Day: May 27, 2014

Was An Apology Necessary?

Opinion from the desk of the Editor

Today I started off with international relations and now I will do a 180………….

By now even the densest yahoo has heard of the idiot Sterling and his problems with black people……of course he is not a racist because some of his close friends are black, always a good statement to make when you are finally outed.

And once again the country is having that conversation that we are told we need to have every time some screws up and makes a lame brain statement……..and the beat goes on…..unfortunately the MSM will not lets this go…..they cannot…it is worth its weight in gold in ratings.

Is there any more that can be said?  Of course there is.

When speaking about the sterling situation the owner of the Dallas Mavericks, Mark Cuban, made a statement……

 “I know I’m prejudiced and I know I’m bigoted in a lot of different ways. If I see a black kid in a hoodie on my side of the street, I’ll move to the other side of the street. If I see a white guy with a shaved head and tattoos, I’ll move back to the other side of the street. None of us have pure thoughts; we all live in glass houses.”

After he made his statement the MSM was all over it and made it into a statement of the Trayvon Martin situation……..and Cuban had to back track on what he had said……..

“In hindsight, I should have used different examples. I didn’t consider the Trayvon Martin family, and I apologize to them for that. Beyond apologizing to the Martin family, I stand by the words and substance of the interview,” Cuban said in a series of tweets.

“I think that helping people improve their lives, helping people engage with people they may fear or may not understand, and helping people realize that while we all may have our prejudices and bigotries. We have to learn that it’s an issue that we have to control, that it’s part of my responsibility as an entrepreneur to try to solve it.”

My question is why did Cuban have to apologize?  he was speaking to truth……but the MSM had to have something to keep the Sterling issue going…..if not they would have to wait until the NBA ruling and that could take awhile and they did not want to lose the news.

My opinion is that Cuban did not owe anyone anything.  He spoke his mind and someone took offense and he did what he had to do……..this situation illustrates why we can NEVER have the conversation that all pundits say we need to have on race.

NO one wants that conversation to take place…..especially the MSM…….people are afraid of this conversation…..why?  You cannot be honest without hurting someone’s feelings or your words are turned back on you……..

The much needed conversation is doomed……it will never take place…..thanx to FEAR!

The Making Of A New Somalia?

Inkwell Institute

North African Desk

There you go….a new week and we have not managed to destroy all life….well not yet….but we keep trying.

I have said just about everything I wanted to say on our cracker jack political system so as usual I will move on to more important issues and more important places……..

The US and its allies have done their part brilliantly…..we hve managed to pretty much destroy all opponents……and we did it with a smile and pat on the back…..we showed up to save them from themselves…..and in doing so we have created some of the most dangerous spots in the world……..oh I don’t know Iraq, Syria, and now we are condemning Libya…….been a helluva century so far.

What are talking about Professor……Qadahfi is gone and all is right with the world,……..ain’t it?

All is right….only if you have the attention span of a rabbit in heat.

Eastern Libya hates Tripoli….Southern Libya is just pissed….and then there are the militias (Militias?  Where have I heard the term before?)…..every megalomaniac has a militia (again that sounds vaguely familiar) and the militias do what militias do….they fight whoever is the bad guy of the day.

Recently there was a coup, only we do not call it a coup these days, that put the entire country in a tizzy…….all this stems from the area that Americans know all too well….only they have no idea they know it….Benghazi.

What do the separatists want? They demand not mere autonomy but something close to independence. The territory of Cyrenaica (Barqa, in Arabic) followed concrete steps in this sense: it first established a shadow government, after advocating for a loose federal system of government sharing power for months with Fezzan, the south western region of Libya and in June 2013, Sheikh Ahmed Zubair Senussi, head of the Cyrenaica Transitional Council, declared self-government.

On November 4 2013, it unilaterally declared its condition of “semi-autonomous state.” The separatist region even announced the establishment of an independent oil company after taking over several commercial seaports, a step prior to the creation of a Cyrenaican Defense Force.

The self-proclaimed government of Cyrenaica insists it is not defying the government or Congress, but rather claim their right to export. It has been complaining for decades of being sidelined from the political arena. The east is where most of the country’s wealth lies, in form of oil reserves. It made sense that the uprising started there, as the city has become a hub for intellectuals, dissenters, unsatisfied youth and political activists. Contrary to Tripoli, the city has grown from the meddling of different identities. Cyrenaica has forged its identity on a strong sense of tribal membership that today remains present even among the urban youth.

All this violence makes me think of a country we know all too well…..Somalia.  Libya is looking at a situation that is playing out today….in Syria….In Somalia….and to a lesser extent in Iraq.  all the violence…..all human rights violations……all the lawlessness……tribe against tribe…..clan against clan…..and eventually all against the US.

Libya is flirting with a civil war…..and won’t that be just peachy?

All these countries are countries that our congressional war hawks have made the US a part of the violence………and that will bite us in the butt……..any day now.  These war hawks in their rush to assist the military-industrial complex have lost sight of the consequences of their positions.  And as soon as something goes wrong, and it will go wrong, these hawks are the first to assign blame and it is never their fault.

Time for the US to re-think their failing foreign policy…….19th century answers will not work in the 21st century.

The Isolation Game

Inkwell Institute

Eurasian Desk

Today I would like to write about the popular technique used to handle our problem states in the world….sanctions.

In the beginning there was Russia and Ukraine……..after much provocation violence broke out…..a referendum was voted on…….and the world got its panties in a twist.  The US could not stand by and let Russia dictate the future of Ukraine.

We began with our typical response to a growing situation……..we threatened and then set about putting sanctions into place that would necessarily isolate Russia for not acting like a good guy on the world stage.  We then set about convincing Europe to join in our efforts…..did not work out the way we had planned……you see Europe gets about 80% of its natural gas from Russia…..so our European friends were not so quick to jump on the US sanctions bandwagon.

While our sanctions set about making Russia pay for their actions….they, Russia, signed a $400 billion agreement with China for natural gas….oops, that should make our sanctions a little less effective.

You see we employed a tactic from the 19th century to isolate Russia and force them to toe the line……a naive attempt at best.  Why?

Russia knew exactly what our response would be to their aggression…..tit is our go to tactic to any type of aggression, anywhere in the world…….our lame attempt at sanctions was just a worthless endeavor…..you see Russia had been trying to cut a deal with China for 10 years and it just made it necessary to ward off the sanctions that the US was trying to impose.

The isolation game we tried was destined to fail…..Russia had all its bases covered and a solution for each problem that US would throw at them.

The US needs to spend some time and find a new more up to date strategy for handling aggression in the 21st century………if not then our foreign policy will remain as impotent as it is today.