A veritable carnival

Baghdad's Sadr City goes to the great sheep give away

Sorry I don't have a picture of the first people in line receiving their sheep. Or the little kid who toppled into the razor wire. Or the teenager who punched a soldier in the jaw.

Mosul update

The group who organized the suicide bombing in the U.S. mess tent has released a video showing them planning and executing the attack.

Mea culpa

I am so sorry I didn't catch this one before Christmas - what a clever (and economical!) idea. Try to remember it for a year.



Office nativity.

"The miraculous apparition of the Holy Family in three randomly placed tape dispensers."

(From Adult Christianity)

Shut up, professor

Or face Amerika's gulag.

Jesus' General has a link to an article that you'll just have to read to get the full value. It seems the College Republicans are duping people into donating. Really. I know it's hard to believe. I like the part about telling people to send a flag pin along with their donation so that the president can wear them to Republican Headquarters. I hope they send little bitty ones, or they're not all going to fit anywhere. No. Wait. I think his head is big enough.

Anyway, you must read the fantastic report. I have a hard time feeling sorry for people who wipe out their life savings to donate to anything like a political group - or anything for that matter. Even if it is little old ladies with dementia. I would never personally dupe them into doing so, however.

But what's really funny is that the RNC wants to be distanced from the College Republicans because of their dirty tricks! It's a lie. There is no honor among theives.

What do you expect from the College Republicans? They're Republicans. Let's not expect them to be something else.

The General's post is a good read, too. It's responding to another fantastic claim from a Republican college student. These young 'uns are getting an early start on the New Amerikan way. "Liberal" academic professors are under attack from the righteous right and the Republican party. They're an endangered species. There is no room for independent or progressive thinkers in the New Amerika.




Graphic from Whitehouse.org

Are you still buying

Well, let's shake off that final illusion right now.

The Bush administration is considering reserving a few high-level posts in the next Iraqi government for Sunni Muslims, regardless of how well they fare in next month's elections, for fear that their exclusion could prolong the country's military and political turmoil.

[...]

"There's some flexibility in approaching this problem," a White House official told the New York Times. "There's a willingness to play with the end result - not changing the numbers, but maybe guaranteeing that a certain number of seats go to Sunni areas even if their candidates did not receive a certain percentage of the vote."

Guardian article

Ah, democratic elections. Don't you just love them?

So much for speculation about how the Bush Administration was going to keep control over the Iraqi government.

Talk of guaranteeing Sunni representation has not been raised officially but, according to several sources within the state department, it is being seriously discussed both in the US and in Iraq.

[...]

Some Sunnis have called on the US and the Iraqi interim government to postpone the election while security improves - a request that has repeatedly been rejected by the Bush administration.

Instead, US officials have been mixing threats and promises to force the Sunnis to the polling station and on to the ballot papers.

I just can hardly bear to look any more.

Update 8:00 pm:

And not to put too fine a point on it...but, we get the booty.

The United States is helping the interim Iraqi government continue to make major economic changes, including cuts to social subsidies, full access for U.S. companies to the nation's oil reserves and reconsideration of oil deals that the previous regime signed with France and Russia.

During a visit here this week, officials of the U.S.-backed administration detailed some of the economic moves planned for Iraq, many of them appearing to give U.S. corporations greater reach into the occupied nation's economy.

[...]

to date all contracts let for "reconstruction" by the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) have gone to U.S. firms, which have then subcontracted some work to foreign companies.

[...]

Washington has installed hundreds of U.S. economic advisors in all Iraqi government ministries, who have a decisive say on most economic decisions. It has also sponsored the bulk of the nation's economic changes, based on a neo-liberal model that emphasises privatisation of government entities and cuts to social spending.

One major move the country is inching towards under U.S. guardianship, which was discussed this week, is a rollback of Iraq's huge subsidies system, which may have kept millions of Iraqis from starvation under U.S. and UK-backed sanctions imposed by the United Nations after the 1991 Gulf War.

Read it if you can stomach it.

Update 12/27: See today's post.

Chuck, please check in

Indonesia Earthquake Sparks Tidal Waves Across Asia, Killing More Than 3,900 People in 6 Nations

Update7:30 pm :

Asian Tsunami Kills 12,300, Many More Homeless

More than 12,300 people were killed and tens of thousands left homeless after a powerful undersea earthquake unleashed giant tsunami waves that crashed into the coasts of south and southeast Asia.

