We Sweden

When he opens his mouth wide like that, I’m sure that the Mullahs can hear him loud and clear in Iran, and have no doubt (lack of faith) that he really means business…

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Haven’t heard the expression “compassionate conservatism” for a very long time. Perhaps the expression will soon turn up in the forthcoming discussions about the plight of America which is NOT in recession with  something like a current 1.7 % growth rate. Which means the US  is doing better than France and Germany.

Should the expression “Compassionate Conservatism” eventually pop up, one thing is already clear, whether the Republican’s conservatism is compassionate to the rich and poor or not, at this stage Romney has at least made it clear (and to my satisfaction) that there will be no compassion for the Mullahs and their genocidal ambition.

Someday, someone will kindly tell us where the similarities that the Republicans share with Sweden’s Conservative Party begin or end and what the Social Democrats of Sweden have in common with the Democratic Party of the United States. Suffice it to say that our Fredrik (the Great) supported Brother Barack Obama in the US presidential elections in 2008.

Still irritated with both Romney and his mate Ryan’s distortions.

In the words of Jim Messina ( Brother Obama’s campaign manager, What Paul Ryan said

“If you’ve seen any coverage of Paul Ryan’s speech in Tampa, you know that the consensus among journalists and independent observers is that it was … factually challenged.

He lied about Medicare. He lied about the Recovery Act. He lied about the deficit and debt. He even dishonestly attacked Barack Obama for the closing of a GM plant in his hometown of Janesville, Wisconsin — a plant that closed in December 2008 under George W. Bush. He also failed to offer one constructive idea about what he would do to move the country forward.”

Jim Messina issues warning about Paul

Romney & Crew did not get whip-lashed by Hurricane Isaac, in Tampa, Florida. Isaac had mercy, headed West. Isaac’s ferocity was even downgraded to that of a tropical storm, and so spared the GOP convention a lashing. What a pity. But Tampa in particular and Florida in general is a special place for me – my Professor of American Literature – my favourite Professor, Jack B. Moore lives there and once upon a time, in 1969 it looked like I was heading for that place (everybody loves the sunshine) when fate intervened. My one and only sister lives there as do some of my first cousins (everybody loves the sunshine.

Now, of course after M. Romney’s performance of a lifetime, everybody’s talking

As The Guardian’s Ewen MacAskill reporting from Tampa, puts it,

“In a largely pedestrian speech, Romney won some of the loudest applause of the night when he said: “President Obama promised to begin to slow the rise of the oceans and heal the planet.” After a long pause to milk the raucous laughter of the crowd he delivered his own pledge: “My promise … is to help you and your family.”

But overall he failed to rise to the occasion, his flat delivery contrasting badly with the man who introduced him, Senator Marco Rubio of Florida, who showed rhetorical flair in an assured speech.”

Not being such a great fan of his, can’t say that I stayed up all night to listen to Mitt Romney’s Acceptance Speech at the GOP , but there it is and in this life, he has certainly made his most important speech so far. Different style from Rev. Jeremiah Wright and Liberation theology, different syle from the Southern Baptist preacher’s (the difference between country and soul, between jazz and pop, between gospel and distorting the truth ) but it seems like on this occasion he and his Mormon soul & tongue were specially on fire for the presidency of the American people. Having been runner up to to Senator John McCain for the GOP’s ticket in 2007 – since when he must have been patiently counting his money and quietly biding his time for his next attempt at occupying the oval office at White House, this time with a message of hope and prosperity that he hopes with resonate not necessarily with the souls but with the hearts, minds and pockets of the American people and the spectacular promise that he’s gonna create 12 million new jobs…(heck that’s more than the population of Sweden and West Virginia combined

12 million is the equivalent of the entire populations of some ten US states combined!

Consider !

All he could do last night was to decry all the efforts and achievements of President Obama to date – as if the financial meltdown didn’t begin during Bush’s watch. As if, if he Romney had beaten McCain for the GOP ticket in 2008, he would not have had to start on page one, with bailing out the banks, for trillions of dollars.

