How about “president for life” Jean-Claude “Baby Doc” Duvalier landing unannounced back in Haiti 25 years after he fled to exile in France? Was that ever a sad, dumb move? Jean-Claude, now almost 60 years old, a dictator without a country, wandered around Port au Prince eyeing the destruction and meeting with a slim trickle of old supporters for one day, mumbling in his soft voice to reporters that, “I just came to help,” before he was arrested by authorities and charged with extortion and embezzlement.
One of the greatest of America’s heroes in the Vietnam War has died. His name was Vang Pao. He was 81 and he led a remarkable life. He died in California’s San Joaquin Valley, where he had made his home and was the leader of thousands of the Hmong people who had fought for the US in Laos and who had settled, like Pao, near Fresno in California’s bread basket known as the Central Valley.
Here’s a crisp, Marine gate-guard’s salute to all the men and women in America’s military services who have fought our wars for us and who have suffered misery, injury, death — and sometimes cold ingratitude in return. We owe them a debt beyond explication. Their national holiday is shortly before us.
Iranian housewife Sakineh Mohammadi Ashtiani still awaits execution for the crime of adultery. She has been in prison for four years and was to be publicly stoned in accordance with Islamic law. When her lawyer raised hell on an Internet blog about her pending death an international cry was raised. Iranian mullahs then caved to pressure and said they wouldn’t have her stoned but she would still be executed, perhaps by beheading.
The documentary on Islam that has been billed as “The film PBS doesn’t want you to see” is going to be running on public television and so you may see it.
There have been frequent cries from politicians in the US for the FBI to be more like Britain’s MI5, though the legal and structural foundations of both agencies are intrinsically different.
The biggest news of the waning months of this year is the national rout of Republicans, the victory of the Democrats, and the political change about to take place in Washington — larger in import even than the surprising dismissal of Don Rumsfeld as Secretary of Defense and the hiring of the former CIA Director Bob Gates, a Bush family friend and former career intelligence analyst, to take Rumsfeld’s place at DOD.
You’ve heard of the “religious police” in Saudi Arabia? They are the bully-boys with the swagger sticks who go after public outrages like women exposing their arms or couples who are smooching.
The majority of Palestinians favor using the terrorist tactics of Hezbollah against Israel, says an AP story from Jerusalem citing a poll conducted jointly by the Hebrew University of Jerusalem and the Palestinian Center for Policy and Survey Research in Ramallah.
