Obama Tilts to Center, Inviting a Clash of Ideas

In another piece a phrase jumps out at me: Mr. Geithner grew up in Asia — in Tokyo, New Delhi and Bangkok — and keeps his ego well in check. He asks a lot of questions, but does not have Mr. Summers’s overwhelming — some say overbearing — personality.

Very telling. Obama grew up in Indonesia and Hawaii (itself polyglot); Gaithner in Japan, India and Thailand.

You, the little people, will be easy to 'smack down'

Found this story in the website of the Sydney Morning Herald. It is, at the least, informative and sobering.

It is difficult to understand just who these fanatics have more contempt for: the infidels they so clearly and cavalierly denounce as worthy of no more than being destroyed, or the very constituency of Muslims whom they exhort to join in the blood bath.




You, the little people, will be easy to 'smack down'

Richard Macey - November 1, 2008


ON THE eve of their executions, the Bali bombers have called for revenge against the West and have warned the US to expect defeat.

In separate letters on October 22, and posted on an Islamic website, Amrozi, Mukhlas and Imam Samudra have urged Muslims to attack non-believers.

Amrozi declared in his letter that every "fellow Muslim" needed to raise his hands "to offend the infidels and Thagut [non-believers] that wronged the Muslim, by cutting their necks [beheading]".

This, he warned, would be the only way to stop "their cruelty to us".

Samudra directed his letter to people in the West, suggesting they should not be surprised "if America, the so-called superpower, is beaten, almost dying," and it would lose "the war against the mujahideen".

"You, the little people, will be easy to 'smack down' by the mujahideen."

"You will be defeated in this world and will be taken to hell."

"Who doesn't know that the toothless giant, the US infidel and their allies, are now dying.

How can it be, Andi Matalata [Indonesia's Human Rights and Law Minister] … and all the judges from Bali do not understand this? Don't understand that America is 'klepek-klepek' [a slang word used to describe the death throes of an animal as it is slaughtered].

"You think, if you execute the three of us, you can walk freely, there's no way."

Attacking corruption in Indonesia he wrote "you even have to pay if you want to be a civil servant, even bribe … so there's no way, man. Nothing is free. You can probably decide on the execution as ordered by your bosses but … ahem! The answer is, 'what you see' not 'what you hear'.

He completed his letter by writing, in large print, "Remember: there's not one free Muslim blood drop!"

The ABC reported the International Crisis Group's terrorism expert, Sidney Jones, as saying she was amazed that the bombers were still able to incite violence from their cells.

"I just think that if there's an increase in the security threat as the result of the executions, the Government is at least in part to blame for allowing these three men access to the media over and over and over again."

The mother of two of the Bali bombers says her sons were right to "kill infidels".

Seventy-year-old Tariem was speaking in Tenggulun, East Java.

"I don't cry. I leave it all to God," she said as Amrozi and Mukhlas, two of her 13 children, waited for the firing squad.

"I feel that killing infidels isn't a mistake because they don't pray."

with AFP

This story was found at: http://www.smh.com.au/articles/2008/11/01/1224956342990.html

Georgia is the graveyard of America's unipolar world

More on W's legacy.

what is clear is that America's unipolar moment has passed - and the new world order heralded by Bush's father in the dying days of the Soviet Union in 1991 is no more. The days when one power was able to bestride the globe like a colossus, enforcing its will in every continent, challenged only by popular movements for national independence and isolated "rogue states", are now over. For nearly two decades, while Russia sunk into "catastroika" and China built an economic powerhouse, the US has exercised unprecedented and unaccountable global power, arrogating to itself and its allies the right to invade and occupy other countries, untroubled by international law or institutions, sucking ever more states into the orbit of its voracious military alliance.

A fascinating article.