here

Although I am no expert on foreign policy, I do have an undergraduate degree focusing on it, and so I'm always interested in events like those going on in Honduras. The situation is really quite simple, and summed up nicely by the WSJ via Powerlineblog. I'm going to copy the whole story down here, because it is complete and does a great job at showing just how clear the situation is:

Yesterday the Central American country was being pressured to restore the authoritarian Mr. Zelaya by the likes of Fidel Castro, Daniel Ortega, Hillary Clinton and, of course, Hugo himself. The Organization of American States, having ignored Mr. Zelaya's abuses, also wants him back in power. It will be a miracle if Honduran patriots can hold their ground.That Mr. Zelaya acted as if he were above the law, there is no doubt. While Honduran law allows for a constitutional rewrite, the power to open that door does not lie with the president. A constituent assembly can only be called through a national referendum approved by its Congress.

But Mr. Zelaya declared the vote on his own and had Mr. Chávez ship him the necessary ballots from Venezuela. The Supreme Court ruled his referendum unconstitutional, and it instructed the military not to carry out the logistics of the vote as it normally would do.

The top military commander, Gen. Romeo Vásquez Velásquez, told the president that he would have to comply. Mr. Zelaya promptly fired him. The Supreme Court ordered him reinstated. Mr. Zelaya refused.

Calculating that some critical mass of Hondurans would take his side, the president decided he would run the referendum himself. So on Thursday he led a mob that broke into the military installation where the ballots from Venezuela were being stored and then had his supporters distribute them in defiance of the Supreme Court's order.

The attorney general had already made clear that the referendum was illegal, and he further announced that he would prosecute anyone involved in carrying it out. Yesterday, Mr. Zelaya was arrested by the military and is now in exile in Costa Rica.

It remains to be seen what Mr. Zelaya's next move will be. It's not surprising that chavistas throughout the region are claiming that he was victim of a military coup. They want to hide the fact that the military was acting on a court order to defend the rule of law and the constitution, and that the Congress asserted itself for that purpose, too.

Mrs. Clinton has piled on as well. Yesterday she accused Honduras of violating "the precepts of the Interamerican Democratic Charter" and said it "should be condemned by all." Fidel Castro did just that. Mr. Chávez pledged to overthrow the new government.

Honduras is fighting back by strictly following the constitution. The Honduran Congress met in emergency session yesterday and designated its president as the interim executive as stipulated in Honduran law. It also said that presidential elections set for November will go forward. The Supreme Court later said that the military acted on its orders. It also said that when Mr. Zelaya realized that he was going to be prosecuted for his illegal behavior, he agreed to an offer to resign in exchange for safe passage out of the country. Mr. Zelaya denies it.

Many Hondurans are going to be celebrating Mr. Zelaya's foreign excursion. Street protests against his heavy-handed tactics had already begun last week. On Friday a large number of military reservists took their turn. "We won't go backwards," one sign said. "We want to live in peace, freedom and development."

Besides opposition from the Congress, the Supreme Court, the electoral tribunal and the attorney general, the president had also become persona non grata with the Catholic Church and numerous evangelical church leaders. On Thursday evening his own party in Congress sponsored a resolution to investigate whether he is mentally unfit to remain in office.

Again, I'm no expert, and I don't want to oversimplify things here, but the bad buy is the former President and the good guys are whoever is getting rid of the brutal communist who is trying to illegally stay in power. If I were the President of the United States, I would be supporting those people on the side of good- those who want law, freedom, and prosperity. Perhaps I would wait a bit just to make sure my initial take on events was correct, but probably my statement would be supportive of what is going on, or at least as neutral as Obama's statements were on the overthrow of evil dictators by forces of good in Iran.

But Democrat President Obama sees things differently. He quickly sided with the bad guy, and stood shoulder to shoulder with other bad guys (Castro, Chavez, Ortega) in being "deeply concerned" about the ouster of the tyrannical president. Again, he quickly sided with the bad guy- Obama's first impulses, those that show his qualities and character the most, are to side with bad guys. He further makes a call to restore the tyrannical president to his place, and appears to be 100% supportive of the bad guy in this situation.

I've hammered Obama about his domestic policy, where it appears as if he is trying to destroy the United States for no reason at all. Let's not forget Obama's foreign policy though, where he is attempting to hurt our best friends (British, Israel, Georgia) while attempting to give everything to our worst enemies. Not to make this oversimplify or black and white, but Obama appears to be helping the bad guys. That's why he is a bad President.