[...]

In Los Angeles, the head of the Pacific Tsunami Warning Center said U.S. officials who detected the undersea quake tried frantically to get a warning out about the tsunami.

[...]

"It took an hour and a half for the wave to get from the earthquake to Sri Lanka and an hour for it to get ... to the west coast of Thailand and Malaysia," he said. "You can walk inland for 15 minutes to get to a safe area."

"We tried to do what we could," he said. "We don't have contacts in our address book for anybody in that part of the world."

It's called "the Pacific Tsunami Warning Center", and it doesn't have contacts in that part of the world?

The Geneva-based International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies said it was seeking 7.5 million Swiss francs ($6.5 million) for emergency aid funding.

The United States said it would offer "all appropriate assistance," while the European Union pledged an initial three million euros ($4 million).

I guess we'll have to wait and see what "appropriate assistance" is. You might have thought it would be a warning in that hour during which the "Warning Center" knew about the quake.

Update 8:00 am Dec 27: The latest figure for death toll is 22,000+. Thanks for checking in, Chuck.

So how was your Christmas?

James Wolcott analyzes the only Christmas movie that I ever liked....

The only Christmas movie I can now abide is White Christmas [...] starring Bing Crosby, Danny Kaye, Rosemary Clooney, and the insectile Vera-Ellen, whose scissory legs could decapitate a man should the situation demand.

After watching The Nightmare Before Christmas, (perhaps the only good modern Christmas movie, sent to me this past week in a generous surprise package by a YWA reader - and thank you, I'll be sending a personal note), I can tell you that, if you haven't watched White Christmas, "insectile" is a good descriptor, which I hadn't thought of before, and which aptly describes Jack Skellington's legs, too. So, if you've seen Nightmare but not White Christmas, think of Jack's legs, and you'll be very close to a picture of Vera's. I always thought of her as resembling a prancing pony. The movie is worth watching just to see her dance. There really is something non-human, but utterly fascinatingly attractive about it. Like watching Jack Skellington, the Pumpkin King, stroll up the hill silhouetted by the moon.

My favorite Christmas may always be the one I spent in San Francisco at the Cannery. Years ago when I lived on Fisherman's Wharf, I took a couple of nice bottles of wine and some plastic cups down to the Cannery where the wharf's homeless people gathered to celebrate Christmas eve. They gathered at some tables in the courtyard and shared whatever they had - cigarettes, mostly. Some beer. And one old woman had a coloring book and crayons. A couple of street artists were there. One, a musician, who played his guitar for the group, and one, a very good magician, who got drunk and gave away the secrets to his card tricks. Taking nothing away from the incredible skill required to seemingly pull cards out of thin air (and do it while drunk!), I was disappointed to learn how it's done, and I tried desperately to get him to keep the secret. Alas, the alcohol told him otherwise.

Anyway, it was a very peaceful, caring and sharing evening, the likes of which I have not seen elsewhere or when for a Christmas eve celebration. A great memory.

Okay, that's all out of the way, now on to the news. It hasn't gotten any better, of course. Hope you enjoyed your respite. Hope you had one.

I've been unable to log in to tblog today until just now, so here's a collection of post-Christmas items:


Go visit The General...he's got a nice portrait of Jesus with a mullet.

And, hey...

Getcher shirts here:





And other stuff you can buy - sorry, I'm late with the Christmas gift ideas. Maybe there'll be a next year.

Hypocrisy's poster boy....

Bush calls for Compassion at Christmas

Into the woods

The government will no longer require that its managers prepare an environmental impact analysis with each forest's management plan, or use numerical counts to ensure there are "viable populations" of fish and wildlife. The changes will reduce the number of required scientific reports and ask federal officials to focus on a forest's overall health, rather than the fate of individual species, when evaluating how to protect local plants and animals.

Houston Chronicle article

I absolutely agree with looking at the bigger picture and evaluating the overall health of a forest. But, what I would like to know is how you can determine the overall health of an ecosystem without considering the environmental impact of your management practices or monitoring individual species population dynamics. Hm?

Oppose the Gonzales nomination

Democracy in Action makes it easy for you to voice opposition to the nomination of Alberto The-king-is-above-the-law -and-the-Geneva-Conventio ns-are-quaint-and-obsolet e Gonzales for U.S. Attorney General. Although no nomination by this president is going to be a good choice.

