The Post Scolds China

The Washington Post scolds China in an editorial today. The subject is Burma and China's increasing willingness to block any actions against tyrannical regimes.

In the past three days, Burma's ruling junta has carried out a bloody and criminal crackdown on a peaceful protest movement led by thousands of Buddhist monks. The regime admits that 10 people have died in the volleys of gunfire and the baton charges its soldiers have directed at demonstrators. More likely is that the death toll is in the scores. Hundreds of monks and democratic opposition activists have been rounded up at night and trucked away to unknown fates; troops have occupied and ransacked monasteries.

Sadly, the degree of international outrage over these events has been inversely proportional to the influence those speaking out have over the Burmese regime. The Bush administration and European Union have been admirably outspoken, but the generals have a long record of dismissing the West. Burma's neighbors, who made the controversial decision to admit the regime to the Association of Southeast Asian Nations a decade ago, expressed "revulsion" at the use of violence against the protests but did not call for an end to military rule. India, which has struck military and economic deals with Burma, was even milder, saying it "is concerned at and is closely monitoring the situation."

But the weakest response of all was left to China, which did $2 billion worth of business with Burma last year alone and is its principal supplier of weapons. China's ambassador at the United Nations blocked a Security Council resolution condemning the crackdown. The strongest word Beijing has been able to cough up is "restraint." U.S. officials counted it as an achievement that China supported the dispatch of a U.N. envoy to Burma……

As was pointed out in the last post, democracies talk, tyrannies act. China has been blocking meaningful sanctions against rogue states for many years now. It is not getting better. The Post says that the cracked and bleeding skulls of the Monks in Burma will cast a stain of the Beijing Olympics. Before the crackdown and the cracked heads, western analysts were confidently predicting that China would restrain the junta to protect their Olympic image. That didn't quite work, did it?

China understands what the west refuses to. Democracies talk and scold. Tyrannies do pretty much what they want. It is doubtful that they care one whit how much the Post scolds them.

Substituting Talk For Action

Mark Steyn explains the difference between democracies and tyrannies in terms so simple even a left wing academic could understand. It's not about risk-free dissent, it is about action.

At some point during this past week, it was decided that the relevant Ahmadinejad comparison was to Nikita Krushchev. The Soviet leader toured America in 1960, was taken to a turkey farm, paid a visit to Frank Sinatra and Co. on the set of "Can-Can" and pronounced the movie "decadent." And yet the republic survived. As one of my most distinguished fellow columnists, Peggy Noonan, put it in the Wall Street Journal, Krushchev's visit reminded the world that "we are the confident nation." And, as several e-mailers observed, warming to Noonan's theme, back then hysterical right-wing ninnies didn't get their panties in a twist just because a man dedicated to the destruction of our way of life was in town for a couple of days.

Whether or not this was a more "confident" nation in 1960, it's certainly a more post-modern nation now. I don't know whether Stina Reksten, as a 28-year old Norwegian, can be held up as an exemplar of American youth, but she certainly seems to have mastered the lingo: We've invited the president of Iran to speak but let's not confuse "the very dire human-rights situation" – or his nuclear program, or his Holocaust denial, or his role in the seizing of the U.S. Embassy hostages, or his government's role in the deaths of American troops and Iraqi civilians – with the more important business of applauding ourselves for our celebration of "academic freedom."

So much of contemporary life is about opportunities for self-congratulation. Risk-free dissent is the default mode of our culture, and extremely seductive. If dissent means refusing to let the Bush administration bully you into wearing a flag lapel pin, why, then Katie Couric (bravely speaking out on this issue just last week) is the new Mandela! If Rumsfeld is a "fascist." then anyone can fight fascism. It's no longer about the secret police kicking your door down and clubbing you to a pulp. Well, OK, it is if you're a Buddhist monk in Burma……

That then is the difference. Democracies talk, tyrannies act. In Burma, the junta has acted ruthlessly while democracies expressed concern. In Iran, Ahmadinejad hangs homosexuals; democracies invite him to speak at Columbia. Post modern democracies have forgotten all the lessons of history. At some point talk no longer works. Woodrow Wilson tried talk right up until he saw that it would not work. Then the doughboys went to France. Franklin Roosevelt was all for talking, until the bombs shattered the quiet of a bright, sunny morning in Hawaii. Then he was all-in for the war. Truman was willing to talk right up until the North Koreans crossed the 38th parallel. Then he sent the Army. John Kennedy talked up a storm until the missiles arrived in Cuba. Then he sent the Navy to blockade.