If it is indeed, as some of the conspiracy theorists say, that it is the rich who decide who is crowned King in America, then they set the stage – stage one : the bank bailouts by president Obama and now we’re waiting for stage two : if the Romney-Ryan vision prevails, back to more rigorous cut-throat capitalism in a much more competitive world, where the winner/killer takes all….

Greed and Debt

Mr. Romney Reinvents History

Romney Not Plausible Enough to Replace Obama

Meanwhile, serious food for thought about American ascendancy: China, Egypt commit to raising their bilateral Strategic Partnership to an unprecedented High

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Sizzla – Be strong – YouTube

So, if I want to see Sizzla me got to go out of di country to see him since him cian’t play here?

Sizzla from whose name has been coined the word Sizzlagate and that important input Life before Sizzlagate ( bear with the translation) clarifying the history of a tenuous relationship between reggae and humanity (and believe it or not ( you have no choice) humanity incorporates homosexuality as part of human sexual behaviour, from the time of early man and woman to now ( 31^st August 2012).

These two sentences from Life before Sizzlagate are noteworthy:

“ On the other hand, reggae music’s most hardline supporters who argued that Sizzla-resistance was actually an expression of racism that demonstrated a colonial view of sexual politics.”

“Homophobia is reggae’s blind spot, that a colonialism and slavery heritage as a liberating musical culture has not been able to make up with.”

Last week I read this 2004 Guardian essaywhich shines some light on the colonial proposition, with this clear head-line: “It’s not natural :The developing world’s homophobia is a legacy of colonial rule

Of relevance as homophobia grips/ engulfs Africa, with Liberia being the latest to pass some stringent precautionary laws – probably to pre-empt Brother Obama’s same ’sex marriage approval gaining traction in Liberia which is the most American of African countries…..

For those who would like to look into such insights more closely : Colonialism and homosexuality

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“Hang ups, let downs

Bad breaks, set backs

Natural fact is Honey,

that I can’t pay my taxes” ( Marvin Gaye – Inner City Blues)

Get this: That last line “I can’t pay my taxes” was not Mitt Romney howling or hollering at the US authorities or his honey.

And before that last line, long before that, Karl Marx wrote this letter (which I read for the first time this morning) to Abraham Lincoln…

It’s not too difficult to understand that Mitt Romney is no Robin Hood, but we have been made to believe that the Protestant Ethic does not exclude Mormon business ethics and includes working hard and paying your fair share of taxes.

Those who are at home in the US ( including members of the African Diaspora West) would have a hard time explaining to anyone in Sweden how there could be doubts about Mr. Romney not having paid IN FULL, the taxes that are legally binding on him and all citizens and yet he is aspiring to be president of the US.

mccain saw romney’s tax returns and picked sarah palin

Perish the thought that in Sweden, such a deficit in the kind of good behaviour required by those who dream of leading us could get someone like him to have the effrontery to aspire to lead any Swedish Party to victory – even if such a one had only made some minor mistakes in his tax declaration or there was any suspicion that he was a tax-dodger.

I guess that to a lesser extent that would be true of the United Kingdom too.

Reading this report that “In his 2010 tax returns Mitt Romney forgot to mention his investments in Iran Oil that were reported in his 2006 tax return” only adds insult to injury.

Read more: http://www.politicolnews.com/mitt-romneys-iran-oil-investments/#ixzz24suMp5Ne

Some of us Obama supporters were happy that Hurricane Isaac caused Mitt & Co Ltd to postpone their big meet from Monday, to Tuesday. And that the Hurricane could steal some of the news headlines space and some of prime TV news time from Mitt R & Co. (Some of the more ardent and ill-willed supporters even sent silent prayers to Heaven, imprecating the Almighty that Hurricane Isaac should – instead of continuing on to Louisiana, should be guided ( like a laser) to lash the GOP Convention in Tampa, Florida. That and the timing would have certainly been a sign, of the kind that Rabbi Ovadia Yosef (who is currently praying for the destruction of Iran ) could be quick to interpret – as he did interpret Hurricane Katarina’s devastation of New Orleans – although he might take more kindly to interpreting the ferocity of Hurricane Isaac – because of his love for the righteous Isaac, son of Aba Abraham. No need to speculate, if we are patient he might eventually come up with an interpretation, most probably, political and with a pro-Israel spin.