Mathematical Musical Interlude

From Apostropher:

Step One: Assign musical notes to the ten single-digit integers.
Step Two: Play the first 10,000 digits of pi.
Step Three: Profit.

I listened to this for much longer than it probably deserved.

I don't know what it "deserves", but it captured my ear for a good long while. And, speaking of pi, did you ever watch the movie? If not...

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

The Mosul Mess

The deadly suicide attack on a US military base in Mosul this week was an "inside job" carried out by insurgents who are part of the Iraqi armed forces, Asia Times Online has been told.

Sources said a strong nexus between Iraqi forces and the resistance is what allowed them to carry out the most devastating attack on US troops since the beginning of the invasion. US forces have imposed a curfew in Mosul and have launched a military operation in the city, but, the sources say, this will have little effect on the problem, for the simple reason that the US-trained Iraqi military is heavily infected with people loyal to the resistance groups.

[...]

While various analysts ponder the insurgents' strategy in the lead up to next month's elections, and opine that their primary goal is to disrupt those elections, the resistance says it has a different agenda. In a message to Asia Times Online from the Netherlands, Nada al-Rubaiee, a member of the central committee of the Iraqi Patriotic Alliance, a group that is part of the Iraqi national resistance movement both inside and outside Iraq, said, "Everything in the resistance movement is clear ... There is agreement on one issue; that is, getting freedom from foreign occupying forces and their handymen."

Asia Times article

No. No. I'm sure that's not it. They are evil people who don't want the Iraqis to be free.

Meanwhile, Nada claims that the number of casualties from the Mosul attack is far higher than what was admitted by the US, 22 people. "In the [dining tent] where the attack took place, there were at least 500 US soldiers. The number of casualties given by the occupation forces always excludes private contractors [non-official soldiers/unregistered soldiers-agents]. We expect the number [is] a lot higher than the announced one."

According to Nada, the attack was very organized - so much so that a video of the bombing was even prepared and will soon be released.

Are we winning?

In the secrecy column....

Amerika's offshore prisoner camp:

Prisoners were experimented on

And:

The Central Intelligence Agency has been unilaterally removing records from public collections in the National Archives, according to the minutes of a September 2004 meeting of the State Department Historical Advisory Committee that were approved for release this week.

The Advisory Committee oversees the production of the official State Department publication Foreign Relations of the United States (FRUS).

article

I told you USA Today hates America

More proof that commie rag is going down!:

By Al Neuharth, USA TODAY Founder

• More than a half million troops serving overseas will have little holiday happiness, especially the 138,000 in Iraq.

My saddest Christmases came when I was ages 19, 20 and 21 serving in the Army in World War II. The 86th (Blackhawk) Infantry Division took me far from my South Dakota home, first to Texas and California for training, then to France, Germany and the Philippines.

[...]

Despite unhappy holidays, nearly all of us who served in WWII were proud, determined and properly armed and equipped to help defeat would-be world conquerors Hitler in Germany, Mussolini in Italy and Hirohito in Japan.

At age 80, I'd gladly volunteer for such highly moral duty again. But if I were eligible for service in Iraq, I would do all I could to avoid it. I would have done the same during the Vietnam War, as many of the politically connected did.

"Support Our Troops" is a wonderful patriotic slogan. But the best way to support troops thrust by unwise commanders in chief into ill-advised adventures like Vietnam and Iraq is to bring them home. Sooner rather than later. That should be our New Year's resolution.

USA Today article

James Wolcott quotes some more America-haters.

SS reform

No, the goons are not being deported. We're keeping them in Washington high office for now. But Frogsdong has something to say about the privatization of Social Security:

My financial advisor, a nice fellow at Morgan Stanley, agrees with my analysis of SS privatization, by the way, but then it doesn't take a genius to see what will happen. The financial services sector makes an estimated $290 billion in commissions on all that new money, those who are ahead of the curve in the market make a fortune when all that new money starts chasing just so much equity, the smart players get in ahead of the SS money and out before the Big Adjustment (because all that new money chasing just so much stock will cause an over-valuation of the equities, which will adjust eventually). The end result will be many, many people losing their shirts and their retirement savings in the market. I will have my money in bonds, annuities, and other low-risk securities by then, but that won't help the massive increase in poverty, led by the oldest among us. Be prepared to see lots of 70+ year old people working in retail stores as perfume shpritzers.