In the post modern west, the default is talk until talking fails, then start a new round of talk. Express concern when the militias in Sudan butcher humans. Send a bit of food aid so the targeted villagers present bigger targets for the tyrants who prefer acting to talking. Express concern about those monk guys over in Burma while the junta cracks their skulls with batons or shoots a few holes in them. Howl endlessly if a western leader acts instead of talks. Screech and whine your risk-free dissent against that risk-free target and ignore the real monsters. Or invite them to talk at Columbia. Or even to attend classes at Yale.

Forget the lessons of history.

Fashion Week

The Modern Left ExposedExplained

Well, I wondered what exactly was "liberal" about today's left in this post. It did not take long to get an explanation from The Time of London's columnist Mick Hume. (Funny how the Rupert Murdoch owned Times has an avowed Marxist as a columnist, isn't it?) Hume explains exactly what is liberal about the left: Not a damned thing.

Spotted on the London Underground: an Amnesty sticker demanding “Stop raping Darfur”. Who was that aimed at: commuting Sudanese militiamen? Or was it just there to turn our work journey into another guilt trip?

Some of those on Sunday’s London march for action on Darfur wore blindfolds, supposedly to symbolise the West’s refusal to face the truth. To me it rather symbolised the blind ignorance of the pro-intervention lobby. Why are those who protest against the disastrous intervention in Iraq demanding more of the same for Sudan? Do they really think it will be all right if Brown and Sarkozy lead the charge instead of Bush and Blair? Duhh-fur!

The crusaders won’t learn the lesson that such interventions do not work. They perpetuate conflicts, turn civil wars into international theatres where local actors compete to win outside support, and impose hopeless states. Never mind Iraq, look at “success stories” such as Kosovo or East Timor.

The pro-interventionists drown out these inconvenient truths with pop videos and atrocity stories. As Professor Mahmood Mamdani, of Columbia University, points out, their presentation of the Darfur conflict looks more like a voyeuristic “pornography of violence”, spiced up with promiscuous claims of deaths – now 120,000, now a quarter of million, now 400,000.

It is almost funny. The left accuses those who don't agree with them of having an "I've got mine, Jack" mentality. But I think Hume explains exactly who has that mentality.

The New Royal Navy!

The Telegraph is reporting that the British Royal Navy has big, big plans for its future. Thanks to extreme cost cutting by the government, the RN is working on plans to downsize the fleet. Even more than before.

The Ministry of Defence has produced a plan to decommission five warships from next April, which would reduce the Navy's capability to the level where it could carry out only "one small-scale operation".

Separate documentation from inside the department suggests that the total number of ships in the Navy and Royal Fleet Auxiliary could fall from the present level of 103 to 76 in 2017 and only 50 in 2027 — a reduction of more than half.

The information has been supplied in an email from a whistleblowing official inside the MoD, who has given details of a row between senior officials in the department and Andy Burnham, the Treasury Chief Secretary, over the allocation of money to the MoD over the next three years.

The deal, sealed under the Comprehensive Spending Review and announced in July, gave the MoD an annual increase of 1.5 per cent above inflation for the years 2008-11.

Our operatives have managed to obtain a photo of the entire Royal Navy after all the cost cutting is finished.

(Photo by Silje L. Bakke)

Reprisals

The Daily Mail is reporting that people in Burma are bracing for reprisals now that the junta that has ruled - ruthlessly - since 1962 has the upper hand in suppressing the popular uprising against it.

Burma was yesterday bracing itself for a wave of bloody reprisals as military generals claimed victory over pro-democracy protesters.

Squads of soldiers were being sent out to track down and punish the leaders of the revolt.

And suspected protesters were forced to kneel on the pavement in front of troops in a humiliating pose normally used to show respect towards senior monks.

As UN special envoy Ibrahim Gambari arrived in Burma to meet the country's generals, activists feared a brutal crackdown against the monks and students who led last week's protests.

