Weekend Update

Filed under: Cuba ~ Russia ~ US Elections ~ Venezuela

It was an eventful weekend. Democracy took it on the chin.

Despite recent revelations concerning deep flaws the factual presentation of his film An Inconvenient Truth, to say nothing of the lack of any apparent connection between global warming and global war (much less any life-risking courage shown by the recipient, much less any actual evidence that anything he's done has actually reduced climate change) it was announced that Al Gore would receive the Nobel Peace Prize. The Nobel Committee no doubt believes that noted humanitarian Yasir Arafat is beaming widely up there in heaven, delighted to welcome his fellow traveler to the club.

Then, Fidel Castro came out of hiding and had a powwow with Hugo Chavez, including a joint broadcast on a Cuban radio program, and observers declared him to be on the track to regaining his health. Among other things, Chavez actually sang love songs to Castro.

Meanwhile, the New York Times reported that "Israel's air attack on Syria last month was directed against a site that Israeli and American intelligence analysts judged was a partly constructed nuclear reactor, apparently modeled on one North Korea has used to create its stockpile of nuclear weapons fuel."

And to round things out, Russian dictator Vladimir Putin snubbed a visiting delegation to Moscow comprised of Condi Rice and Bob Gates "by making them wait 40 minutes and then delivering a stern lecture before a room full of reporters." The pair were in Moscow to discuss U.S. plans to install a ballistic missile defense system in Europe, and Putin crazily declared: "Of course we can sometime in the future decide that some anti-missile defense system should be established somewhere on the moon. But before we reach such arrangements, we will lose the opportunity for fixing some particular arrangements between us." Echoes of Khrushchev and his infamous, self-destructive shoegate incident. Rice (who Putin, like his predecessor, may have forgotten leads a nation with an economy twelve times larger than Russia's and which leads a large group of powerful allies) promptly responded by issuing a stern blast against the Putin dictatorship and followed it up by meeting with his political opponents. This came on the heels of French President Nicolas Sarkozy giving Putin the business a few days earlier.

All that can be viewed as adequate preparation for today's main course: Putin is due to arrive in Tehran later today for another meeting with Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. As world criticism of this conspiracy mounted, it was suddenly announced by Russian authorities that a plot to assassinate Putin during the visit had been discovered (Putin craftily cloaked the visit in the shroud of a regional conference on the Caspian Sea). Is it possible that Putin's KGB pals have cooked up this "threat" as a way of further distracting the world's attention from the outrageous nature of Russia's actions in Iran (providing nuclear technology, missile defense systems to protect it -- even while opposing such systems in Europe -- and diplomatic support against international sanctions in the U.N. -- and Russia is also supplying weapons to Syria)? Oh, it's possible alright. Last week, Putin's rubber-stamp legislature passed a law which will basically abolish referendum voting in Russia. The bill's sponsor stated: "There is, for example, a group of disgruntled people who get together and begin to disrupt society. We don't need this." Days earlier, it had been announced that Garry Kasparov's party would not be allowed to vie for seats in the upcoming parliamentary elections, and many others were facing the same fate. Welcome back to the USSR.

The net result of the Clinton administration in which Al Gore served was the rise to power of proud KGB spy Putin in Russia (shortly before that, Clinton became the first U.S. president to shake Castro's hand since he took power), resulting in a new cold war, and the most significant terrorist attack on U.S. soil by the Islamic extremists beloved by Ahmadinejad. Little wonder, then, that Gore is so fond of the subject of melting ice (even if he has to misdirect the conversation).

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