A Little Of The Old In And Out



(image via stopgenocidenow)

In: Mia Farrow. As the world is distracted by Russia's incursion into Georgia, the Sudanese are using the geopolitical pandemonium to launch assaults on rebel-held areas of North Darfur. And while that little chestnut didn't make A1 above-the-fold of The New York Times, Mia Farrow -- God bless her -- is on it on the ground in Darfur, and fighting on the side of the angels. From ABCNews:

"U.S. actress-activist Mia Farrow is airing a series of 'Darfur Olympics" webcasts that coincide with the Beijing Games, blasting the Chinese, who have close economic ties to Sudan, for funding the Darfur genocide. But some Sudan experts say Farrow has been too quick to demonize China.

"Mia Farrow is airing a series of 'Darfur Olympics' webcasts that coincide with the Beijing Games, blasting the Chinese, who have close economic ties to Sudan, for funding the Darfur genocide.

"Farrow, who has dubbed this year's Olympics the 'Genocide Games,' is airing one webcast for each day of the competition, and calls for a complete boycott of the Games."

(image via newsgroper)

Out: Dick Cheney. How goes "The Great Game," Dick (And you don't mind that we call you that)? The VICE(president), who humiliated Russia at every turn, behaving as if the Cold War were still going on, bears some responsibility for the chaos presently engulfing the Caucasus region, especially considering he was the administration point man in the Caspian. Salon's Juan Cole writes a damning piece on the Bush (Cheney) Doctrne, saying:

"In a unipolar world, the Bush doctrine of preemptive war allowed Washington to assert itself without fear of contradiction. The Bush doctrine, however, was never meant to be emulated by others and was therefore implicitly predicated on the notion that all challengers would be weaker than the United States throughout the 21st century. Bush and Cheney are now getting a glimpse of a multipolar world in which other powers can adopt their modus operandi with impunity. Bush's rhetoric may have sounded like that of President Woodrow Wilson, but his policy has often been to support the overthrow or hobbling of elected governments that he does not like -- and that has not gone unnoticed by countries that also count themselves great powers and would not mind following suit.

"The problem with international law for a superpower is that it is a constraint on overweening ambition. Its virtue is that it constrains the aggressive ambitions of others. Bush gutted it because he thought the United States would not need it anytime soon. But Russia is now demonstrating that the Bush doctrine can just as easily be the Putin doctrine."

Russia's territoriality makes for bad times for oil prospectors (and Vice Presidents) who had eyed the region with hunger.