What's really happening in Iraq?

If you want to know why public opinion in Western Europe has been so overwhelmingly against the U.S. war in and occupation of Iraq, there’s one obvious answer: the difference in television news between theirs and ours.

[...]

An on-the-ground study of Iraqi casualties between April and September by Nancy Youssef of Knight Ridder newspapers demonstrated that "Operations by U.S. and multinational forces and Iraqi police are killing twice as many Iraqis — most of them civilians — as attacks by insurgents." But you’re not told this by U.S. TV’s "embedded" reporters, who’ve traded their reportorial independence for access to the boom-boom footage that drives what Time magazine has labeled the "militainment" proffered by American television. In fact, embedded reporters are enrolled in what the Pentagon calls "information operations" — a counterpart to military operations designed to exact the rosiest possible picture of the U.S. occupation from accredited reporters. Those who don’t toe the Pentagon line, and who report negatively on the occupation of Iraq and the indiscriminate effects of U.S. forces’ combat there, are simply blacklisted.

I think that's why they're called "media whores". How to get better information, or 4 Ways to Find Out What’s Really Happening in Iraq by Doug Ireland

Christians leaving Iraq

Iraqi Christians, that is.

Iraqi Christian Alaa Alfonse spent his first Christmas abroad on Saturday, having quit the homeland where attacks on churches and increasing religious intimidation is making life tough for those of his faith.

"Many of the things that are happening in Iraq (news - web sites) now push us to leave,
whether it be the bombing of churches or the threatening of Christians or pressuring our women to cover their heads," said Alfonse, 33, attending Christmas mass with his family at the Alliance Church in central Amman.

article

And, gee, I wonder what ever became of that grand idea that Christians here in the States had for embarking to Iraq, Bibles in hand. Perhaps I should ask the guy at work who signed up to go convert some Muslim. He's still here.

And....

Juan Cole has the Iraq war report summary for Christmas Day, plus a look at the happy Christmas we brought to Iraq's Christians:

The US Christian Right has been loudly complaining about the alleged exclusion of Christmas from the US public sphere. (There isn't really any evidence of it.)

But Iraq's approximately 700,000 Christians actually are having to hide their celebrations for fear of violence from radical Muslim extremists. Borzou Daragahi reports that most Iraqi Christians are declining to put out Christmas lights or symbols, and many are attending daytime masses or none at all for fear of car bombs. Many masses have even been cancelled by the churches. Christians had been relatively safe under the Baath regime.

And so this is Christmas*

I've been saving up some little bits and pieces for your Christmas Day enjoyment. For those of you visiting today, thanks for hanging around. Many blessings today and every day. May the fog of world clear up soon.

[T]he national government will maintain and defend the foundations on which the power of the nation rests. It will offer protection to Christianity as the very basis of our collective morality. Today Christians stand at the head of our country. We want to fill our culture again with the Christian spirit. We want to burn out all the recent immoral developments in literature, in the theatre, and in the press . . . in short, we want to burn out the poison of immorality which has entered into our whole life and culture as a result of liberal excess during the past few years. -- Adolf Hitler

The Great American Treason

It's the Devil's Christmas, this year, as the wolves of war bay at the moon, and Lucifer's legions move on every front. Iraq, Iran, Russia, and the Caucasus – they're everywhere, looking for an opening. Christmas, the season of hope, is this year transmuted to the season of fear and ominous foreboding. Even as we celebrate the birthday of the Prince of Peace, the pagan acolytes of the war god plot in the shadows.

Justin Raimondo article

Why are Bill Kristol and Andrew Sullivan – a marriage made in hell if ever there was one – echoing Mad Dog McCain's barking for "more boots on the ground" if not to escalate and widen the fight? The dogs of war are baying up a storm as Christmas steals in with the night. So light a fire against the encroaching darkness, and cuddle up with whomever, while wolves howl in a distance that seems ominously closer. As we drift off to sleep, visions of sugar plums dancing in our heads, let's forget for a moment that the War Party never sleeps.

