podpolia

We learn more from the UN every day. Today we learn that one must have “moral authority” to coordinate relief efforts for people in need. The basic message here? The US is making it clear that the UN is the emperor without clothes, and the UN is upset that the US is showing that one does not NEED an emporer (much less a naked one) to do the things that the UN has been doing. The UN discovered that they could play the “moral authority” card during the run-up to the war with Iraq, and now they’re still trying to make it work when it’s completely irrelevant. If we needed any further signs that the UN was a corrupt and stagnant bureaucracy, this was it.

It was only a matter of time. It has become obvious to the rocket scientists on the staff at the Washington Post that Bush is to blame for the tsunami. Now, obviously they don’t come right out and say that, but it’s definitely implied. The most solid evidence they seem able to come up with for this is that Bush has not come out and made an announcement while biting his lower lip like Clinton did. The views of Bush’s staff are even covered (albeit in paragraphs 6 and 7), but are immediately followed by analysis from someone in academia who (suprise!) doesn’t agree with what Bush is doing. The last paragraph discusses how stingy the US is, completely ignoring the fact that the numbers being reported are statistics for the government, and not individual contributions. In that case, the US looks quite a bit better. But no, we must remember that all the people who count believe that the government is the only one who should have money to give out at all.
The detail that irks me most about this article is that the “foreign policy specialists,” whoever they happen to be, equate the effects of a natural disaster with the intentional murder of innocent people by other people. Yes, it’s a bad thing when people die, particularly if lots of people die. Yes, it is good to be sympathetic. But when you start equating deaths from something that no human being could prevent (like an earthquake) to deaths caused willfully by other human beings, you’ve crossed the line. I don’t know exactly how to define it, but that really rubs me the wrong way.

It was only a matter of time. It has become obvious to the rocket scientists on the staff at the Washington Post that Bush is to blame for the tsunami. Now, obviously they don’t come right out and say that, but it’s definitely implied. The most solid evidence they seem able to come up with for this is that Bush has not come out and made an announcement while biting his lower lip like Clinton did. The views of Bush’s staff are even covered (albeit in paragraphs 6 and 7), but are immediately followed by analysis from someone in academia who (suprise!) doesn’t agree with what Bush is doing. The last paragraph discusses how stingy the US is, completely ignoring the fact that the numbers being reported are statistics for the government, and not individual contributions. In that case, the US looks quite a bit better. But no, we must remember that all the people who count believe that the government is the only one who should have money to give out at all.
The detail that irks me most about this article is that the “foreign policy specialists,” whoever they happen to be, equate the effects of a natural disaster with the intentional murder of innocent people by other people. Yes, it’s a bad thing when people die, particularly if lots of people die. Yes, it is good to be sympathetic. But when you start equating deaths from something that no human being could prevent (like an earthquake) to deaths caused willfully by other human beings, you’ve crossed the line. I don’t know exactly how to define it, but that really rubs me the wrong way.

Yushchenko has declared victory, defeating Yanukovich by as much as sixteen percent. For background, look at this post and others at Le Sabot Post-Moderne. Hopefully this is the beginning of meaningful reforms and improvements in Ukraine.

Ukraine has voted again. Hopefully this time they’ll get the actual voting results instead of a government-inspired fable.
Also of interest, a large riot in China. It is difficult to tell from this story just what the real story behind the news is, but either way it appears that there was a large riot against the police. One has to wonder how many of these go unnoticed by the western press, simply because there’s no access to information about them. Hopefully they’ll bravely face down their government like the Ukrainians did recently. As much of an economic threat that China may pose to the United States, it would still be much better for there to be a free, democratic China.

I had been wondering how we had gotten to the place in America where simply opposing the politics of liberals invited cries of “they’re questioning my patriotism!” and where if you are openly patriotic, you tend to be Republican, while many sneer at the ‘flag-waving’ Neandertals in the ‘red states.’ This clears up a lot of what I was wondering about. Definitely worth a read.