Inside the Mind of the Serbian Radical Party

Der Spiegel has an interview with Tomislav Nikolic, leader of the ultra-nationalists in Serbian politics. Excerpt below:

SPIEGEL ONLINE: Doesn't Serbia realize that ignoring reality is only hurting Serbia and, especially, the Serbs in Kosovo? You as a realist should understand that Kosovo will never again be a part of Serbia.

Nikolic: Who says? We will use our veto to prevent Kosovo from becoming a member of almost all world organizations.

SPIEGEL ONLINE: Which is a fine strategy to force Kosovo to become part of Albania. By taking such a step, Kosovo would automatically gain membership in those organizations.

Nikolic: Don't count on it. Otherwise there will be war in Europe. Or do you think that Bucharest will sit on the sidelines should the Hungarians in Romania demand to become a part of Hungary? It is not us but Europe that needs to face reality. For precisely these reasons, there are many countries in both Europe and elsewhere in the world which will never recognize the precedence of Kosovo.

Doesn't sound good.

Be sure to also read Marko Attila Hoare's (historian and blogger of Greater Surbiton) analysis of what is going on in Serbia.

They told us that the Serbian people were not like other Europeans. They told us that the Serbian people were so outraged over international recognition of Kosova’s independence that they would turn their backs on Europe and rally behind the nationalists. They told us that Serbia and Europe were parting ways because of Kosova. They told us that the Serbian people were crazy.

They were wrong.

At least people are standing up and say no to the Serbian Radical Party.

Serbia: Don't turn back.

Depiste the Pressure, FARC Still Operates

Despite some setbacks facing FARC, they are still operating and terrorizing the region. Colombia has made some progress into defeating the Marxist drug-peddling group, yet challenges still lay ahead. Click here for an article at the LatinAmerican Post.

Colombia's FARC guerrillas are reeling from military attacks and defections. While the ranks have fallen about 40 percent from a 2002 peak, the group nevertheless remains a potent force.

-- A six-year Colombian military offensive has put the FARC on the run, experts say, driving the guerrillas to more remote areas, neutralizing their ability to launch attacks and killing an unprecedented number of key leaders.

Colombian intelligence officials believe that the deaths -- including those of two top leaders known as Raúl Reyes and Iván Ríos in the past eight days -- desertions and captures have thinned the FARC's ranks from 16,900 in 2002 to about 10,000 today.

''They have less support of the population, less money, less discipline and don't have the same ability to carry out attacks,'' said Alfredo Rangel, a leading FARC expert who heads the Security and Democracy Foundation, a Bogotá think tank. ``The guerrillas are in decline.''

Will more military aid by the United States help? Will this effort to squash FARC have a backlash in the region, like say Venezuela? When will Colombia address its human rights issues? The questions are endless.

FARC: Unfortunately, still in operation.

Gates on Top of It

Article on the Secretary of Defense Robert M. Gates.

When he was told that some in the Army were dismissive of press reports on the mistreatment of patients at Walter Reed Army Medical Center, Secretary of Defense Robert Gates, according to one witness, grew "very, very quiet." Within two weeks, the Walter Reed commander was out of a job.

This kind of decisive silence has been employed by Gates to good effect in scandals ranging from misdirected nuclear parts to the cremation of both fallen American soldiers and pets at the same facility.

To those who know this Eagle Scout with 28 years of experience in government, Gates' subdued efficiency is not surprising. To those of us who haven't had the pleasure, his transformational ambitions and strategic boldness are surprising indeed.

When Gates was nominated in late 2006, conservative suspicions and liberal hopes coincided. Gates, then a member of the Iraq Study Group, was expected to ease the American retreat from Iraq and begin the American engagement with Iran. Foreign-policy realism was back. When asked at his confirmation hearing if America was winning in Iraq, Gates replied, "No, sir" -- a candor that foretold change. But since Gates was the opposite of an ideologue, it was difficult to predict what form that change might take.

Once again, a great person to have in our government.

Where I found this article:
RealClearPolitics

Charlie Rose interviews Robert Kagen

They talk about Iraq, geopolitical struggles of today and yesterday, interventionism, United States influence in the world, and many other topics.

Very interesting.

Where I found this video:
RealClearPolitics

A FARC Leader Surrenders

Here is a Reuters segment:
I guess that Marxist revolution wasn't worth dying for, huh Karina?

Three Story Sunday

Chávez moves forward with more State control of the economy.

Faced with shortages of foods, building materials and other staples, President Hugo Chávez is intensifying state control of the Venezuelan economy through a new wave of takeovers of private companies and the creation of government-controlled ventures with allies like Cuba and Iran.

The moves come just months after voters rejected a referendum to give the president sweeping constitutional power over the economy and public institutions, leading to new accusations that Chávez is more interested in consolidating power than in fixing Venezuela's problems.

I'm still baffled how some people praise this man. Chávez is nothing more than an rising autocrat.

Uganda uses torture...a lot.

Denmark's Ambassador to Uganda was away when his wife looked out the window and saw a young man fall from the sky and land on her garden. She made a frantic call to her husband, Stig Barlyng, who immediately sped home to his residence in a posh suburb in Kampala. But by the time Barlyng arrived home, the guards from the Chieftaincy of Military Intelligence (CMI) headquarters next door had already overpowered Barlyng's guard and recaptured their escapee. "I went next door and I started yelling a bit, to put it mildly," recalls Barlyng, who is months away from wrapping up his ambassadorship. Barlyng had reason to be upset -- "the presence of torture in Uganda was handed to me on a silver platter," he says.

If money from the United States is going to this country, we need to have some transparency and policy changes in Uganda. I don't want my money going to a paranoid prone government who applies torture for the sake of stability.

In Rwanda, women are increasingly gaining more equality. One such area is in the economy, where businesswomen play an important role. Here is a Washington Post segment:

Another Sunday.

Russia: The Mask of Success

Russia isn't as nearly as successful as some may think, according to Boris Nemtsov. Kim Zigfeld of the Publius Pundit reviews Nemtsov's analysis of Russia, finding the apparent triumphs of the Putin reign to be nothing more than a failure. Click here to view the article.
Excerpt below:

Nemtsov begins by pointing out that Putin enjoyed an average oil price more than double what Yeltsin had to work with, five times greater in recent months, and that Putin has not used any of the oil windfall to “carry out economic reforms, create a modern army, and establish public health and pension systems.” All but the economy, he says, have degraded, and the economy has merely been “stabilized through a stroke of luck” having nothing to do with Putin.

He shows that there were already clear signs of recovery before Putin came to power, and argues convincingly that the problems Yeltsin’s Russia faced were those of the communists’ making, not Yeltsin’s. As important, he shows that Putin simply didn’t obtain power through policy success; he was named president arbitrarily by Yeltsin, and this was followed by the relentless use of electoral fraud and media suppression to guarantee his election. He writes: “We are all supposed to be over the moon at the success of the economy under Putin. In reality, however, it is not doing that well. Given today’s oil prices, our GDP growth has actually been remarkably modest.”

It seems Russia is sliding back (or already has) to an authoritarian regime, whose State dictates and restricts your conscious. When we look back at this time period twenty years from now, the question will be "Did we do enough to counter Putin?" The answer will be no.

Russia: Where have you gone?

Where I found this article:
The Moderate Voice