More Justin Raimondo

When Jesus was murdered by Rome as a political criminal -- crucifixion was the way such rebels were executed -- the story's beginning was fulfilled in its end. But for contingent historical reasons (the savage Roman war against the Jews in the late first century, the gradual domination of the Jesus movement by Gentiles, the conversion of Constantine in the early fourth century) the Christian memory deemphasized the anti-Roman character of the Jesus story. Eventually, Roman imperialism would be sanctified by the church, with Jews replacing Romans as the main antagonists of Jesus, as if he were not Jewish himself. (Thus, Herod is remembered more for being part-Jewish than for being a Roman puppet.)

In modern times, religion and politics began to be understood as occupying separate spheres, and the nativity story became spiritualized and sentimentalized, losing its political edge altogether. "Peace" replaced resistance as the main motif. The baby Jesus was universalized, removed from his decidedly Jewish context, and the narrative's explicit critiques of imperial dominance and of wealth were blunted.

This is how it came to be that Christmas in America has turned the nativity of Jesus on its head. No surprise there, for if the story were told today with Roman imperialism at its center, questions might arise about America's new self-understanding as an imperial power. A story of Jesus born into a land oppressed by a hated military occupation might prompt an examination of the American occupation of Iraq. A story of Jesus come decidedly to the poor might cast a pall over the festival of consumption. A story of the Jewishness of Jesus might undercut the Christian theology of replacement.

Common Dreams article

For centuries Christians around the world have accepted the Nativity story at face value - that Jesus was born in a stable in the little town of Bethlehem.

But a growing number of Bible scholars and archaeologists are rocking the foundations of Christian faith by suggesting they have identified a different birthplace for Jesus.

They claim to have amassed a considerable body of evidence for their theory but say Church leaders are in no mood to listen.

Aljazeera article

Ed: No, and for good reason – the account has St. Matthew making a switcheroo for political purposes. Political!?! Jesus? Christ! What are you people suggesting?! Read the article.

Why, oh why, does Bush hate Christmas? There, right at the beginning of Bush's press conference, he used such hateful language I could hardly believe what I was hearing:

Good morning and happy holidays to you all.

Happy holidays? Why does Bush want to banish Christmas? I can't wait to tune in to O'Reilly and listen as he has the courage to stand up against those who wish to banish Christmas. I look forward to the press releases from James Dobson and the Christian Defense Coalition on Bush's attack on Christianity. And next weekend I'll get on my feet and cheer as Pat Robertson hits the Sunday talkies coming to the defense of Christmas everywhere.

It Affects You post

Bill O'Reilly (who ought to be sodomized with a candy cane) is on to something when he belches forth, "This Christmas battle really stunned the secular forces," but it's not for the reasons he's thinking. It's not because we "secular forces" are taken aback at the ferocity of the defense of Christmas. If you tell a chimp not to throw its feces at you, the chimp is still gonna toss that shit. It's what chimps do. No, the "you gotta be fuckin' kidding me" response from the Left has more to do with the fact that, once again, the right has taken something insignificant, blown it up to something huge, and used it as a distraction from the shit that really matters. Social security "privatization"? Too complicated. Muslims and Jews who don't like Christmas? That's a Crusade we can have an Inquisition about. That speaks to the deep seated xenophobia of so many people, so flamed into rage by the right (like O'Reilly, who now has appointed himself the spokesman for the actions of Jesus when he proclaims that, because of the "attacks" on his birthday, "Somewhere Jesus is weeping." The Rude Pundit gets the feeling that if Jesus is weeping, it's probably watching the cars getting loaded with boxes at the valet parking at a Nordstrom's somewhere).

The Rude Pundit post

Happy Saturnalia

Okay, this whole "Happy Holidays" jihad is confusing me. As far as I can remember, people have been saying "HH" for many, many years now. Every time I've heard it, regardless of who's speaking it, I've always interpreted it as an act of kindness that's meant to imply "I know we may have different beliefs, but I hope your celebration is a happy one." Of course, with New Years in the mix, it's more than a pleasant inter-faith greeting. "Happy Holidays" is a nice, sincere expression of the whole season.

For a few humbugs out there, however, "Happy Holidays" has been stripped of its goodness and turned into a hideous attack on Christmas. Did you think you were being kind and inclusionary in your seasons greeting? Well, you were wrong! Little did you know that you were actually saying "Up yours, baby Jesus".

Talent Show post

And, just in case that doesn't get the message across, there's.....

The chicken nativity set (available at Our American Heritage - there are others, if you're not a chicken fan - the moose nativity is nice)...





