President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad of Iran could not have picked a better time to be both defiant and adamant about his nuclear ambitions. Not only are there widespread disagreements in the international community about whether or not Iran is a danger and whether or not it should be stopped, the nations with the will and the means to stop Iran militarily are politicially unable to do so. An international high-stakes hot potato game has begun.
Nuclear Iran - Passing the Hot Potato
Published November 23rd, 2006 in Middle East and Iran. 0 CommentsSenior Democrat Proposes Reinstating Draft
Published November 21st, 2006 in US Legislative and Military. 0 CommentsIn what can only be called an odd role-reversal, Rep. Charles Rangel (D-NY), who will chair the House Ways and Means committee come January, said he would seek passage next year of universal draft legislation.
Rangel told CBS’ “Face the Nation” yesterday that “If we’re going to challenge Iran and challenge North Korea and then, as some people have asked, to send more troops to Iraq, we can’t do that without a draft”, adding that the war in Iraq is being fought by American soldiers who disproportionately are from low-income families and minorities and implying a desire to change that.
Gingrich Seemingly Announces Presidential Bid
Published November 21st, 2006 in '08 US Elections. 0 Comments(Sources: Fortune magazine and RedState)
Former speaker of the House Newt Gingrich spoke to Fortune magazine today about the 2008 presidential elections and whether he would run in them.
“You still don’t get it, do you?” he asks.
The radical realist who defied conventional wisdom 12 years ago by stealing the House out from under the noses of entrenched Democrats now plans a surprise attack for the presidency. “I’m going to tell you something, and whether or not it’s plausible given the world you come out of is your problem,” he tells Fortune. “I am not ‘running’ for president. I am seeking to create a movement to win the future by offering a series of solutions so compelling that if the American people say I have to be president, it will happen.” So he’s running, only without yet formally saying so.
After having just finished writing a post asking for your opinions on the UN, I thought it would be fair for me to expand a bit about what I don’t like about the UN. And the end of the article you’ll find some praise for the United Nations, just to be fair. Here’s what I already wrote earlier:
General Assembly resolutions are, by merit of not being binding, irrelevant. And the Security Council is, due to the veto-system, incapable of making decisions on many touchy subjects. Having to attain a majority of votes is usually such an arduous project that resolutions are watered down to a shadow of their original intentions and often achieve nothing.
Your Opinion: The Future of the US in the UN
Published November 20th, 2006 in Opinion, United Nations and Your Opinion. 1 CommentWhile browsing a multitude of political blogs and forums after yesterday’s UN General Assembly resolution on Israel and the subsequent comments of John Bolton, the US Ambassador to the UN, I found that there are some very strong and very different opinions out there on the future of the United States in the UN.
Bolton yesterday -in a slightly roundabout way- suggested that the United Nations might not be “capable of playing a helpful role in the region”, referring to the Middle East, and said that anti-Israel bias is “a decades-old, systematic problem that transcends the whole panoply of the UN organizations and agencies.”
From Reuters:
Massachusetts Democratic Sen. John Kerry said on Sunday he is still considering a second run for the White House in 2008, despite public criticism of what he has has called a “botched joke” about the Iraq war.
In an interview on “Fox News Sunday,” Kerry was asked he had given up on a presidential run after the flap over his comment to students that they could “get stuck in Iraq” if they did not study hard enough.
“Not in the least. I am looking at it in the same way. The people that I have talked to across the country, my team’s confident and strong. I don’t know what I’ll do.
A day after Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah accused the Lebanese government of a lack of credibility and being “in a state of weakness and feel[ing] a huge defeat as the result of the last Israeli war in Lebanon”, the anti-Syrian bloc in the Lebanese government fear a coup is imminent.
Prominent politician Walid Jumblatt warned his party members today that “the (pro-Syrian) opposition groups are on the verge of announcing a coup in the country and we (the anti-Syrian parliamentary majority) should take the brave decision to confront all options.” Jumblatt is the Druze leader of the Progressive Socialist Party, the second largest party in the Lebanese parliament and a member of the coalition.
UN General Assembly Urges End of Gaza Violence
Published November 18th, 2006 in Middle East, Israel & Palestine, Opinion and United Nations. 1 CommentThe United Nations General Assembly has overwhelmingly passed a resolution urging an immediate end to all acts of violence by Israelis and Palestinians. (Sources: BBC World and Haaretz).
The resolution calls for an immediate end of Israeli incursions in Gaza and Palestinian rocket fire into Israel. It also calls for an immediate investigation into the recent Beit Hanun shelling, where a few misfired shells killed 19 Palestinians, to be set up by UN Secretary General Kofi Annan. The investigation is likely to be headed by former US president Jimmy Carter. There is no mention of the Hamas-led abduction of Israeli corporal Gilad Shalit.
Spot the Candidate #1: Presidential Hopefuls Seek Spotlight
Published November 18th, 2006 in '08 US Elections. 1 CommentAlmost two years before the American people will be able to elect a new president, the presidential race has slowly but surely started. History teaches us that most serious candidates will announce their intentions in early 2007 to give them ample time for fundraising before the all-important Iowa caucus and New Hampshire primary in January 2008.
For now it is seems like the ‘ones to beat’ in the upcoming primaries will be Rudy Giuliani and John McCain for the Republicans, while the Democratic nomination will probably be fought out between Hillary Clinton, John Kerry, John Edwards and Barack Obama, with Clinton as the clear front-runner. But what do we know? Most mainstream media made Howard Dean out to be the favorite in 2004 and look what happened there.
I could hardly believe my eyes when I read this report. Now even former UN weapons inspector Hans Blix believes that North Korea seeks to perfect a nuclear bomb.
Blix warned the world not to strike a quick disarmament deal that doesn’t have appropriate verification measures in place, saying “cosmetic inspection is worse than none because that can lull states into a confidence that is false, and you can have very unpleasant surprises”. And here I thought that Mr. Blix was fine was the cosmetic inspections Saddam gave him of the Iraqi facilities throughout 2002.
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