The Cuban People, not Raul Castro, must chart the nation's path after Fidel Castro receives his infernal reward.

President Bush is planning to issue a stern warning Wednesday that the United States will not accept a political transition in Cuba in which power changes from one Castro brother to another, rather than to the Cuban people.

As described by an official in a background briefing to reporters on Tuesday evening, Mr. Bush’s remarks will amount to the most detailed response — mainly an unbending one — to the political changes that began in Cuba more than a year ago, when Fidel Castro fell ill and handed power to his brother Raúl.

The speech, scheduled to be given at the State Department before invited Cuban dissidents, will introduce the relatives of four Cuban prisoners being held for political crimes. A senior administration official said the president wanted to “put a human face,” on Cuba’s “assault on freedom.”

Cuba has been under the yoke of Communism for longer than I have been alive. Cubans have been scheming to escape that terrible oppression for all of that time -- even though their country has gotten the Michael Moore Seal of Approval when the USA has not.

Cuba will be free again, and in my lifetime. I still hope to see Fidel -- or at least Raul -- end up like Mussolini.

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For all her flaws, I hope that the prediction she makes here after the horrors that accompanied her return to Pakistan come to pass.

Former Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto warned Sunday that Taliban and al-Qaida militants have gained ground in Pakistan, making her first public appearance since narrowly escaping a suicide assassination attempt that killed 136 people.

But she said the bombing could unite her and other forces opposed to extremism, including military ruler President Gen. Pervez Musharraf.

''He's been the victim of assassination attacks and so have we,'' Bhutto told a small group of journalists inside her heavily guarded Karachi residence. ''I think certainly it will unite all those who are against extremism.''

If she is right, these attacks will provide the necessary ingredients for a new Pakistan, one that embraces democratic values and rejects extremism and terrorism. If that is the case, perhaps the scores killed during her return will not have died in vain.

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I was going to ignore this article on internet hacking in Russia, until I got to the very end.

This quote really leaped out at me.

“I don’t see in this a big tragedy,” said a respondent who used the name Lightwatch. “Western countries played not the smallest role in the fall of the Soviet Union. But the Russians have a very amusing feature — they are able to get up from their knees, under any conditions or under any circumstances.”

As for the West? “You are getting what you deserve.”

Gee, I guess they don't teach about Ronald Reagan over there. Too bad, because it was his willingness to challenge a corrupt and unstable Soviet system that enabled the peoples oppressed by the Communist regime to rise up against the tyrants his policies had weakened.

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As the New York Times continues to use the name given the country by the murderous dictators who have oppressed the country for the entire span of my life, President Bush continues to side with the Burmese people.

President Bush imposed new sanctions Friday to punish Myanmar's military-run government and its backers for a deadly crackdown on pro-democracy protesters.

Expanding on sanctions imposed last month, Bush ordered the Treasury Department to freeze the U.S. assets of additional members of the repressive junta. He also acted to tighten controls on U.S. exports to Myanmar, also known as Burma. And he called on the governments of China and India to do more to pressure the government of the Southeast Asian nation.

''The people of Burma are showing great courage in the face of immense repression,'' Bush said in the Diplomatic Room of the White House. ''They are appealing for our help. We must not turn a deaf ear to their cries.''

I realize that the NY Times has never met a dictator they didn't like, with the possible exception of Hitler. But they can at least follow the lead of those Burmese who oppose the military junta rather than that of the murderous regime.

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Al-Qaeda and the Taliban threatened to kill her -- and indicated once again proved that they are more than willing to slaughter innocents in an attempt to carry out their malign agenda.

Two powerful bombs detonated next to a truck carrying former prime minister Benazir Bhutto late Thursday, just hours after she returned from exile to a triumphal homecoming. More than 120 people were killed and hundreds were wounded in one of Pakistan's worst episodes of political violence.

Bhutto, who arrived in this coastal city Thursday afternoon after eight years away, appeared shaken but unhurt following the blasts. Security officials said the explosions had been set off within several yards of her vehicle as it inched through the streets, with Bhutto being cheered by thousands of supporters. Only minutes before, she had descended from the roof of the vehicle and into an internal compartment.

Later reports indicate that the death toll continues to creep higher (I saw the number 200 mentioned in one report), and over 400 are wounded. I'm curious -- will this persuade some folks of the continued need to fight al-Qaeda, no matter where they are found?

I'll agree with the New York Times' surprisingly sane editorial on this one.

Ms. BhuttoÂ’s greatest challenge will be to redeem this tawdry trade-off by using her popularity and skills to leverage this modest political opening into something resembling genuine democracy. Her first step should be to insist that those parliamentary elections are open to all, including her longtime political rival, Nawaz Sharif, another former prime minister. His previous tenure, like hers, was badly flawed. But they are PakistanÂ’s two most popular politicians, and without the participation of both of them there can be no Pakistani democracy.