Last night, about 1,000 monks were said to have been incarcerated in Rangoon's infamous Insein Prison and it was claimed that some have already been sentenced to six years in jail for their actions.

Anti-junta groups said 200 protesters had been killed in the uprising in Rangoon alone. Burmese authorities, however, claimed there had been only nine deaths.

The army's victory seemed almost total as columns of military trucks accompanied by crack paramilitaries drove up and down Rangoon's key roads.

Agam has more, including a number of organizations that have been documenting the junta's brutal crackdowns on ethnic minorities. One thing I've noticed. The left in this country - and in the west in general - has largely remained silent on what is happening in Burma. Just as they are silent about the totalitarian moves of (T)hugo Chavez in Venezuela. Just as they are silent about what Robert Mugabe is doing to the people of Zimbabwe.  

Who says the left has one, damned thing liberal about them?

No Honor

IMPORTANT UPDATE: Jerusalem Post has removed the story. Jim Hoft contacted them - the actual video appears to have been shot in Northern Iraq in April. Regardless, the only hope that entire region has is democracy and respect for basic human rights.

The Jerusalem Post has a very disturbing story in it about an "honor Killing" in Gaza caught on video. Consider this fair warning, If you are squeamish stop reading now, the rest of the post is below the fold.

Read more »

Car Shopping

Talk about sticker shock. A moose decided he needed a new set of wheels, so he visited a Colorado dealership to scope out the Aston Martins.

A lost 800-pound moose scoped out the new cars at a Broomfield auto dealership Friday morning before running toward some willows and being felled by a tranquilizer darts.

"It certainly was big enough that none of us wanted to approach it," Eric Erbsland, sales manager at Sill-TerHar's Ford-Lincoln-Mercury dealership, said of the unusual visitor. "He started out at our service department then ran all the way through, past every single new car, then pulled a U-turn and ran right at us. That's when we ran.

"He then ran through all the Aston Martins and Volvos."

"It definitely was not ideal moose habitat," Division of Wildlife spokeswoman Jennifer Churchill said of the crossroads where U.S. 36, U.S. 287 and Colorado 121 come together at an industrial park in Broomfield.

The moose shrugged off the first tranquilizer dart, went down when hit by a second but then got up and headed farther north before finally being quelled by a third, Churchill said.

They hauled the moose away to a remote location. As he was being driven off, he was heard to mutter, "That's the last time I shop there."

Ninja Nanny Still On The Run

Decatur, Alabama is still being plagued by a black nanny goat that will not be captured. The goat is mocking attempts by humans to catch it.

To the amusement of some doing the chasing, the goat's legend grew Thursday as police tried without success to take it into custody or just keep it off the road and away from traffic.

At one point, according to The Decatur Daily, the goat darted from bushes into a narrow space behind a shed as officers approached. When an officer stepped up to block her exit, the goat turned and darted back the other way, slipping past another would-be captor.

She head-butted a closed gate, knocking it open, and raced across Fairview Drive, where Tommy Alston, a sewer worker, saw the goat fly past and leave an animal control officer in the dust.

"The guy just threw his net (in frustration)," Alston said.

The goat disappeared around the corner of a house.

"She was on two wheels when she hit the corner. It was like she knew where she was going. The goat was like, 'Catch me if you can,"' Alston said. "It was ridiculously funny. The policeman was laughing harder than I was."

(Earlier post on the Decatur ninja nanny here). We believe that the ninja nanny can't be captured for a simple reason. She possesses superhuman, er, supergoatish, powers. We're pretty sure the goat escape artist is actually a member of The Goat Justice League named Ewedini. Remember, you heard it here first.

(Note: Yes I am aware that a ewe is a female sheep. It was too good a play on words. Just like "Wonder Ewe" was.)

Deterrence

During the Cold War the United States and Russia managed to refrain from launching nuclear weapons at each other no matter how tense things got between the two superpowers. This was accomplished mainly by one, simple if awful doctrine. Known as Mutually Assured Destruction, or the completely appropriate acronym MAD, both sides understood that any nuclear attack by one power would be met with an overwhelming response by the one attacked. It was a terribly cold calculus, but it kept the missiles in their silos. It worked for one, simple reason: both side were fundamentally sane. Both sides knew that both sides would be destroyed and that there would be no winner of such a war.

