Joseph Stalin the murderer of the best and brightest of Poland at Katyn...

Hard to believe that it would take so long to admit something that everyone knew already. Every Pole knows this for a fact, not as an urban legion but the horror of having so many of your loved ones massacred on a frozen lake. Read the article from the AP....

MOSCOW –  The World War II Katyn massacres were committed on the direct order of Soviet dictator Josef Stalin, Russia's lower house of parliament said Friday — a statement hailed by Polish officials.

The 1940 massacre of around 20,000 Polish officers and other prominent citizens in western Russia by Soviet secret police has long soured relations between the two countries. President Dmitry Medvedev will visit Poland in early December.

Soviet propaganda for decades blamed the killings on the Nazis, but post-Soviet Russia previously acknowledged they were carried out by the People's Commissariat for Internal Affairs, or NKVD — Stalin's much feared secret police.

The statement passed by the State Duma appears aimed as a step toward Russia definitively breaking with its Soviet legacy.

Some observers have expressed alarm in recent years that Russia may be quietly rehabilitating Stalin. Last year, a quote praising Stalin was restored to the decoration of one of Moscow's busiest subway stations; this year, Moscow's mayor proposed allowing posters depicting Stalin as part of the annual celebrations of the defeat of Nazi Germany.

"This historic document is important not only for Russian-Polish relations — much more it is important for us ourselves," said Konstantin Kosachev, chairman of the Duma's foreign relations committee, according to the news agency ITAR-Tass.

Russia has turned over scores of volumes of documents this year about Katyn to the Polish government.

"Published materials, held in secret archives for many years, not only reveal the scale of this awful tragedy but show that the Katyn crime was committed on the direct order of Stalin and other Soviet leaders," says the statement, which also expresses "deep sympathy for the victims of this unjustified repression."

Communist legislators tried to amend the statement to remove the naming of Stalin, but were defeated.

"The falsification of history that we are fighting against in other countries is also taking place in our country, and today we could see it with our own eyes," Kosachev said of the amendment attempt. Russian officials frequently use the term "falsification of history" to attack perceived attempts to underplay the importance of the Red Army in the fight against Nazi Germany.

The head of the Polish parliament's foreign affairs committee, Andrzej Halicki, said he considered the Duma's statement to be a breakthrough.

"I am happy that such a process of reconciliation and truth is taking place," he said. "It is the first such act that proves that our relations and discussions are sincere."

However, Jaroslaw Kaczynski, head of the conservative opposition Law and Justice party, said he still wants Russia to offer a full apology and compensation.

A U.S. historian who wrote a book about Katyn, hailed the Duma decision.

"I think this is part of a long process in which ultimately the Russian people will have to come to grips with their past," Allen Paul, who authored "Katyn: Stalin's Massacre and the Triumph of Truth," told The Associated Press.

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Associated Press writer Vanessa Gera in Warsaw contributed to this report.

Two takes on North Korea....

Charles Krauthammer on NKorea...

Last night I predicted that the administration would do exactly the wrong thing and call ... for a return to the Six-Party talks. Well sure enough, our envoy to North Korea, who's now in Beijing, last night called for, yes, a return to the talks.

This is after he had a meeting with the Chinese and he announced that it was extremely successful, that we and the Chinese had agreed ... on the need for -- strong measures? Retaliation? Sanctions? No. On the need for multilateralism. ...

To return to the talks is exactly the wrong thing because it's exactly why -- if there's any logic at all to what's happened -- that's why Pyongyang has been doing this: (a) the attack with the artillery, and (b) the revelation earlier this last week of this vast, advanced facility for uranium enrichment.

The point is this is a regime in transition, a regime in a succession crisis, that is in economic disaster. The people are starving. It needs [outside] aid because we and the South Koreans and the Japanese have correctly cut it off years ago, and this is the way it [North Korea] beckons us into negotiations where, again, it will offer a phony agreement on some kind of halting of perhaps the uranium or plutonium program, and we will once again subsidize them. ...

I think everybody understands that the only outcome of this eventually that will be considered a success is if the regime eventually implodes and collapses of its own inefficiency and irrationality -- in fact lunacy in the way it governs itself.

And one way to do that is not to continue what we have been doing for 16 years -- [which] is negotiating and periodically caving in to threats like this, or attacks like this, with carrots, meaning keeping the economy of that state, which is really teetering on the edge of collapse, keeping it going...

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Mike Walker on China and NKorea...

All,

Here is a report from the AP:

BEIJING – When North Korea tested a nuclear device last year, China issued bland criticism and urged Pyongyang to resume diplomacy. After a South Korean navy ship was sunk, most likely by a NorthKorean torpedo, Beijing sent its sympathies but called the evidence inconclusive.

