Chubby Chavez of Venezuela vows to protect the Bolivian government in the event that anything bad happens there in the near future. Chavez reminds me of that crazy Korean Kim. Seems he likes to pump his ego by taking spots in the world news. Though not nearly as bad as North Korea, Venezuela is really just another under-developed shit-hole of a country, and frankly I think Hugo should keep to himself. He is not worthy of any kind of world spotlight.

On the North Korean front, the diplomats have moved from deliberate posturing back down to the typical disagreement over what to do in the manner of punishment for Kim’s alleged testing of a nuclear bomb. The end result is likely to be no result, and the world will continue on as if nothing really happened. But come to think of it, there isn’t really much that anybody can or is prepared to do, even in spite of the fact that we’ve had years of warning about this particular scenario.

“Let’s just wait and see what happens, then we’ll deal with it when it becomes an issue.”

Well, it’s become an issue all of the sudden, and still nobody is willing to deal with it.

“Well, you can have your nuclear bombs, but just don’t light them off in anybody else’s back yard.”

That, sirs, is the only next logical step. Let’s just see what happens next. Just wait.

It still remains to be seen just exactly what this madman wants. I mean you can’t hold somebody hostage without also having some kind of demand. What the hell does Kim want so badly that he has to threaten world peace? He wants direct negotiations with the U.S. But negotiate what? Makes no sense to me.

I run into a fellow from time to time who vocalizes all his internal dialog, which in itself is pretty crazy, but if you heard the disjointed thoughts going through his head, you would not expect to be able to carry on any kind of rational conversation with him. The guy is a stark raving lunatic. So given that analogy, I would not be inclined to want to open any kind of dialog with Kim the crazy Korean either.

On to Iraq, they want to pass a law that effectively segments the country into different semi-autonomous regions. The Sunni opposition fear that it will fragment Iraq, meaning the Sunni chunk of land will not have as much oil as the Kurdish and Shiite chunks. The Shiite opposition fears it will adversely impact national reconciliation, which means they aren’t though killing all the Sunnis yet. The Kurds, bless them, have been pleasantly quiet.

The British want to pull out of Iraq, claiming their presence in the country is contributing to the insecurity there. It’s a double-edged sword that, if they pull out, it’s exactly what the people presenting the security problems want, so that they will be freer to make more of a mess than things are now.

The conservatives in the U.S. call it cut-and-run. When thing get tough, we all go home. The truth of the matter is that the violence will not stop there until the Iraqis are ready to stop it themselves. It doesn’t matter how many British or American troops there are over there. We clearly aren’t doing anything to help the situation. The Iraqis can blame our presence all they want for the violence, but it really is just Iraqis killing Iraqis, and they will continue to do it whether we are there or not. We certainly aren’t doing anything to stop it. So maybe the British have a point.

And then in Afghanistan, the house speaker there is threatening to resign because of alleged corruption in the government. It is widely know that Afghanistan supplies 90% of the world’s heroin. Now, that’s a lot of dope. It couldn’t happen if the government wasn’t corrupt, at least not on that scale. And President Karzai has the nerve to complain about Pakistan harboring the Taliban on their side of the border, when it is Karzai’s government and the opium crop that funds the Taliban in the first place.

Now who’s stupid here? I guess we are. We don’t know what’s going on. Obviously President Bush doesn’t know what’s going on or he wouldn’t have invited Karzai to visit him in Washington last month. And certainly NATO doesn’t know what’s going on, since their soldiers are too busy fighting the Taliban to notice all the thousands of acres of opium fields across the country. Yup, them Afghans got us all spoofed. I guess I’ll just have to accept the fact that I am dumber than a bucket of rocks.