Still wondering why it’s called Isaac.

I suppose that if  it were lashing Iraq it would be called Hurricane Saddam?

And if blowing in from the Persian Gulf could earn the title Hurricane Ahmadinejad? ( A terror hurricane)

Feeling more than just a little disgusted with Romney just now because of his policy of distorting everything that Brother Obama says – here’s one blatant example

A question being asked is, Republican National Convention: Where are the African Americans?

Ms Palin of the Tea Party hasn’t taken the podium yet

On Day 1 Ron Paul and his supporters have been true to form…

My first thoughts just before starting today’s blog took me back so many years to this alliterative line,

So slender Sohrab seem’d, so softly rear’d and Matthew Arnold’s treatment of the historical figure Rostam

( to be continued)

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Kurdistan

The Kurdish People

This is a fait accompli – regional autonomy : Iraqi Kurdistan

Kurds in Sweden

Kurdo Baksi the anti-racism activist is well known in Sweden….

It’s difficult to ascertain exactly how many Kurds live in Sweden, for the simple reason that we cannot rely on the immigration office statistics which classify them according to their countries of origin: Iraq, Turkey, Iran, Syria, Azerbaijan,Armenia, Lebanon,Turkmenistan, etc.

Should a Kurdistan nation soon come into existence, we can be sure that many in Sweden would be returning to build their country.

This Eid message  is great encouragement to Kurdish nationalism :

MY ‘EID MESSAGE – A FREE KURDISTAN

Here too this sudden spate of articles about Kurdistan

Kurdistan could become a great nation and probably be a stabilising force in the new geopolitic…

I once heard from someone who claims to know, that the Kurds and the Hindus have never persecuted the Jewish people. True.

I then asked my mentor, to tell me about Saladin

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In the beginning was the Iranian Revolution followed some 27  years later by the demise of Iran’s number one enemy, Mr. Saddam Hussein (of Halabja fame) who went down with the shahada on his lips.

Indeed,

“The evil that men do lives after them,

The good is oft interred with their bones” ( but not always.)

Iran continues as a hot news topic, mostly about their staunch support for their faithful ally Basher al-Assad and of course their on-going Islamic & revolutionary project to go nuclear before any of the Arabs, including their theological rivals in Egypt or Saudi Arabia who I’m sure do not want to join Iran’s war against the “little” and “the great Satan”, perhaps with a view to returning the country which they must see as Amerindian territory which is still formally under occupation by among others, the gringo settlers…

They’ve got apocalyptic dreams and to use wiki-leaker terminology, more than “medium-sized” ambition. That sort of ambition should be made of even sterner stuff:

Military wisdom is of the opinion that at this stage it could probably be easier for Iran to freely proselytise al-Islam in America the land of the free, than to defeat the“kuffar”, militarily, considering that after just two weeks of bombing, Iran’s entire fleet could find itself at the bottom of the Persian Gulf….

Lately, we have witnessed the Arab brethren trying to catch up with their “Arab Spring”which put the North African trinity of Ben Ali, Gaddafi and Mubarak out of business.

Meanwhile Mr. Assad junior

is hanging on to his presidency for dear life.

He’ll eventually, most probably be granted political asylum by Iran’s Supreme Leader & the governing Ayatollahs if he does not succeed with brutally putting down the mostly Sunni insurrection…….

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The Assange affair :Fear of the unknown future: Assange’s fear of extradition to Sweden, en route to more serious charges in the US

Europe – and Sweden in particular, the country to which Assange is expected to be extradited, seems to be equally divided between those who think that Julian Assange is a brave man and those who think that as a brave man he must bravely face the consequences of his bravery.