But it counted on both sides being sane.

Dan Senor looks at Iran's behavior and does not see that sanity. In 1992 and again in 1994 Hezbollah, financed and directed directly by Iran detonated powerful bombs in Argentina. A prosecutor their has issued arrest warrants for top Iranian leaders. (I posted about that here.) Apparently the attacks were carried out to teach Argentina a lesson after they stopped cooperating with Iran on nuclear energy and missile programs. It was also a demonstration to Israel that Iran could reach out anywhere. Senor draws a number of conclusions from these events:

The Argentinean case reminds us of four important points.

First, we must reconsider the applicability of Cold War-style deterrence. Its central argument is this: While it would be preferable that Iran not go nuclear, the history of the Cold War demonstrates that the possession of nukes creates a balance of power, and thus makes the possibility of nuclear war extremely unlikely. Representing the pro-deterrence school, Stephen Biddle of the Council on Foreign Relations says, "We've lived with Iran as a terror threat for a generation. Iran has a return address, and states with a return address can be retaliated against."

This misses the point. Even if Iran never fires a nuke or transfers one to a terrorist group, its possession of nukes would enable it to escalate support for terrorist proxies, allowing it to dominate the region and threaten moderate regimes. Who would be prepared to retaliate against a future Buenos Aires terror attack if we knew that the "return address" was home to a nuclear weapon?

Second, U.S. officials are deeply concerned that Tehran would not even have to build a complete bomb to transform the balance of power. It would just have to make the case that it could complete development on short notice. "For their political needs, that would be enough," says Gary Samore, a nonproliferation official in the Clinton administration.

Third, Mr. Rafasanjani continues to be described in the Western media as a leading Iranian "moderate." If Mr. Toma is correct, this "moderate" was intimately involved in the planning of the Argentina bombings. And he has ambitions to succeed President Ahmadinejad.

Fourth, according to Mr. Toma, the Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei authorized the Buenos Aires attacks. This is important because many analysts today argue that, as scary as President Ahmadinejad sounds, he is not really in charge in Tehran–the true "decider" is the Supreme Leader. Well if he is, then we should in fact be doubly concerned.

Therein lies the real problem with Iran. The actions they took against Argentina are not fundamentally sane. Governments that are sane do not plant bombs to murder civilians as a payback for another government's decision not to pursue certain arms deals. That is why deterrence will not work with Iran.

Strange as it sounds, a MAD doctrine will not work if one of the parties is really quite mad.

The Smear Campaigns

Juan Williams goes on the offense to defend Bill O'Reilly against the Soros-backed smear machine that is attempting to damage him. Because the smear machine is also going after him.

O'Reilly, controversial host of the top-rated TV cable talk show on Fox News Channel, interviewed me on his radio show about a woman-hating, N-word-spouting rapper being hired by McDonald's for a celebrity endorsement. O'Reilly has been on a crusade against big companies legitimizing a crass, hateful and pornographic popular culture by putting stars like Snoop Dogg, the pornographer/rapper, in their ads.

Sad to say, but a lot of today's rappers fit the bill.

They make their name by bragging about how many people they've killed, how many times they've been shot and how many "bitches" they've abused. And those rappers, along with no-talent black comedians who use the N-word and profanity constantly, are creating a very negative image of black people in music, in music videos and in the movies.

So, O'Reilly says to me that the reality to black life is very different from the lowlife behavior glorified by the rappers. He told me he was at a restaurant in Harlem recently and there was no one shouting profanity, no one threatening people. Then he mentioned going to an Anita Baker concert with an audience that was half black, and in sharp contrast to the corrosive images on TV, well dressed and well behaved.

I joked with O'Reilly that for him, a guy from Long Island, a visit to Harlem was like a "foreign trip." That's when he brought up his grandma. He said she was prejudiced against black people because she knew no flesh-and-blood black folks but only the one-dimensional TV coverage of black criminals shooting each other and the rappers and comedians glorifying "gangsta" life and thug cool. He criticized his grandmother as irrational for being afraid of people she really did not know.

I defended his grandma.

After watching all those racist, minstrel images of black people, I argued, she is right to buy into stereotypes of blacks as ignorant, oversexed and violent. And I said while I worried about his grandma having racist images justified in her mind I had bigger worries.