WashingtonÂ’s help will be crucial in this effort. For too long it has coddled General Musharraf for his supposedly stalwart policies against the Taliban and Al Qaeda. But recently, those policies have seemed scarcely more credible than his hollow promises to accept the constraints of law and democracy or his commitment to free elections.

After belatedly recognizing that the generalÂ’s misrule was dangerously strengthening, not weakening, extremist forces in Pakistan, Washington helped engineer the deal that permitted Ms. BhuttoÂ’s return. Now, it must help her and Pakistan truly move toward democracy.

Bhutto is a flawed figure, as are Sharif and Musharraf. In an ideal world, none would be considered as acceptable leaders to head a government. However, if their presence on the political stage in Pakistan can lead to a resurgence of democracy, it is better than the status quo that has existed for the last eight years and the descent into Islamism that would follow the success of the murderous thugs that left scores of dead and dying in the streets in their attempt to murder the popular and charismatic opposition leader.

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Is democracy on its way back in Pakistan? The return of Benazir Bhutto may be the signal that it is.

Former prime minister Benazir Bhutto returned to Pakistan on Thursday to a massive and joyous homecoming, as thousands of her supporters rallied at the airport here and tens of thousands more gathered nearby to celebrate the end of her eight years in exile.

Ignoring assassination threats and a suggestion from President Pervez Musharraf that she delay her return, she arrived on a plane from Dubai at a time of immense turmoil in Pakistan -- with her presence adding another layer of uncertainty.

Stepping onto the tarmac at 2:16 pm local time, she briefly glanced upward and said "It's great to be back home. It is a dream come true."

Jostling through a scrum of hundreds of reporters and photographers documenting the moment, she headed for a planned trip to the tomb of Mohammed Ali Jinnah, Pakistan's founder, a journey that will take her through streets lined with until thousands of supporters.

Aides predicted that perhaps 1 million Pakistanis would gather to welcome her in a reception expected to last for days. But they had also arranged tight security and a bullet-proof vehicle and stage trappings for her first appearances.

"My return heralds for the people of Pakistan the turn of the wheel from dictatorship to democracy," Bhutto said at a news conference in Dubai, where she has spent much of her exile.

Some argue that her deal with Musharraf undercut the movement against him, but if her return signals a weakening of his power, she has done a great service to the people of Pakistan. After all, a peaceful transition from the general's rule is a good thing, compared to the convulsions seen in many other parts of the world as military leaders are challenged.

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Heck, the conclusion is intuitive.

President Bush warned today that Iran would be raising the risk of a “World War III” if it came to possess nuclear weapons.

* * *

“If Iran had a nuclear weapon, it’d be a dangerous threat to world peace,” Mr. Bush said. “So I told people that if you’re interested in avoiding World War III, it seems like you ought to be interested in preventing them from having the knowledge necessary to make a nuclear weapon.”

Personally, I don't care if they have the knowledge to make the weapons. I want to be assured they don''t have the materials and the facilities to make the weapons.

After all, they are a terrorist-supporting regime of questionable stability.

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Because after all, they donÂ’t want anyone to question the legitimacy of their takeover of Tibet and subsequent human rights violations there.

Chinese officials warned the United States today not to honor the Dalai Lama, saying a planned award ceremony in Washington for the Tibetan spiritual leader would have “an extremely serious impact” on relations between the countries.

Speaking at a Foreign Ministry briefing and on the sidelines of the Communist Party’s ongoing 17th National Congress, the officials condemned the Dalai Lama as a resolute separatist and said foreign leaders must stop encouraging his “splittist” mission.

“Such a person who basely splits his motherland and doesn’t even love his motherland has been welcomed by some countries and has even been receiving this or that award,” Tibet’s Communist Party boss, Zhang Qingli, told reporters during the congress.

“We are furious,” Mr. Zhang said. “If the Dalai Lama can receive such an award, there must be no justice or good people in the world.”

The Dalai Lama, a Nobel laureate, has lived in exile since the Chinese army crushed an uprising in his homeland in 1959 and is revered as the spiritual leader of Tibetan Buddhists. He is scheduled to receive the Congressional Gold Medal on Wednesday after President Bush receives him at the White House today.

My big regret is that the President does not choose to receive him as the legitimate leader of the Tibetan government in exile.

A White House spokesman, Tony Fratto, emphasized that the meeting was “with a spiritual leader,” not a political official, and he said it was thus appropriate that it be held in the president’s residence, not the Oval Office.

The complaints of the Communist regime cannot obscure the abuses of the people of Tibet or the level of respect appropriate for this man of peace and dignity. The yapping of the Pekinese puppies cannot undermine the importance of a giant like the Dalai Lama and his voice as spokesman for an oppressed people.