There’s even speculation as to why he did not take refuge in the High
Commission / Embassy of the Federal Republic of Nigeria – and
understandably, perhaps that he did not do so,because unlike Ecuador,
Nigeria was once a British colony…and moreover, there’s the lesson of
what happened with Charles Taylor.after he was granted asylum by
Obasanjo….

It seems that Assange cannot extricate himself from the impasse in
which he has locked himself, namely, that there should be a guarantee
that should he be extradited to Sweden to be tried for sexual assault,
whether he is found guilty or not guilty, he should not be extradited
to the United States if the US decides to request his extradition.

This is my very personal view of the Assange debacle and  I’m looking
forward to the next scene: A courthouse in Stockholm Sweden, On the
one side  the accused  and on the other side, two women, taking the
witness stand against him,one at a time, the world’s press
assembled….:

http://www.thelocal.se/blogs/corneliushamelberg/2012/08/25/ass-as-in-…

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Our ( We Sweden’s) Foreign Minister,

“with big dog attitude”too (and that’s what Assange is probably afraid of, given the nice relationship between the big and the medium-sized, that medium sized might just do Mr. Big the favour by handing him over to the authorities in charge of the Guantanamo facilities where he and others of his type who are also guilty of such un or anti-American activities shall remain until further notice..

The cherub…

What’s wrong, sweet boy, what’s wrong?

Website for this image (you notice that in his long, self-righteous homily from the balcony of Ecuador’s London embassy, Mr. Ego is so self-centred in his centre stage role, that he does not even say a word about the rape charges or his alleged female victims

Assange…

some break it down to assangel

Angel, as in “ Look Homeward Angel” which interestingly enough begins

“A destiny that leads the English to the Dutch is strange enough; but one that leads from Epsom into Pennsylvania, and thence into the hills that shut in Altamont over the proud coral cry of the cock, and the soft stone smile of an angel, is touched by that dark miracle of chance which makes new magic in a dusty world. Each of us is all the sums he has not counted: subtract us into nakedness and night again, and you shall see begin in Crete four thousand years ago the love that ended yesterday in Texas. The seed of our destruction will blossom in the desert, the alexin of our cure grows by a mountain rock, and our lives are haunted by a Georgia slattern, because a London cut-purse went unhung. Each moment is the fruit of forty thousand years. The minute-winning days, like flies, buzz home to death, and every moment is a window on all time.”

With the verdict on Anders Breivik in, the world has just witnessed what the Justice system is like in Norway. So, Assange should not be afraid of turning up in court over here to answer questions about what he is alleged to have done whilst in Sweden.

Assange is not wanted in Sweden, for any of his wiki leaking or for burglary, or for murder or for going around the world causing havoc as in this first wiki-leak that really irritated me with the world headlines screaming “cut off the head of the snake!”

And all the other statements made in confidence and under diplomatic cover now in the open, that this and that American ambassador, true or false, said that so and so in this and that African country is a crook, lots of damaging material (could have kick-started more than one war) although when it comes to our own Carl the Great it was only a mild if not affectionate put down, him being compared, not to a summer’s day, nor to the Great Dane or a bigger Glasnost bear but to a mere, medium-seized poodle, with big dog attitude.” (Big dog of course being Uncle Sam…

Assange is a Commonwealth man from Australia isn’t he, and should be familiar with this document which was drawn to the world’s attention in 1987, when former MI5 man Peter Wright’s Spycatcher was published, and the fallout resulting from that publication.

In my view, what Assange has done and done with such a flourish, is utterly reprehensible.

And the more I think of the fate of Jonathan Pollard – an American, who did infinitely less – for a friendly nation, the more I believe that the unapologetic and unrepentant Assange should be behind bars, if not in the US, then as a prison guest of any of the numerous countries whose state secrets he has pilfered, and spread on the world wide web.

