U.S Cuts Aid to Egypt...Maybe...

Sometimes it's like watching parents who can't decide how to deal with unruly children. To many, this is a no brainer: cut aid to them NOW, and don't even CONSIDER restoring it until they have a government that is friendly and receptive to us.

Or do things the way that I think we should and stop giving aid to other countries at all until we have rendered aid to OUR OWN COUNTRYMEN first...

At stake: a sizable portion of the $1.5 billion the U.S. provides Egypt each year. Much of the aid is in military equipment, and at least a quarter-billion in cash assistance to the Egyptian government and $300 million in a loan guarantee are also now in limbo.
The State Department made clear Wednesday that the decision to freeze the aid wasn't permanent and it could be restored if "credible progress" is made toward setting up an inclusive government in the wake of the military coup that overthrew the elected if unpopular government of President Mohammed Morsi.

It should be remembered that Morsi was Obama's choice for leadership in Egypt during the "Arab Spring." Now, as the "spring" seems to show only more signs of shifting and evolving (as any fire eventually does to survive. The world wonders what form it will take next.

Sic vis pacem parabellum.

MT

Could We Be Being Duped By An International Shell Game over Tibet?

The Dalai Lama, speaking today in Silicon Valley in California, has announced that there will be no more concessions made in dealing with China, and has threatened to resign his leadership of Tibet's government in exile if violence escalates.

From the 17th century until 1951, Tibet has been ruled by the Dalai Lama's and their regents from the traditional capital of Lhasa. In 1911, Tibet declared it's independence from China at the fall of the Qing dynasty. From that time until 1941, it remained an independent state until the formal formation of the People's Republic of China, at which time the government in Beijing (formally Peking) launched an armed invasion of the region in 1950. The unprepared Tibetan army of 5,000 was routed by 40,000 Communist Chinese forces near the city of Chamdo. In 1951, Tibet and China signed the Seventeen Point Agreement for the Peaceful Liberation of Tibet, recognizing the rule of China over Tibet. In 1959, the Dalai Lama fled to India with his government, going into exile, and repudiated the agreement.

The Dalai Lama is more than just the leader of the government for the people of Tibet. Tradition holds that the Dalai Lama is the reincarnation of a line of Buddhist Masters who have become so enlightened that they have been able to become exempt from the wheel of life, death, and rebirth, and have chosen by their own free will to be reborn on this plane to teach mankind.

The current Dalai Lama, Tenzin Gyatso, is the 14th Dalai Lama and has proclaimed that he will be the last.

The Dalai Lama is currently on a visit to the United States, and has issued a statement today from Silicon Valley in California concerning the violence and protests over the Olympics in Beijing.

“If violence becomes out of control then my only option is to resign,” the exiled Tibetan spiritual leader told reporters on the sidelines of a five-day conference on compassion in Seattle.

“If the majority of people commit violence, then I resign,” the 72-year-old Nobel Peace Prize laureate said on his first visit to the U.S. since the recent Chinese action in Tibet.

The Dalai Lama said he was fully committed to his “middle way” approach to Tibet’s relationship with China. “I am fully committed to the middle approach; further more concessions, I don’t know,” he said. “Our struggle is with a few in the leadership of the People’s Republic of China and not with the Chinese people,” he said in a statement.

However, he expressed fears that suppression in Tibet may increase if the present situation continued.

“I am very much concerned that the Chinese government will unleash more force and increase the suppression of Tibetan people,” he said.

The Dalai Lama also indicated that there have been ongoing private conferences between his government and Beijing since the eruption of protests last month, adding that he had had no direct contact with Beijing, but that talks were being conducted through "private channels," giving no indication as to nature of the talks or the means of communication. He also expressed his support for the Olympics in Beijing, expressing that he was "saddened" by recent anti-Chinese protests surrounding the arrival of the Olympic torch in San Fransisco.

Beijing, however, has accused the Dalai Lama of "masterminding" the protests in an attempt to stir unrest and split Tibet from China, and ruin the Olympics.