Because Williams, who is black, dared to defend O'Reilly he was called a "Happy Negro" by a CNN commentator. The left uses attacks like this on a routine basis, of course. The valid point that both Williams and O'Reilly made, that glorifying thuggish behavior does lead to a terrible, one-sided cartoonish perception of black culture is ignored in order to take things out of context to launch a smear. We have to start paying attention to the man behind the curtain. Go read the rest of what Williams wrote. Its a rather damning indictment of the tactics the left considers acceptable.

(Side note, I don't listen to O'Reilly.)

Silence In Burma

The AP is reporting that the military junta that runs Burma appears to have shut down most of the protests against it. The United Nations has sent an envoy, but it would appear that he will only be allowed to meet with who the junta says he can. Nobody is encouraged by the UN involvement, least of all the Burmese.

The U.N. dispatched one of its chief negotiators to the country to try to persuade the government to ease the crackdown but many demonstrators were losing hope, with soldiers and police seizing control of the streets and sealing Buddhist monastaries to prevent the saffon-robed monks who led the protests from resuming their marches.

Some 300 die-hard protesters, waving peacock-emblazoned flags of the democracy movement, marched down a street in Chinatown to applause on Saturday, but everybody ran when the soldiers arrived. Housewives and shop owners taunted troops and then quickly disappeared into alleyways.

It was not immediately clear if the U.N. envoy Ibrahim Gambari would meet junta leader Gen. Than Shwe during his brief visit to Naypitaw, the remote new bunker-like capital where the country's military leaders are based, or pro-democracy figures like Nobel peace laureate Aung San Suu Kyi, who has spent nearly 12 of the last 18 years under house arrest.

Western diplomats said it was unlikely, noting that the schedule had been set by the government, but the envoy told reporters before arriving "I expect to meet all the people that I need to meet."

"Gambari is coming, but I don't think it will make much of a difference," said one hotel worker, who like other residents asked not to be named, fearing retaliation. "We have to find a solution ourselves."

Local pessimism about Gamabari's visit was reflected by diplomats as well: "We are not very hopeful, but it's the best shot we have," Singapore Foreign Minister George Yeo said at the United Nations in New York.

Agam has pictures and video (NOT for the faint hearted). He reports that the internet connections to Burma were available for a couple of hours before they were stopped again. Agam also has a roundup of lots of links to Asian news and blog sites that are providing coverage.

Enemy Of The State

The Chicago Sun Times has a brief profile of a brave man you've probably never heard of. Leopoldo Lopez is the mayor of Chacao, one of five municipalities that make up Caracas, Venezuela. He is a marked man. Marked by the Chavez government.

There's nothing unusual about a mayor being trailed by a bodyguard — unless, that is, he needs to be protected from assassins working on behalf of the president of his own country. But then, Leopoldo Lopez of Caracas is not your usual mayor and Hugo Chavez of Venezuela is not your usual president.

Lopez — 36, educated at Harvard's Kennedy School of Public Policy, and mayor of Chacao, one of five municipalities within Caracas — has emerged as one of the most visible challengers to the increasingly authoritarian Chavez regime. That's a dangerous undertaking. Lopez recounts three assassination attempts — the most recent last year, when 12 shots were fired at his car, six of them killing his bodyguard. ''He died in my arms,'' recalled Lopez, in Chicago this week for a conference of mayors from North, Central and South America.

An investigation traced the attack to the government and identified a suspect, Lopez says. But the suspect was released after one hour with the case manager in the attorney general's office breaking into tears when she told Lopez, ''This is bigger than what I can handle.''

One of the new changes to the constitution that Chavez has had rubber-stamped by his lapdog legislature will declare anyone who opposes Chavez's programs an "enemy of the socialist state". Lopez knows that he will be so named, but he is continuing to fight Chavez and the takeover of his country. Venezuela has the distinction of being rated as the second most corrupt nation in Latin America behind Haiti. Murder rates are skyrocketing - and the Chavez-controlled police are involved in more and more murders.

Yet Chavez is visited by useful idiots from Hollywood like Kevin Spacey, Sean Penn and Danny Glover. Maybe they should take the time on their next trip to visit a man who is standing against Chavez. While they still can.