G. Pascal Zachary writes in The East African:

“If autocrats do not deliver prosperity any more reliably than democrats, then the romance with benign authoritarianism is probably misguided. Democratisation must be pursued wholeheartedly in Africa — but pursued without illusions. Elections inevitably heighten ethnic tensions, but these tensions can be managed. If democrats are to triumph over authoritarian populists, they must take more seriously the importance of balancing ethnic differences along with promoting economic growth. One without the other is unsustainable.”-[continue reading]

via Africa Works

This week has been a slow week for posting. I could blame it on the fact that I have been really busy, but that's honestly not it- the real reason is that every day it seems to be getting worse and worse around here, and I'm starting to get annoyed.

For example, I read in the Detroit News two stories- one that says that the Democrats in Congress and the President is going to do everything it can do to help the domestic auto company, and than another that says that the Democrats in Congress and the President are going to slap the auto industry with new fuel efficiency standards that will cost $1.5 billion. What the f&%$ is that?

A lot of my students express similar frustrations- I was trying to teach them today about bills of attainder and ex post facto laws, and one of them raised a hand and asked what the point of it was if you could just ignore or re-interpret those clauses whenever you wanted to? I mean, come on- how am I supposed to do my job and teach these students the core beliefs of our country, how am I supposed to teach them to be proud of our rights and liberties, when the freaking government keeps undercutting me by violating them so openly?

So my brother passed me this site to look at, called I Am Simon Jester. I like it. The reference of course is to The Moon is a Harsh Mistress, where in the book those who decide to break free of their earthly rulers would often scrawl anti-authoritarian graffiti on walls, signing it "Simon Jester". Some have have suggested that those who find the American government oppressive do the same, and I like it. From I Am Simon Jester:

We are not anarchists. We are not Far-Right or Far-Left. We are the seventy percent in the middle. We are not Capital “L” libertarians, although we do have sympathies with their platform. We are neither bitter clingers nor conspiracy nuts.

What we are is a group of folks that think we see liberty and freedom eroding in our beloved United States. We see the policies and agendas of the hirelings in Washington D.C. heading toward an abbreviation if not outright abrogation of the Bill of Rights.

We think the Federal government, not just this administration, is more interested in self-serving personal, political, and party power than it is in actually doing its best to do the least.

For almost a hundred years, our country has been heading towards becoming a Socialist, centrally planned, Nanny State where the Federal Government tells it citizens how to conduct business, what they could grow in their own gardens or on their own farms, and now even how much a private citizen is allowed to earn before punitive and illegal taxation takes it away.

Now is the time to make it stop.

There are many ways for you to be Simon Jester. Wear a t-shirts that says "Simon Jester," or "I Aim to Misbehave," or "Don't Tread on Me." Go to a Tea Party- there are some coming up on April 15. Write your government officials. And take action, however, whenever you can to show our government officials that we are not going to stand for it anymore, we will not take it anymore, and we will not go into the night quietly.

Mahmood Mamdani writes in LRB:

Many have compared Mugabe to Idi Amin and the land expropriation in Zimbabwe to the Asian expulsion in Uganda. The comparison isn’t entirely off the mark. I was one of the 70,000 people of South Asian descent booted out by Idi Amin in 1972; I returned to Uganda in 1979. My abiding recollection of my first few months back is that no one I met opposed Amin’s expulsion of ‘Asians’. Most merely said: ‘It was bad the way he did it.’ The same is likely to be said of the land transfers in Zimbabwe.

What distinguishes Mugabe and Amin from other authoritarian rulers is not their demagoguery but the fact that they projected themselves as champions of mass justice and successfully rallied those to whom justice had been denied by the colonial system. Not surprisingly, the justice dispensed by these demagogues mirrored the racialised injustice of the colonial system. In 1979 I began to realise that whatever they made of Amin’s brutality, the Ugandan people experienced the Asian expulsion of 1972 – and not the formal handover in 1962 – as the dawn of true independence. The people of Zimbabwe are likely to remember 2000-3 as the end of the settler colonial era. Any assessment of contemporary Zimbabwe needs to begin with this sobering fact...[continue reading]

via 3QuarksDaily

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The FT writes about "The legacy of Suharto":

In the 1990s, World Bank staff used to tell a joke about two friendly government ministers, one from Indonesia, the other from Nigeria. Each enriched himself by taking bribes from a big road contract. The Indonesian took 20 per cent of the contract price, but the Nigerian boasted to his friend that he was even richer because his cut was 100 per cent. But in Nigeria, of course, there was no road.The purported moral of the joke was that Asian corruption was efficient whereas African corruption was not. Former allies and business associates of Suharto, the Indonesian ex-president who died on Sunday, want his legacy to be judged in this light. Suharto may have been corrupt and authoritarian during his 32 years in power, they say, but he oversaw political stability and economic growth that pulled millions of Indonesians out of poverty...It will be easier to end corruption if the crimes of the late Suharto, his relatives and associates are not swept under the carpet in a misguided attempt to burnish his legacy. Suharto was better than some of his African counterparts, but worse than his people deserved.