Light Posting

In case you have been wondering why I haven’t been posting on (torture!, swine flu!, specter!, pakistan!, sunita paul!, bangladesh!), its because I have been a little under the weather for the past week that has kept me from work and the blog. A lot has happened and I’ve not been able to write about it. So, in short:

• Torture sucks. US did torture. If Obama fails to prosecute, he is giving a green light to every other country in the world to torture at will. The Obama administration is in real danger of making torture acceptable.
• Swine flu sucks. Its already here in Washington. I expect if it enters the school system in Virginia, my daughter’s school will shut down. I think it is better to lose millions in operating costs than billions in trying to treat victims of a full blown pandemic. The good news is that it appears to be not as contagious as originally thought: none of the family members of the boy in Texas who died have the flu. The other good news is it appears to be mild in the US. We’ll have to wait for more information before we understand the damage H1N1 can do now, and when it comes  back in the fall.
• Great that he is a Democrat, but Senate Democrats suck pretty badly anyway. So, what is there to celebrate? If the goal is to expand the caucus, good job. But if the goal is to help the American people, EPIC FAIL. The problem in the Senate has been Democrats – Republicans have been an excuse. Now the Democrats has one less excuse as they continue to screw the American people.
• The Islamist problem in Pakistan is not new. It is a decades old problem. Really, it has been a problem since the formation of Pakistan. America is only now pretending to understand it. The way you get at Pakistani Islamists is through the Pakistan army. But as usual, I suspect, America will do the opposite of what will be useful. The ill-fated American Ambassador doing cartwheels with General Zia-ul-Haq did not convince the Americans. This episode will not be either. Obama is listening to the wrong people.
• Did I tell you Sunita Paul is a fraud? Now everyone else thinks so too. It looks like she got bumped from American Chronicle because of her blatant plagiarism, so now she is writing at a group blog called Modern Ghana, who apparently don’t care about copyright violations. I am sure ModernGhana’s domain registrar will care. Sunita Paul is now relegated to writing whining pieces complaining about how she cant get published.
• US government praises Bangladesh for how minority’s are treated. The current government deserves credit for moving in the right direction. But much remains to be done. Minority rights are still not fully respected in Bangladesh, for that the current government must take responsibility and blame. I urge the current government to make this – the founding promise of Bangladesh – an ongoing effort until Bangladeshis are all guaranteed, not in theory but as a matter of practice, their full rights as human beings. Thirty Eight years is too long to wait for a birthright.

I’ll ease back into posting as I feel a bit better. In the meantime, it looks like the commenters are keeping this place warm with their charm, wit, name calling and other abilities.