Blatant Reality

Even with his presidential bid over, Ron Paul still finds ways to make his way into the news. What was his latest antic that was found newsworthy? Well, it seems that Paul was the only Representative to vote against sending our condolences to the people of Myanmar that were affected by the cyclone.

As the article states, these resolutions are just ceremonial and overall are completely worthless. Why he would vote against something this simple if it doesn’t commit any of our resources is beyond me. Even if he doesn’t give a care about anything else that happens in the world you would think a simple “We offer our condolences” would be fine. Crazy kid.

Anyways, my favorite part of the article was that the author referred to Ron Paul followers as “Paultards.” That made me laugh just because I, for one, have never heard his followers called that.

In recent meetings, North Korea has admitted to sending engineers to Syria. However, they swear that they weren’t involved in any nuclear business Syria was doing.

North Korea acknowledged sending engineers to military-related facilities in Syria, during its recent talks with the U.S. over its nuclear program, Kyodo News reported, citing unidentified diplomatic sources in New York.

 

The communist nation, however, denied involvement in Syrian nuclear development, Kyodo said yesterday.

With his party conceding the defeat in the election today, Musharraf’s future isn’t to certain. With his party coming in third in the number of parliamentary seats won so far, impeachment or the invalidation of his October election could become a reality.

With the support of smaller groups and independent candidates, the opposition could gain the two-thirds majority in parliament needed to impeach Musharraf, who has angered many Pakistanis by allying the country with Washington in 2001 to fight al-Qaida and the Taliban after the Sept. 11 attacks in the United States…

 

Musharraf has promised to work with whatever government emerges from the election. But the former general is hugely unpopular among the public and opposition parties that have been catapulted into power are likely to find little reason to work with him — particularly since he no longer controls the powerful army.

 

Sharif has been especially outspoken in demanding that Musharraf be removed and that the Supreme Court justices whom the president sacked late last year be returned to their posts. Those judges were fired as they prepared to rule on whether Musharraf’s re-election last October was constitutional.

 

If the opposition falls short of enough votes to remove Musharraf, the new government could reinstate the Supreme Court justices and ask them to declare the October election invalid.

 

The spokesman for Sharif’s party, Sadiq ul-Farooq, told reporters Tuesday that Musharraf “should go.” But he added that if the restored justices validate Musharraf’s October election to a new term, the opposition would accept the decision.

Gateway Pundit has a good post concerning several US legislators’ involvement in this election. It’s worth a read.

Yea, I wasn’t so interested in the nuclear talks part but more in the way this Indian paper referred to the United States presidency as a “regime.” I mean this is first class liberal jargon we are talking about here. The worst part is, the paper doesn’t even get this phrase from the interview. Here, take a look (emphasis added):

Atomic Energy Commission chairman Anil Kakodkar has said efforts to ensure success of the Indo-US nuclear deal would go on regardless of regime change in the US.

 

Speaking to reporters after delivering a lecture on Monday at the National Institute of Advanced Studies on India’s nuclear energy status, he said: “It is a step-by-step process and takes time. I am not willing to conjecture on what will happen to the nuclear deal in connection with the US presidency… I don’t want to say whether the deal will be seen through before or after the Bush presidency… We will continue to talk with the US.”

 

Kakodkar said he was neither positive nor negative about the deal. “I am a realist, I am realistic about it. If the deal goes through, it is very good. I don’t think about whether it won’t… But if it doesn’t, our indigenous programme will go on. I can say our indigenous programme is sustainable on its own…”

Unless the reporter left out the part where Mr. Kakodkar referred to the Bush presidency as a “regime,” I really don’t know why the author would even refer to it as that. I mean, this isn’t an opinion piece so words like “regime” are normally limited to referring to those really bad nations (aka Iran and North Korea).

Well, I guess if it ain’t liberals at home you got to worry about it’s also the ones abroad. Go ahead Mr. Anonymous Liberal, keep putting words in other people’s mouths. Just remember that there are people like me watching and catching your (intentional) mistakes.

Today, Pakistan arrested two men in connection with the assassination of Bhutto last December.

Pakistani investigators arrested two men in connection with the assassination of opposition leader Benazir Bhutto, the Interior Ministry said.

 

The men were arrested today in the garrison city of Rawalpindi, where Bhutto was assassinated in a shooting and suicide bomb attack on Dec. 27, ministry spokesman Javed Iqbal Cheema said in a telephone interview. An investigating team of police and intelligence officials is interrogating the suspects, he said.

China seems to be experiencing one of the coldest winters it has had in the past century.

Millions remained stranded in China on Monday ahead of the biggest holiday of the year as parts of the country suffered their coldest winter in a century.

 

Freezing weather has killed scores of people and left travellers stranded before the Lunar New Year, or Spring Festival — the only opportunity many people have to take a holiday all year.

 

It has also brought China unwanted negative publicity six months before the Summer Olympics in Beijing.

The United Nations’ Human Rights Committee will bring a draft condemning North Korea’s human rights violations to the General Assembly for a final vote. In the draft along with singling out North Korea, the committee also condemned the human rights record of Iran and Myanmar. Cuba, probably feeling like they may be the next to be singled out for their human rights record, tried to rally some nations against the draft.

Before the vote, Cuba rallied members of the 118-nation Nonaligned Movement which it heads not to approve the draft resolution because it singled out North Korea.

However, that didn’t seem to do much because the draft passed easily with a 97-23 vote with only 60 abstentions. I really don’t know what the fuss is about; The result of the vote in the General Assembly will be non-binding and will most likely have no affect on the countries what-so-ever. The world already knows that human rights are constantly being ignored in those countries so its not like it will even raise awareness of the atrocities happening there.

UPDATE:

Yea, Iran was pretty angry with the UN’s panel including them in it’s draft so you know what they did? Sentence 50 college age kids to death because of “immorality.” Hmmm, for some reason I don’t think that will help their case.

In the past six years alone, North Korea has violated the Northern Limit Line 135 times, with 2/3 of those incursions being with military patrol boats.

Baek Seung-joo, chief researcher of the North Korean Studies Division for the Korean Institute for Defense Analysis, said that the crossing of North Korean fishing boats “can be understood as the pursuit of economic purposes. But patrol ships’ violations are an obvious sign that North Korea has no intention to respect the NLL.” Baek recalled that the North has repeatedly demanded a redrawing of the line but mainly uses the matter as a convenient pretext to reject South Korean proposal to build up mutual military trust.

Even though North Korea has promised to dismantle its nuclear program, the country still celebrated the one year anniversary of their first nuclear detonation.

On the one-year anniversary of its first nuclear test, North Korea gushed praise over the country’s success and its leader, saying the test was a “miracle.”

 

“Our leader Kim Jong-il has brought to us, 70 million people (on the Korean Peninsula), the sky of lasting peace, prosperity and hope,” said the Rodong Shinmun, the newspaper of the ruling North Korean Workers’ Party monitored in Seoul.

With North Korea shutting down its nuclear facilities, questions arise about where will all the atomic physicist go.

Unlike the arms engineers of the former Soviet Union, the North Korean experts are far from the forefront of their field. But they have honed skills in old technology that could spread with relative ease.

Washington and the North’s neighbors worry they could follow the path of Abdul Qadeer Khan of Pakistan, who became a merchant of nuclear secrets to Libya, Iran and North Korea itself.

A more immediate concern is that failing to assure the scientists’ future could give Pyongyang another reason to resist disarmament.

As with most solutions, more problems always seem to crop up.