Now that North Korea has unleashed an artillery barrage on a South Korean island that killed four people — including two civilians — and raised tensions in the heavily armed region, Beijing again appears unwilling to rein in its neighbor.

For all China's growing international might, its tolerance of North Korea's wayward behavior shows how differently Beijing sees the world — or at least its corner of it.

"There is zero chance of China, either in open or in private, putting major substantive pressure on North Korea," said Shi Yinhong, professor of international relations at Beijing's Renmin University.

If major damage is inflicted on South Korea from the irrational and deadly actions of North Korea, either literally or economically, the long-term damage will ultimately fall on China.

North Korea only exists  state because China makes it so.  

While most of the world is working to build a better future, such as the emerging powers in India and Brazil, China looks foolishly backwards.  Its relationship to North Korea is neither progressive nor enlightened, it is a throw back to a failed "kowtow" relationship going back to the days of decadent Chinese emperors and ever subservient Korean kings.  

What China seems incapable of seeing is that it cannot sponsor, however covertly, a horrific war in East Asia without severe consequences any more than the Japanese militarist could exploit their power a century ago.  Both courses were and are doomed to tragic failure.

China is at a crossroad.  It either advances the world forward in peace or helps to plunge it once more in to darkness and relentless warfare.  The sad reality is that China is an immature power.  It has no history of treating other nations as equals and is struggling, too often unsuccessfully, with the concept of equality of nations and races in East Asia.  To paraphrase Churchill, it seems that if you live in East Asia then the Chinese must either be at your feet or at your throat.  

It does not have to be that way but only the Chinese can make that choice.

Mike

Smallness... and very scary. This was the third person in line for four years to govern the US in case something were to happen the President and Vice President! She has always thrown these type of "playground" comments out. Remember her references to violence against gays when anyone opposed same sex marriages or her describing Tea Party activitists with Nazi symbols, etc.

John Boehner, caught up in historic election results that propelled his party into a dominate position in Congress and himself as the Majority Speaker was caught up in a moment of emotions...

Pelosi's response? Not so empathetic.

“You know what? He is known to cry. He cries sometimes when we’re having a debate on bills,” Pelosi said.

“If I cry, it’s about the personal loss of a friend or something like that. But when it comes to politics – no, I don’t cry,” she added. “I would never think of crying about any loss of an office, because that’s always a possibility, and if you’re professional, then you deal with it professionally."


Why would she need to say anything? Where are the adults? I guess this her definition of professionalism...

Read more: http://www.politico.com/news/stories/1110/45425.html#ixzz15w2SKH00

Victor Davis Hanson

The George W. Bush Fixation

Obama’s fixation on his predecessor could consume his presidency.

B      Obama remains fixated on George W. Bush. For nearly two years, President Obama and his team have prefaced their explanations for the tough economy, the tough finances, and the tough situation abroad with a “Bush did it” chorus. Apparently, they believed that most of our problems, here and abroad, either started with George W. Bush, or at least would not transcend him.

At first, it was an easy enough habit to fall into. Things were not in great shape in January 2009 when Obama took over. More important, Obama started out with a nearly 70 percent approval rating. By contrast, Bush, like the punching bag Harry Truman, left office with an approval rating in the low 30s.

Obama’s serial fixation on his predecessor made little sense when he first took office — and it has now become a disastrous misreading of political realities.

Recent polls reflect that Bush and Obama are now just about even in popularity. Obama’s supporters in the House have suffered the worst shellacking since 1938. The president got out of Washington on a foreign tour immediately after the election — only to be cold-shouldered by fair-weather foreign leaders who sensed weakness. Bush, meanwhile, is basking in endless media exposure as he expounds on his best-selling memoir — appearing above the partisan fray, past and present.

Voters two years ago elected Obama for a variety of reasons — from unhappiness with Bush and Iraq to the landmark novelty of seeing our first black president. The financial meltdown of September 2008 ended for good John McCain’s small lead in the polls. That panic also reminded voters of their unease with the Bush deficits and his expansion of government.

Unfortunately, Obama misread all that, and ended up trumping many of the things that Bush did to alienate voters.

Deficits of $500 billion soared to $1.4 trillion. Vast but unfunded Bush programs like Medicare prescription-drug benefits and No Child Left Behind soon were overshadowed by even bigger ones like Obamacare. An initial Bush bailout evolved into a gargantuan stimulus and serial government takeovers.

The result, fair or not, was that Bush’s financial felonies began to look like misdemeanors in comparison. Tea Party voters saw the Obama medicine as worse than the original Bush disease.