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Just like in 1981, the Israelis have protected the Middle East from a rogue regime seeking a nuclear program.

IsraelÂ’s air attack on Syria last month was directed against a site that Israeli and American intelligence analysts judged was a partly constructed nuclear reactor, apparently modeled on one North Korea has used to create its stockpile of nuclear weapons fuel, according to American and foreign officials with access to the intelligence reports.

The description of the target addresses one of the central mysteries surrounding the Sept. 6 attack, and suggests that Israel carried out the raid to demonstrate its determination to snuff out even a nascent nuclear project in a neighboring state. The Bush administration was divided at the time about the wisdom of IsraelÂ’s strike, American officials said, and some senior policy makers still regard the attack as premature.

The attack on the reactor project has echoes of an Israeli raid more than a quarter century ago, in 1981, when Israel destroyed the Osirak nuclear reactor in Iraq shortly before it was to have begun operating. That attack was officially condemned by the Reagan administration, though Israelis consider it among their militaryÂ’s finest moments. In the weeks before the Iraq war, Bush administration officials said they believed that the attack set back IraqÂ’s nuclear ambitions by many years.

By contrast, the facility that the Israelis struck in Syria appears to have been much further from completion, the American and foreign officials said. They said it would have been years before the Syrians could have used the reactor to produce the spent nuclear fuel that could, through a series of additional steps, be reprocessed into bomb-grade plutonium.

Israel had to act now. Waiting a year would have made the attack a political issue during the height of the presidential campaign in the US. Waiting longer than that could mean a Democrat administration headed by a woman who kissed on Yassir Arafat's wife and a House Speaker who embraced Syria's dictator in an unauthorized diplomatic mission earlier this year. Israel must act to protect Israel, and must do so in a manner that best assures the survival of the Jewish state.

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Because the Syrian government says it didn't.

Foreign journalists perused the rows of corn and the groves of date palms pregnant with low-hanging fruit here this week, while agents of SyriaÂ’s ever present security services stood in the background, watching closely, almost nervously.

“You see — around us are farmers, corn, produce, nothing else,” said Ahmed Mehdi, the Deir ez Zor director of the Arab Center for the Studies of Arid Zones and Dry Lands, a government agricultural research center, as he led two of the journalists around the facilities.

It was here at this research center in this sleepy Bedouin city in eastern Syria that an Israeli journalist reported that Israel had conducted an air raid in early September.

Ron Ben-Yishai, a writer for the Israeli daily Yediot Aharonot, grabbed headlines when he suggested that the government facility here was attacked during the raid, snapping photos of himself for his article in front of a sign for the agricultural center.

He said he was denied access to the research center, which sits on the outskirts of the city, and he did not show any photos of the aftermath of the raid, though he said he saw some pits that looked like part of a mine or quarry, implying that they could also be sites where bombs fell.

Interesting analysis in the comments at Washington Monthly

And in related news, the Syrian government spokesman also denied that Senator Larry Craig was cruising for gay sex in a Minneapolis Airport restroom, and that Bill Clinton had sex with that woman, Monica Lewinski.

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After all, his diplomatic approach to Iran was not noted for its sucess.

Diplomacy, not military action, "definitely" remains the best approach to dealing with Iran, former President Jimmy Carter said in a wide-ranging interview on The Early Show Tuesday.

"Even after the Shah (of Iran) was deposed," Carter told co-anchor Harry Smith, "I quickly restored diplomatic relations with Iran. As a matter of fact, that's been proven by the fact I had about 60 diplomats in Iran, and they had an equal number in Washington, so we were continuing to try to communicate with them and work with them. And I think that, now, with increasing evidence that Iran is a dangerous and unpredictable country, the best thing to do is to have a maximum diplomatic relationship.

Yeah, you peanut farming moron, you did -- and then allowed America to be humiliated for over a year as the Iranians took those diplomats hostage and you allowed the United States to flail around in impotence.

Why, exactly, is the worst president of my lifetime (indeed, of the entire twentieth century) even given the time of day on foreign affairs -- especially as related to policy regarding the nation where he suffered his (and America's) greatest humiliation.

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Oh please!

North Korean leader Kim Jong Il called himself an "Internet expert" during summit talks with South Korea's president this week, a news report said Friday.

The reclusive leader made the remark after South Korean President Roh Moo-hyun asked that South Korean companies operating at an industrial park in the North Korean city of Kaesong be allowed to use the Internet, Yonhap news agency reported, without citing any source.

"I'm an Internet expert too. It's all right to wire the industrial zone only, but there are many problems if other regions of the North are wired," Kim told Roh, according to Yonhap.

"If that problem is addressed, there is no reason not to open" the Internet, Kim said.

Yeah if only Dear Internet Expert could figure out how to block out all that stuff about freedom -- and plentiful food -- from the staring North Korean masses.