But there he stands like the Pope on his balcony delivering his Easter resurrection message and smiling faintly as if he hasn’t done anything wrong, and wanting the whole world to come to his rescue as if he has not even heard that there is something known as Classified information !

FactCheck: Are the British treating Julian Assange unfairly?

I guess that when he is finally brought to Sweden to face the music, the kind of

justice

that he is scared of – and is finally found guilty or not guilty of sexual misconduct with those two charming, innocent ladies in Sweden ( it’s the words of two Swedish women against the testimonies of Lord Fountain-of-Joy himself) he should only have himself to blame, not them, even if they are only telling lies about him or in fact revealing what actually happened during their secret session/s….

The debate continues about his extradition, even as he waves at some of his adoring fans, from the balcony of Ecuador’s London embassy.

For more drama, with he himself as the world redeemer and – a little short of omniscience – revealer of other people’s state secrets, hanging out other people’s underwear to dry in full public view, he could have easily popped in and asked for refuge – from facing justice – at the Argentinian London embassy – then he could be sure that unlike Ecuador, Argentina with the bruises they suffered during Falkland War still fresh on their minds, I’m sure that the Argentina’s  Foreign Minister would be thundering even more loudly than his Ecuadorian counterpart, to the British government and its police law enforcement, “ We are Not a  a British Colony!”( That they can’t go in to sovereign Ecuador property and arrest Julian Assange.

Thus I recall what V.S. Naipaul said when he was interviewed on BBC during the Falklands War – well you know VS – he did not disappoint the Brits on that occasion either, speaking from his haughty and secure vantage point there in Merry England, he did speak disdainfully about third world countries who have no sense of history and could ever have the audacity to challenge “Britannia rules the waves” and indeed, one of the British fleet, ELK, re-fuelled free of charge at one of the safest natural harbours in the world , en route to Ascension Island….

“We are not a British colony!!”And there methinks that the foreign minister of Ecuador doth protest too loudly. Perhaps with a touch of  Latin /Spanish  pride. We would surely not hear that kind of squeaking from say the nearly All-Mighty USA once a real colony of Great Britain, until the US did their own versions of the Mau-Mau, after that Boston Tea Party and the battle cry, “ No taxation without representation !”

So, as we can see, taxation has always been an issue, even before the birth of the USA…

All this is being written, prior to reading what Trowbridge H. Ford has to say about this asinine affair and prior to being in any way influenced by what he may ( as expected) have to say about this particular Julian or about his femme fatale, Jihad Jane or about the earthquake that hit Tabriz….

Sweden’s statement for the OAS Meeting of Foreign Ministers

Here in Sweden, Mr. Assange has quite a following and here is one such by the name of Anna Troberg, the leader of the Pirate Party, who says that Wikileaks is the only thing she trusts in the soup known as “abuse of power”…

Wikileaks

Wikileaks

in thee she trusts

(others in the dollar’s eye of Horus

proclaim, ” In God we trust”

(and into ashes all his lust )

Well, that was the leader of the Pirate Party

and she probably believes that everything should be free ( “There’s no such thing as a free lunch” says her senior sister Lady Thatcher…. and as for this trust, thing, these lines still in my ear, ring:

“Don’t wanna betray nobody, don’t wanna be betrayed
Don’t wanna play with nobody, don’t wanna be waylaid
Don’t wanna miss nobody, don’t wanna be missed
Don’t put my faith in nobody, not even a scientist.”

Last line in the mind of major conspiracy theorists is that wikileaks is a CIA operation, and that Monsieur Julian Assange  is now dutifully playing his part from Ecuador’s balcony in Knightsbridge.

And sometimes, it’s more than just ordinary, run of the mill conspiracy theories being cooked in various paranoid heads

Check this out!

We’ll see how this whole thing plays out and if he ever gets his just deserts, even as he now threatens to release another avalanche of classified information, illegally obtained, including such  an unlikely item in the pipeline. If he’s not very careful, Assange may also  find himself facing charges of blackmail and slander, one of these days…

The only person that I’m feeling sorry for is his mother, Ms Assange and her feelings for her little cherub who can do no harm and should come to no harm…

Of course if her Julian had been born in the USA , then he would be facing charges of treason, even if he still thinks that he has not done anything wrong…

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World Peace, Peace in the Middle East.

