Early Morning Thoughts

1.
After a Syrian mob destroyed the Scandinavian embassies in Damascus yesterday, the Swedish Minister for Foreign Affairs, Laila Freivalds, issued a statement that is surprisingly clear and well defined:

“It is completely unacceptable that the protests against the cartoons of the Prophet Muhammad are expressed in such a way that the Swedish Embassy in Damascus has been subjected to damage. Under the Vienna Convention on Diplomatic Relations, Syria is responsible for protecting foreign diplomatic missions and their staff. We have conveyed a formal protest to Syria.”

For once Mrs Freivalds manages to do her job. Thumbs up.

2.
This morning I saw a piece on BBC World about the not-so-bright Venezuelan president Hugo Chávez’s latest project. He is planning to recruit at least a million new soldiers to the national army in order to “defend the country against the American aggression”. To me it has become even more apparent that the “new” communists are very similar to the old ones. The main difference between the old and the new being that the latter is ridiculously pathetic. I mean, if not even China and the Soviet Union with its mass populations managed to overturn the armies of the free and capitalist world, what makes is likely that Venezuela will. Thumbs down.