But I think I've got this one figured out.

Asian dictator seeks SWF for bondage
and hegemonistic exchanges
involving short-range NorK missle.
No F.A.G.s!

I wonder, too, how many of these folks were engaged in fraternal photographic exchanges with a user located in Pyongyang.

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He wants to make the Promised Land Jew-free.

I disagree, but feel I must reiterate my previous suggestion for accomplishing such a goal. After all, it will enable the Palestinians to have their own homeland, free from the Jews they so obviously want out of the Middle East.

And it will free the rest of the world from the dangers of a nuclear Iran.

What do you think?

Seems like a doable option to me.

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So quit complaining that the Bush administration is violating your human rights. it isn't.

Instead, turn your shrill rhetoric to where it belongs -- the real oppressive dictators of the world.

You know, like in Burma.

It was about as simple and uncomplicated as shooting demonstrators in the streets. Embarrassed by smuggled video and photographs that showed their people rising up against them, the generals who run Myanmar simply switched off the Internet.

Until Friday television screens and newspapers abroad were flooded with scenes of tens of thousands of red-robed monks in the streets and of chaos and violence as the junta stamped out the biggest popular uprising there in two decades.

But then the images, text messages and postings stopped, shut down by generals who belatedly grasped the power of the Internet to jeopardize their crackdown.

“Finally they realized that this was their biggest enemy, and they took it down,” said Aung Zaw, editor of an exile magazine based in Thailand called The Irrawaddy, whose Web site has been a leading source of information in recent weeks. The site has been attacked by a virus whose timing raises the possibility that the military government has a few skilled hackers in its ranks.

The efficiency of this latest, technological, crackdown raises the question whether the vaunted role of the Internet in undermining repression can stand up to a determined and ruthless government — or whether Myanmar, already isolated from the world, can ride out a prolonged shutdown more easily than most countries.

OpenNet Initiative, which tracks Internet censorship, has documented signs that in recent years several governments — including those of Belarus, Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan — have closed off Internet access, or at least opposition Web sites, during periods preceding elections or times of intense protests.

You folks are free to spout your ignorant, ill-informed criticism of the American government with no censorship and no oppression -- indeed, you are aided by the very government that you claim oppresses you and violates your rights. Burma, on the other hand, is the face of oppression in the world, along with Darfur and other repressive, murderous regimes (sort of like Iraq used to be). Focus there, not here, and your words might seem to be more than simply self-indulgent whimperings by self-centered losers.

Oh, and I have to ask -- where are the human shields to protect the people of Burma? Or do they only get deployed to protect the enemies of America?

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I consider the man to be something of a joke when it comes to his intervention on behalf of repressive regimes and his support for terrorists against Israel, but former US President Jimmy Carter got one right here.

Former President Jimmy Carter confronted Sudanese security services on a visit to Darfur Wednesday, shouting "You don't have the power to stop me!" at some who blocked him from meeting refugees of the conflict.

The 83-year-old Carter wanted to visit a refugee camp in South Darfur but the U.N. mission in Sudan deemed that too dangerous. Instead, he agreed to fly to the World Food Program compound in the North Darfur town of Kabkabiya, where he was supposed to meet with refugees, many of whom were chased from their homes by militias and government forces.

But none of the refugees showed up and Carter decided to walk into the town, a volatile stronghold of the pro-government janjaweed militia, to meet refugees too frightened to attend the meeting at the compound.

He was able to make it to a school where he met with one tribal representative and was preparing to go further into town when Sudanese security officers stopped him.

"You can't go. It's not on the program!" the local security chief, who only gave his first name as Omar, yelled at Carter, who is in Darfur as part of a delegation of respected international figures known as "The Elders."

"We're going to anyway!" an angry Carter retorted as a crowd began to gather. "You don't have the power to stop me."

Actually, Carter was wrong there -- they had the power to stop him, but not the moral authority to do so. I'm sure that the Secret Service would have done its damnedest to protect him from these thugs.

Frankly, I remain appalled by the weak response to Darfur by the world community. Hopefully this incident will spur some to action.

But I wonder -- if this were George W. Bush after his presidency, would the Left be so willing to praise him, or would we hear complaints about arrogance and potentially sparking international incidents.?

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The human rights tragedy continuing in Burma appears to be worse than imagined.

Thousands of protesters are dead and the bodies of hundreds of executed monks have been dumped in the jungle, a former intelligence officer for Burma's ruling junta has revealed.

The most senior official to defect so far, Hla Win, said: "Many more people have been killed in recent days than you've heard about. The bodies can be counted in several thousand."

Mr Win, who spoke out as a Swedish diplomat predicted that the revolt has failed, said he fled when he was ordered to take part in a massacre of holy men. He has now reached the border with Thailand.

We always hear “Never Again!”

And yet the world allows it to happen again.

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