There was the same obsession with — and misreading of — Bush in foreign affairs. The public was turned off by the violence and costs in Iraq — but otherwise not especially concerned about Bush’s largely traditional foreign policy or his anti-terrorism protocols. Too bad a Bush-obsessed Obama was again blind to that simple fact. So when Iraq became largely quiet as Obama entered office, the entire “Bush did it” refrain was rendered obsolete and should have been dropped.

The anti-war Obama had campaigned on closing Guantanamo, ending tribunals and renditions, and critiquing the Patriot Act and Predator-drone attacks. But once Iraq was taken out of the equation, Obama quickly discovered that these old bogeymen Bush policies were both useful and relatively popular. So he was forced to keep or expand them. Obama’s flip-flop only confused Americans: Why, in hypocritical fashion, was he now embracing the Bush legacy that he used to demonize constantly?

When Obama tried to chart a new and much-heralded “reset-button” foreign policy in loud opposition to Bush’s, the irony continued. Most Americans did not want to try the accused architect of 9/11, Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, in a civilian court replete with legal gymnastics. They did not think that announcing artificial deadlines for troop withdrawals in wartime was an especially bright idea.

They also did not expect that the much-heralded antidote to Bush’s swagger and “Dead or Alive” Texanisms would include bowing to Saudi princes and Chinese dictators, apologizing abroad for America’s purported sins, or spreading mythologies about the Islamic world’s contribution to the Western Renaissance and Enlightenment.

Just because Bush turned off Europe over Iraq did not mean that an “I’m not Bush” Obama could not turn it off even more by printing billions of dollars, urging European countries to borrow more in reckless American style, and downplaying old alliances with everyone from Britain to Poland.

So here is a polite suggestion for President Obama: After nearly two years of governance, free up your policies to either succeed or fail on their own merits without chaining them to the Bush past. In a word: Let go of a now-smiling and relatively rehabilitated Bush — before such a fixation consumes you and your presidency.

— Victor Davis Hanson is a classicist and historian at the Hoover Institution, Stanford University, and the author, most recently, of The Father of Us All: War and History, Ancient and Modern. © 2010 Tribune Media Services, Inc.

RealClearPolitics - Video - Krauthammer: Ghailani Verdict "Huge Embarrassment" For Obama Admin

Tolerance, Intolerance, al Qaeda, and Moral Cowardice

Mike Walker, Colonel USMC (retired)

All,


In the coming days, please compare the outcry in the "enlightened" West as well as the Islamic world and so-called "Muslim Street" over the "proposed threat" to burn a Quran in the United States that never happened vice the wholesale slaughter of an Arab Christian congregation celebrating Mass in Baghdad last week or the mass murder of Sunni Muslims as they worshipped God in their mosques in Pehsawar District, Pakistan this week. Both attacks were claimed by an erstwhile Islamic group called al Qaeda.


This follows the brutal killings of Sufi Muslims in July in Karachi and Ahmadi Muslims in May in Lehore. Sufi's follow and existential path to God and their followers have written, over the centuries, some the greatest poetry the Islamic world has ever seen. The Ahmadi are an eccentric Islamic sect but are also the only Muslim group that are pacifists in the Quaker Christian sense.


All these barbaric acts were made allegedly in the name of God by supposed followers of God who call themselves member of al Qaeda. This is a lie. These are not just acts in the eyes of God. They are great sins. Al Qaeda likes to use the word "Satan" in labeling its enemies. If any group in the world today deserves the label "The Great Stan" it is al Qaeda. Al Qaeda is an abomination before God, the Almighty.


If the world's Islamic leaders are not willing to say once and for all that al Qaeda and its supporters are both evil and bad Muslims, there is little hope for the future. The leaders of the Islamic world must openly say that the members of al Qaeda are fasiq, and that their teachings, such as preaching the killing Muslims and Christians in their places of worship, are bid'ah, damnable innovations and a perversion of Islam.


The members of al Qaeda should be sentenced to death as apostates just as the Quran commands. The supporters of al Qaeda should be publicly excoriated as violators of the Quran, the word of God, and as fajir, sinners before Allah.


Further, the non-Muslim world along with the Muslim world can no longer sit quietly as these horrors take place. They must speak out clearly and forcefully against this form of religious extremism. This is a moment when people of good conscience, regardless of their belief or non-belief, must make a stand and speak out.


Speaking out in one unified voice is worth more than dozen battalions on the battlefield. If we are not willing to exert the moral courage to prove the pen mightier than the sword then the sword is all we will have left to wield.


As Edmund Burke well said on different occasions:


"I take toleration to be a part of religion. I do not know which I would sacrifice; I would keep them both: it is not necessary that I should sacrifice either."


"When bad men combine, the good must associate; else they will fall one by one, an unpitied sacrifice in a contemptible struggle."


The good must now associate for anything less is intolerance in its ugliest form and can only lead to ever greater deaths of innocents.


Semper Fi,


Mike