As IF Times

link U.N.s Ban says Egypt transition should start now | Reuters.

How interesting that no less than the head of the United Nations, Ban Ki-Moon, should declare that the power shift in Egypt should begin sooner than later.  Hosni Mubarak, the long time autocrat of that nation has been under pressure to leave office not just from Egyptians but apparently from all world nations.  Just over a year ago, a similar show of popular uprising and dissent was directed against the repressive regime in Iran, yet strangely, the U.N. didn’t see fit to comment on the need for change in that nation.  As we may recall, the military was brought in to quell the voice of those brave enough to push for changes in that regime.    Even more amusing are the recent missives from the Iranian foreign ministry praising the protests in Egypt!

It’s the same tired pattern of liberal mouthpieces calling for restraint, tolerance and compassion, but only for select groups of people and certainly not for themselves.  It was amusing that during the Iranian ‘uprising’, as the demonstrators were being beaten, there were calls for ‘restraint’ on both sides.  As if.  I guess one side restrains from beating and the other side restrains from bleeding.  

If the U.N. were the institution of freedom and fairness which it laughably purports to be, why doesn’t  it regularly chastise those regimes that legitimize the enslavement of women, the suppression of free speech and the intolerance of other religions and promotes active belligerence with the rest of the world.  By coincidence Iran comes to  mind. 

If the U.N. were so concerned about the rights and freedoms of the population in Egypt, why don’t they propose some kind of provisional authority to help in the transition?  Left on their own and without any credible leader, the population is vulnerable to radical opportunists who would step in and take control during a power vacuum.  If that happens,  kiss any thoughts of freedom and tolerance goodbye. 

In that case, they’ll go back to pleading for tolerance and restraint on both sides.

link Taliban imposter: Senior Taliban leader was a fake, officials say – latimes.com.

Well duh! What was the first clue?  The guy was holding peace talks! Some may recall that the mission statement of the Taliban was to wipe out the Great Satan, kill all non believers etc etc.  The only logical reason to negotiate with the sworn enemy is either you’re out of bullets, out of suicide volunteers or in this case, if you were an impostor. It’s actually amazing no one else has gamed the system up to now, excluding Hamid Karzai of course.

If you are living in Afghanistan,  you likely spend your days watching the landscape transistion from one shade of khaki to another and nothing ever changes.  Why not pretend to represent the locals and get feted and fawned over by all the elite mucky mucks of the West?  It’s a fair bet the food is better and the beds they provide softer than the straw mat in a dusty corner of a cave that you’re accustomed to.  You get to shower and glad hand all the top officials sent to meet you.  It’s not as if it’s easy, even if you had a program, discerning the good guys from the bad over there; I mean come on, all bearded men look the same.  It could have been Cat Stevens for all anyone knew.   But you would think some cursory checks were made to verify that this guy was who he said he was. 

This has been a fairly dependable tactic on dealing with the West, supported by decades of precedence.  The root of this begins from early childhood.  As most public school teachers surely know, average decent and unassuming students don’t cause them any grief.  The really rotten kids, the misbehaving, class disrupting social misfits take up way more of the teacher’s time and attention than the well behaved kids.  It’s not lost on the little darlings that the more they misbehave, the more attention they get.

As they grow older and see that this tactic always brings about the desired response, they become even better at employing it.  In the West, they go on to Hollywood and become actors and entertainers, or they become lawyers, or they go into politics and become Democrats.  Recently there has been a new vocational direction for these folk, the area of environmental activism.  Whatever their chosen vocation, the common denominator is that the public is usually held ransom by their utterances and they themselves believe in the importance of their lives.  But I digress.

On a global scale, this tack is employed again and again by rogue nations looking for some kind of concession by the community at large, principally of course the West.  Think North Korea, think Iran, think Venezuela.  So in this particular case, the Akhtar Mohammad Mansourh impostor figures, why not dance with NATO a bit?  It’s likely that NATO was so keen on getting some discussions going, they didn’t even bother with the usual TSA style security groping.  The tip-off should have been that the impostor was sipping on a 12 year old Glenfiddich and watching Dancing With The Stars in his hotel room. This fiasco is a big red flag that the tactics being employed by our top people there mirrors the competence of  the idiotic TSA regime back here. But you cannot really blame the impostor for taking advantage of the red carpet being deployed for every nut who rattles sabres and wants attention.  The West calls it diplomacy.  The other side calls them Suckers.