Wright Brothers Test “Aeroplane”

Two brothers who purport to operate a "bicycle shop" are claiming that they have been able to lift a man into the air and "fly" using a jumble of wood and fabric and some sort of engine.

"It flew," said test witness Riki Ellison, president of the private Aeroplane Advocacy Alliance, a group funded in part by "Bicycle shop" owners. "It was a success."……

……."Once again, there were no passengers or crew used, making this test one of the simplest, easiest, flights they've ever tried," said Philip Coyle, the War Department's chief weapons tester under former President William McKinley.

Sound stupid? Well, no, it isn't:

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - A U.S. interceptor missile on Friday shot down a dummy warhead replicating an incoming North Korean missile in the seventh successful test of Boeing Co's long-range missile shield, the Pentagon said.

The Missile Defense Agency said in a statement it completed a test "involving a successful intercept by a ground-based interceptor missile designed to protect the United States against a limited long-range ballistic missile attack."

The interceptor missile was launched from Vandenberg Air Force Base on California's central coast, and its target was fired from Alaska's Kodiak Island.

Raytheon Co said a radar it developed, which was located at Beale Air Force Base in California, tracked the target for about 15 minutes during its flight to the intercept point several hundred miles west of California.

"We got it," said test witness Riki Ellison, president of the private Missile Defense Advocacy Alliance, a group funded in part by missile shield contractors. "It was a success."

Development takes time and practice. Period. Engineering is not magic, it is try and try and try again until you get it right. Is there really a problem in some people's minds that it would be a good thing to stop hostile missiles from landing in the US? Well, yes there is:

"Once again, there were no countermeasures or decoys used, making this test one of the simplest, easiest, flight intercept tests they've ever tried," Philip Coyle, the Pentagon's chief weapons tester under former President Bill Clinton, said in a statement e-mailed to Reuters.

One wonders how Coyle would feel if he happened to be at ground zero.

Ruthlessness

In a very unfortunate object lesson, the Associated Press is reporting that popular uprisings against thuggish regimes can be effectively put down by ruthless action of the thug government. The military junta that has ruled Burma since 1962 appears to have taken the upper hand and crushed the uprising against it. Again. The only way a dictatorial government has ever held on in the face of popular sentiment against it is by ruthlessly suppressing dissent. Burma's thugs appear to have learned that lesson.

On the third day of a harsh government crackdown, the streets were empty of the mass gatherings that had peacefully challenged the regime daily for nearly two weeks, leaving only small groups of activists to be chased around by security forces.

"Bloodbath again! Bloodbath again!" a Yangon resident yelled while watching soldiers break up one march by shooting into air, firing tear gas and beating people with clubs.

Thousands of monks had provided the backbone of the protests, but they were besieged in their monasteries, penned in by locked gates and barbed wire surrounding the compounds in the two biggest cities, Yangon and Mandalay. Troops stood guard outside and blocked nearby roads to keep the clergymen isolated.

Many Yangon residents seemed pessimistic over the crackdown, fearing it fatally weakened a movement that began nearly six weeks ago as small protests over fuel price hikes and grew into demonstrations by tens of thousands demanding an end to 45 years of military rule.

The corralling of monks was a serious blow. They carry high moral authority in this predominantly Buddhist nation of 54 million people and the protests had mushroomed when the clergymen joined in.

"The monks are the ones who give us courage. I don't think that we have any more hope to win," said a young woman who had taken part in a huge demonstration Thursday that broke up when troops shot protesters. She said she had not seen her boyfriend and feared he was arrested.

Anger over the junta's assaults on democracy activists seethed around the globe. Protesters denounced the generals at gatherings across the United States, Europe and Asia.

The White House urged "all civilized nations" to pressure Myanmar's leaders to end the crackdown. "They don't want the world to see what is going on there," White House spokesman Scott Stanzel said.

But analysts said it was unlikely that countries with major investments in Myanmar, such as China and India, would agree to take any punitive measures. The experts also noted that the junta has long ignored criticism of its tough handling of dissidents.

Russia is also refusing to act against the junta. I'm really disappointed in India right now. They gained their independence from British rule by peaceful means - and because the Brits refused to be ruthless. I expected a bit more from them in this. But then, the western left has also been largely silent about this. So much for their commitment to freedom.