As we speak, friends and neighbors, the shite is hitting the fan in a big way about 1000 miles to my right, at the World Climate Conference in Russia. In an astonishing turn of furriner politickin', my newest bestest buddy, Vlad "the Impaler" Putin, is nixing the Kyoto Protocol as an (gasp!) alarmist, opportunist, economically disastrous bit of power-politics out of the goofier corners of Europe. Et Tu, Vladimir?
Basically, the Russkis are going to tell us that global warming is a myth, unsupported by any competent scientific studies, and is being used as a hammer by the also-rans of the world (read "France, Germany, Canada, etc.") to clobber people who actually produce stuff and still have an economic future to worry about.
Now, it may very well be that the meeting between Bush and Putin last week had something to do with this. Although you may not know it from reading the papers, Bush isn't the only Tree-Hating Nazi who didn't sign the Kyoto Protocol. Australia and Japan both waffled, and Russia was still holding back on signing it. Things are bad enough there, economically speaking, without having to retrofit the entire infrastructure to satisfy spit Greenpeace spit. So big bad Vlad decides against it, and has Russian scientists galore to debunk the entire global warming hysteria to boot.
But all is not to be taken at face value, to put it mildly. Putin was also quoted as saying "In Russia, you often hear, either as a joke or seriously, that Russia is a northern country and it would not be scary for it to be two or three degrees warmer. Maybe it would be good and we could spend less on fur coats and other warm things".
Having been in Europe for about 4 years now, and twice having seen snow on April 19th, I couldn't agree more.
Thirteen years after the "liberation" of East Germany, when it was proclaimed that major hostilities in the Cold War were over, Germans still find themselves wondering if the occupation and "reconstruction" of the once-independent state will ever end. Spiralling costs, popular resistance, and political pressure on the homefront have plagued Gerhard Schrder, and have people speaking of corruption and a possible confidence vote, says one source at an independent international watchdog organization.
According to Interpol, an independent international watchdog organization, more than 2,200 people were killed in German-occupied territories in 2002, 12 years after hostilities were offically declared ended.
Speaking today in occupied Magdeburg, Schroeder tried to silence critics of the Germans' unilateral takeover of East Germany, saying "together we must find the way to bring harmony, economic prosperity, social cohesion, and justice."
The country remains deeply divided on the issue of East Germany. www.mgb-home.de, an independent international watchdog organization, says of the lengthy occupation, "the word held and 1994 off from Germany took." Further, the site states, "Who comes too late, punishes the life!"
I stand in front of you today representing the voice of the Iraqi citizen who has long suffered from cruelty within and outside his homeland. Those within his country have inflicted on him the worst kinds of torture: they have attacked his honour, betrayed his family, humiliated him, enchained him and thrown him into miserable wars...And throughout the world, those that stood to benefit scrambled to trade and work with his torturer.
...
To those who stood with the dictator and who continue to question the intentions of the American and British governments in undertaking this liberation, we invite you to come and visit the mass graves where half a million of our citizens lie, come and visit the dried up marshes, come and visit Halabja where chemicals were dropped on civilians, come and examine the lists of the disappeared whose right to live was taken away from them by Saddam Hussein. And we the Iraqi people will ask you why you chose to remain silent.
Whew! I'm glad I was for the war. If nothing else, there was a fight on and I wasn't on the side of people like Osama and Saddam. Or Schroeder or Chirac, for that matter. Often, with complicated issues, you can take a page from Occam's notebook and judge the issue by the participants. If you get dragged into a fight and don't truly understand the conflict, just look at who's fighting and make your decision based on that.
I have to wonder if people like the 3 stooges above have a twinge in their conscience when they read stuff like this. Or if they just roll their eyes, sniff derisively through their pointy, long noses, and wonder themselves when these silly little brown people will stop thinking and start listening to their colonial masters again.