At the weekend, Chinese President Hu Jintao defended the action in Tibet and dismissed the claims that the riots in Lhasa were linked to human rights. “Our conflict with the Dalai clique is not an ethnic problem, not a religious problem, nor a human rights problem,” Mr. Hu told Australian Prime Minister Kevin Rudd.

The human rights controversy is and has been at the center of the protestation of China's occupation of Tibet for several years. Actor Richard Gere has been a long time advocate for human rights in Tibet.

For now, the violence and unrest, the protests and demonstrations, are what are taking center stage as the Olympics prepare to begin in Beijing. It does give pause to consider, in stepping away for a moment to look at the entirety of the situation, who benefits from a disrupted, politicized Beijing Olympics? Who suffers? And what will be the final outcomes once the Olympics are past for China?

There is something to be said for timing. China accuses the Dalai Lama of stirring unrest, the Dalai Lama expresses his regrets that the Olympics are being overshadowed by the unrest, so the question remains, who has sparked it?

Is the Dalai Lama truly behind the protests, while claiming denial on the international stage, or is it possible that China, itself, has staged the demonstrations as some way of discrediting the Dalai Lama and the exiled Tibetan government.

Somewhere, there is truth that has yet to be brought to light.

In the meantime, the athletes of the world gather under the taint of political and social disharmony.

Once and Always, an American Fighting Man


.

The Tet Offensive Forty Years Later

Forty years. According to some ways of calculating, that is considered to be the length of time for a full generation.

Forty years. According to the Bible, the length of time that Israel wandered in the Sinai Peninsula after escaping Egyptian bondage.

Forty years of the world turning, forty years of global conflicts, the rise and fall of dictators, of military regimes, of negotiations.

Forty years of what came to be a black eye for the American military.

It has been forty years today since the Tet Offensive. It has been largely undiscussed by the American media today, but it has not been forgotten in Vietnam.

Vietnam on Friday marked 40 years since the Tet Offensive with colourful military parades of its veterans and re-enactments of the surprise wave of urban assaults that marked a turning point in the war.

Communist Party leaders and military chiefs watched as former guerrillas and regular soldiers filed past Ho Chi Minh City's Reunification Palace, formerly the presidential palace of the US-backed Saigon regime ousted in 1975.

Youths in black Viet Cong pajamas with models of AK-47 assault rifles and rocket launchers joined the parade, as did women carrying fruit baskets on shoulder poles, recalling the way arms and bombs were smuggled into the city.

"The 1968 Tet Offensive opened a new page in the Vietnam war and struck a blow to the imperialist Americans' will to continue their aggression," said Le Thanh Hai, using the rhetoric of the Communist Party he heads in the city.

"It is one of the most glorious chapters in Vietnam's history."

In a parade of more than 10,000 veterans, service members, and others held today, the celebration was a dual event, marking the 40th anniversary of the Tet Offensive as well as the founding of the Indochina Communist Party on 3FEB1930.

Sharing the podium with Vietnam's Communist Party leader Nong Duc Manh was Nguyen Thi Binh, signer for the southern Provisional Revolutionary Government, former vice president of Vietnam, and signer of the 1973 Paris peace accords.

Tet has become, in recent years, a center of growing controversy among historians, military analists, and the intelligence community. It is widely conceded, now, that the United States and the South Vietnamese greatly overestimated the North Vietnamese and the Viet Cong. Retired Vietnamese military commanders have admitted in recent years that they were suffering heavy casualties and taking heavy losses in fighting the Americans. Congressional leaders and military commanders clashed on their opinions regarding who was actually winning. Assertions by General William Westmoreland that the U.S. was on the offensive against the communist uprising were met with confusion and doubt by the American public. The American political machine began to downscale operations in Vietnam, eventually leaving the South Vietnamese on their own in 1973. Saigon finally fell to the North in 1975.

One has to wonder, when hearing Senator Harry Reid announcing that the war in Iraq is "lost," and General Peter Petraeus denounced as "General Betray Us," if we are not seeing history repeating itself today.

"Those who do not learn the lessons of history are doomed to repeat it."


Once and Always, an American Fighting Man


.