*
A very merry Christmas
And a happy New Year
Let's hope it's a good one
Without any fear
And so this is Christmas
For weak and for strong
For rich and the poor ones
The world is so wrong
And so happy Christmas
For black and for white
For yellow and red ones
Let's stop all the fight
A very merry Christmas
And a happy New Year
Let's hope it's a good one
Without any fear
And so this is Christmas
And what have we done
Another year over
And a new one just begun
Ans so this is Christmas
I hope you have fun
The near and the dear one
The old and the young
A very merry Christmas
And a happy New Year
Let's hope it's a good one
Without any fear
War is over
If you want it
War is over
Now...

---John Lennon
(hear it)


But, wait. Don't leave just yet, I found a little cheer...

Have a Holly Jolly Christmas (an .mp3 file - sung by my favorite guru at age 3).

And have a holly jolly, regardless of the news I bring you, okay?

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

Battle Hymn of the Republic

"Brought Down to Date" 1901 - Mark Twain

In a sordid slime harmonious, Greed was born in yonder ditch;
With a longing in his bosom - for other's goods an itch;
Christ died to make men holy, let men die to make us rich;
Our God is marching on.

Situation FUBAR

Insurgents have been able to "operate at will" in Mosul [...] because the US forces and the Iraqi authorities have failed to tackle them, an intelligence assessment by senior US officials in northern Iraq concludes.

[...]

The intelligence assessment suggests there was a lack of rigour in the vetting procedures for posts in the Iraqi security forces.

It says: "The US military and Iraqi government should have been aware of the history of persons they appointed to positions."

The lack of effective action by the interim Iraqi government "left the door open for the terrorist groups to work freely in secure areas", it says, adding that better vetting is essential."Each appointment must be seriously reviewed."

Guardian article

And that was a report created last month, before the mess tent blast caused by a suicide bomber who waltzed right in unchallenged.

Going to war with the army you have

Members of a second National Guard unit that prepared for duty in Iraq at the Army's Fort Bliss compound have come forward with allegations that they were not adequately trained. The soldiers said in interviews, e-mails and official documents that they were sent to war earlier this year with chronic illness, broken guns and trucks with blown transmissions.

The unit's M-60 machine guns reportedly were in such bad condition when the soldiers deployed in February that one sergeant -- in a section of a post-training summary sent to his commanders that was titled "gun maintenance" -- wrote: "Perhaps we should throw stones?"

[...]

In the summary document obtained by the Los Angeles Times, the sergeant reported that some soldiers had arrived in Iraq without ever having fired some of the weapons they would use in war. Military commanders at the Fort Bliss complex, which straddles the Texas-New Mexico line, had misread mobilization orders, costing the soldiers a month of training, the sergeant wrote.

"We have been called away from our homes and families for hostile operations. We are owed a chance to be trained properly and given the tools to obtain that objective," the sergeant wrote.

South Coast Today article

You'd think.

Freedom's just another word

From Justin Raimondo:

The U.S. government-funded organization known as "Freedom House" has recently delivered a Christmas present to Russian President Vladimir Putin: his country has been downgraded, from "partially free" to "not free." Israel, of course, is deemed completely "free," in spite of treating its Arab subjects worse than Sparta ever treated its helots. Putin is no Jeffersonian democrat, but neither has he rounded up and imprisoned an entire people and sought to ethnically cleanse them from their homeland. Freedom House standards are elastic, bending to the dictates of American foreign policy.

In Tony Blair's England, an internal passport in the form of a national ID card has been instituted, you can be arrested for making politically incorrect remarks about officially protected minority groups, and spy cameras are on every corner, yet the Brits get off scot "free." Bollocks.

Oh, and by the way, following my post on China's negotiations with Canada, Venezuela and Iraq, Justin has this little tidbit:

Israel has lately been selling sensitive military technology to China. (Technology, one might add, that was either purchased – with our tax dollars – or stolen from the U.S.) Although, for some reason, we haven't been hearing much about that in the English-language media.

Justin Raimondo article with embedded links.

Libya, Oh Libya

Our new little buddy is not settling down. And the trouble is with our other buddies. Whatever will we do?

After a foiled assassination plot, name calling has turned into diplomatic woes.

Riyadh announced on Wednesday that it had recalled its ambassador from Libya and would expel the Libyan envoy from the Saudi capital.

Aljazeera article

I just love it when this guy is in the news. Such a dandy. His outfits are to die for.