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Peace in the Middle East is always in the news.

And thus it has come to be fulfilled that

“Two bulls can’t reign in one pen
Two lions can’t roar in a small den
Two scorpions don’t sting at the same spot
Two guns can’t fire the same bullet shot so” ( Steele Pulse : Bad Man )

On first hearing the news that the Muslim Brotherhood President of Egypt had, in the authority vested in him, struck a deal with the military by peacefully retiring some of their top generals permanently, promoting some of them to government advisers, temporarily, we cannot but conclude that at least on the face of it this has settled the question of who is Pharaoh numero uno in Cairo, which don’t forget climate-wise is situated right in the Middle of the desert, summer temperatures soaring between 35-45 degrees, good for tourists in search of a sun tan, less likely reason for those who were born with one, good too for those who want to circumnavigate the pyramids adventurous, ambulating locomotion by camel – and the tourist business will boom if there is peace and stability and freedom in the land.

More seriously, on first hearing that the Muslim Brotherhood’s Morsi had retired Field-Marshall Tantawi I thought, “Well the peace between Egypt and Israel was basically between the Egyptian Military ( Sadat, Mubarak) and Israel. The Muslim Brotherhood is another basket of dynamite altogether, (they don’t like rubbish/nonsense.”

The general fear is that the Muslim Brotherhood agenda could eventually become Egypt’s national agenda….

Contributing to a fairer idea of what’s happening in Egypt :

Not a word about Syria.

Our own Carl the Great hasn’t issued a communiqué or twittered about how he personally feels about these latest developments yet. We shall have to be patient, even politicians deserve restful holidays away from the world and all her crises….

I imagine that there must be a certain tension in Israel-Egypt relations, until the Brotherhood Government & Parliament ratify the peace treaty with Israel…

In the meantime, the good news is that Egypt’s newly appointed Minister of Defence is no stranger to Israel

Soon enough we will be hearing that this is a positive development for some, whilst some others are deeply pessimistic :Morsi is not to be trusted

For a fairer understanding of the new shoots now taking roots and contributing a certain weight to Islamic ideology, looka here at this IMPORTANT ANNOUNCEMENT

The sort of stuff that could be at the axis of any real sort of discussion except that such a discussion at this election time could rapidly degenerate into an ideological debate between the Democrats mostly on the attack since poor Romney & his conservative mate are wide open to attack even as they start their tour of the Mid-west, starting from New York City all the way to the Golden Gate, to propagate their message of prosperity even as Germany and France compete and stagnate @0% growth rate

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9.8.20123

Dark eyes,

houris of paradise,

dark-eyed houris of paradise,

Another cloudy summer’s day, the earth still soaking

wet from intermittent rain drops.

There we

were

late evening

sitting in a pub in Söder,

shoulder to shoulder.

My Gambian brother

had run out of beer

and sitting beside him,

asked me for some.

“Exactly three drops

is all you’re going to get

to stay wet“,

I told him, (jokingly)

and to my dismay

he had taken offense

he had “gotten”

very angry!

“Such arrogance!” he sneered at me and with such contempt,

“You can go and screw your beer!”

And for a moment I thought that he was going to add,

“AND I’LL KEEP MY GAMBIA!!!” ( Ya  Pa Sanneh!)

Na wah O!

Ever read  The blues eye or known reality about the Swedish paradise

of old blue eyes

dear old Stockholm ?

Despite the competing Aryan mythologies

predominantly hues of blonde

and blue eyes…

the aesthetics of maidenly beauty in the local woman’s paradise…

Be Strong ( you’ve got to)

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Q: Where’s Sweden?

Indeed, “fair exchange is no robbery “ and when presented with some mathematical exactitude the veracity in such an equation should be beyond question

2 for the price of 1?

In the after-Christmas sales in Stockholm, the adverts may lure us into buying 2 items for the price of 1, but the sales pitch from Sudan’s UK ambassador extraordinary and plenipotentiary actually asking for former president Bush and and ex-prime minister Blair in exchange for Bashir (the scoundrel) cannot strike the even-minded as being a fair exchange.

Those two

for that particular one

who must still be having nightmares about the Janjaweed militia in Darfur, followed by the reality of South Sudan no longer being controlled by North Sudan. The USA & the UK must jointly say , “ No deal!”

For a certainty, Omar Bashir is no Charles Taylor (nor is Bush Blair).The question is whether Bashir is in the same class as any of the recently deposed North African tyrants, deposed by the purifying forces of the Arab Spring. It seems unlikely that the Arab Spring will travel south, to uproot The Power in what is North of South Sudan….

What then must we hope for? We may fervently hope that the North does not look upon South Sudan as “occupied territories” when their ambassador (sour grapes) says that South Sudan is “not a real country”

The equation prompts you to wonder and who/ how many should be asked for in exchange for the other Mr. B ( Basher al Assad) ?

Our own Mr. B (Carl Bildt) told him to step down several months ago but the strong man of Syria does not seem to be paying people like our foreign minister any mind about how he should deal with the insurrection…

The sad fact is that what’s done cannot be undone.

UK’s intelligence dossier on Iraq’s Weapons of mass destruction

Tony Blair denies praying with George Bush

‎I too saw Colin Powell on TV – at the war council, using his walking stick to point out the positions of Saddam’s mobile launchers ( alleged), he was painstakingly crisp and so convincing. After all he is an honest man. But he was not as effective as Tony Blair; him too I saw live and direct on Sky News, addressing that special session of the British House of Commons, hastily convened to address the emergency posed by Saddam. Mr. Blair was brief he merely asked the assembled MPs : you sitting here on your honourable bums, do you realise that Saddam can deploy within 45 minutes? ?  They panicked, I too panicked sitting there in Bromma.

(Mr Blair has since been thoroughly ventilated

at the Iraq Enquiry

And Bush? He’s now doing some good work in Africa…

And Powell? Let us not forget that it was Colin Powell who gave a name to what was happening in Darfur.)

Last time I was that scared was on 911 – I had the headphones, on volume up listening to an old Rubinstein piano concert on Mezzo when my better half appeared, two shopping baskets in her hands and a look that I had never before seen on her face ( by the way we got married this day, 43 years ago) I took off the headphones and she asked me whether I had heard. Heard what? She had heard at the supermarket that something terrible had happened in America. I immediately switched to CNN and saw a plane slicing through a skyscraper, the commentator’s voice hysterical and I thought, fy fan the Russian Mofos have finally attacked …!!!…and that the Russian bear was going to seize us ( (We Sweden) in fulfilment of all of our Carl’s submarine nightmares….

Kofi Annan ( with Madeleine Albright as his godmother) was then the UN’s Secretary-General.

If someone like Olof Palme had been occupying that position then, I guess that it would have been a slightly different outcome…to begin with, I believe that Mr. Palme would have put up a greater resistance – perhaps to the point of resigning.

And if it had been someone like Dag Hammarskjöld was Secretary-General?

That question can never be answered.

Iraq. It feels like it all happened such a long time ago.

Briefly, about

Iraq

these two important Swedes Hans Blix and Rolf Ekéus did what they could , in good conscience. ( Perhaps good Lutheran conscience, because that’s what is supposed to determine Lutheran action, as far as I understand Lutheranism: good conscience….)

In the further dialogues between Western Civilisation and Islam there’s this one aspect that could be looked into: Just War theory in Islam as a basis of understanding….

Latest bad news coming in from Sinai …( the Islamists are at it again, this Holy Month of Ramadan

IDF Eliminated Terrorists in ’15-Minute Battle

Today’s daily alert

At this time : the birth of a new blog

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