IN THE WAKE OF THE THEN-SOVIET UNION'S INVASION AND OCCUPATION OF AFGHANISTAN IN LATE 1979/EARLY 1980, A NUMBER OF NATIONS, AMONG THEM THE UNITED STATES, elected to boycott the Moscow Summer Olympic Games in 1980 as a show of protest.

As if in reprisal, the then-Soviet Union and several of its Warsaw Pact/COMECON satellites (with the notable exception of Romania) boycotted the Los Angeles Summer Olympic Games in 1984, prompting the Soviets to offer up a counter to the Olympics which they called "the Friendship Games" for those so boycotting.

Now, it seems as if hints are being dropped in certain circles suggesting that a few soverign nations may consider ignoring the Call to the Games of the XXIX Olympiad in Beijing this summer in response to China's late crackdown in Tibet, with varying accounts on the number of casualties (Beijing officially claiming 16 dead, whereas the Tibetan Government-in-Exile contends the figure is closer to 130) and Beijing's "show no mercy" mentalities on the "ringleaders" behind the late ultraviolence in Lhasa.

And there are still ripple effects from what happened in Tibet recently:

• This morning's Olympic Torch Lighting ceremonies on the Plains of Olympia, outside Athens, were briefly disrupted when a protester displaying a "Free Tibet" banner briefly made an appearence before Greek security forces subdued the protester.
• Pro-Tibetan sympathisers in the Nepali capital of Kathmandu (including a few Buddhist priests) have held protests which were all too often met with police baton charges and scuffles; one such yesterday saw six killed and twenty Buddhist priests detained.

Too, you also have concerns as to whether Beijing's official categorical pledges on controlling air-pollution levels during the Olympics will remain empty such, still putting pressure on some nations as to whether such may also be an excuse to boycott.

Not to mention Chinese police authorities banning broadcasters covering the Beijing Olympic Games doing reports from Tiananmen Square in central Beijing, fearing the likelihood of "China's image being seriously compromised" in case, say, human-rights protesters unfurled banners before the cameras with the Forbidden City in the background.

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HOW HIS FRAUDULENCY'S GREAT WITHIN AS ARE INVOLVED IN THE UR-RAHOWA AGAINST INTERNATIONAL TERRORISM will look upon newly-elected Pakistani Prime Minister Yusuf Raza Gillani (Pakistan People's Party/P3) as a credible ally in the aforementioned ur-RAHOWA is anybody's guess.

Especially considering where Prime Minister Gillani has pledged to order the release from detention of such lawyers as were detained under predecessor Perez Musharaf's period of emergency rule following Benazhir Bhutto's assaination. That, and an international enquiry into the circumstances behind the aforementioned assaination under United Nations control.

One reason why the Great Within needs to be all the more watchful is because of the P3's coalition with the Muslim League, which may not be quite familiar to the Great Within when it comes to terrorism-related issues and matters of interest to the "inside of the inside."

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TRY IMAGINING INDECISION 2008'S ISSUES INCLUDING SOMETHING ABOUT "GROSS NATIONAL HAPPINESS" BEING MAINTAINED as necessary to national identity and cohesion.

Yet in the remote Himalayan mountain kingdom of Bhutan, "gross national happiness" is used to describe the belief of balancing socioeconomic development with respect for traditional values and the environment. And such is the guiding principle in their first-ever legislative elections today for a 47-seat National Assembly as marks the end for the last absolute hereditary monarchy among the world's soverign nations.

Bhutan's current monarch, King Jigme Khesar Namgyang Wangchuck, is expected to remain as, more or less, a symbolic figurehead; but then again, expect considerable support across the desolate kingdom to remain for the monarchy, even if horses and pack mules had to be used to deliver ballot boxes and electoral materials to remote villages and many returning to their native villages from the Bhutani capital of Thimpu to cast ballots--one widely-reported example being that of a woman walking some 370 miles over two weeks from Thimpu back to her native village just to help write history.

Something worth thinking about in the greater debate heading into Indecision 2008.

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HIS FRAUDULENCY'S GREAT WITHIN, AND THEIR PRO-WAR DROOGS, AREN'T GOING TO LIKE THE LATEST MILESTONE IN THE IRAQI THEATER of the ur-RAHOWA Against International Terrorism: Videlicet, the 4,000th American casualty in the five years of misadventure so ensuing, so averaging about 800 troop casualties a year.

Let's just hope news of the 5,000th such coincides with the proximity to Indecision 2008--THAT alone should be enough to make the balloting even more seriously drawn-out, and then some....

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THE CLOSET APOLOGISTS FOR APARTHEID SOUTH AFRICA AND THEIR ARCHITECTS, DIE AFRIKANER VOLK, are not amused @ last week's address by Democratic Presidential wannabe Barack Obama on the interrelationship between race and Presidential qualifications, as People For the American Way's Right Wing Watch blog thus notes:

A few voices on the Right have expressed partial praise for Barack Obama’s speech on race, but by and large, right-wing commentators have stuck to the script, picking over the parts where Obama mentioned the country’s racial wounds, excoriating him for failing to disavow affirmative action or liberal economic policies, and generally promoting the idea that Obama is some kind of Manchurian candidate who secretly hates both America and white people.

But if Obama hoped to start a national conversation about race, he succeeded, in a way. Many right-wing commentators have proved willing to redirect their attacks on Obama to a discussion of their views on African Americans in general. Cal Thomas opined that “black people should be listening to” Bill Cosby, not Rev. Wright. Ann Coulter announced that she had had enough of blacks talking about racism:

But the "post-racial candidate" thinks we need to talk yet more about race. How much more? I had had my fill by around 1974. How long must we all marinate in the angry resentment of black people? …

We treat blacks like children, constantly talking about their temper tantrums right in front of them with airy phrases about black anger. I will not pat blacks on the head and say, "Isn't that cute?" As a post-racial American, I do not believe "the legacy of slavery" gives black people the right to be permanently ill-mannered.

Unfortunately, the online videos of Rev. Jeremiah Wright’s church appear to be the first exposure some on the Right have had to blacks or the African American church. Human Events reporter Ericka Anderson admitted as much: “Those of us outside the black community lack any deep knowledge of black churches. The only black minister we are very familiar with was Martin Luther King, Jr.” Anderson added, “He never damned America.”

George Neumayr, editor of the Catholic World Report, was apparently scandalized by what he described as the “feverish” church-goers in the videos “hopping up and down like hyperactive children” as they follow their “buffoonish[],” “sashaying” pastor.

Perhaps we should leave the final word to Pat Buchanan, who has made a career out of claiming that “white America” is under constant threat from other ethnicities. Before Obama’s speech, Buchanan pined for the “Negroes” of the 1950s:

That Wright is a revered preacher in black America also tells us that, far from coming together, we Americans are further apart than we were in the 1950s, when Negroes could be described as Christian, conservative and patriotic. Malcolm X and Elijah Muhammad did not speak for black America then. Roy Wilkins, Whitney Young and Dr. Martin Luther King did. But Jeremiah Wright makes Stokely Carmichael and Rap Brown sound like the Mills Brothers.

After the speech, Buchanan was more blunt, writing that “Wright ought to go down on his knees and thank God he is an American.”

What is wrong with Barack's prognosis and Barack's cure?

Only this. It is the same old con, the same old shakedown that black hustlers have been running since the Kerner Commission blamed the riots in Harlem, Watts, Newark, Detroit and a hundred other cities on, as Nixon put it, "everybody but the rioters themselves."

Was "white racism" really responsible for those black men looting auto dealerships and liquor stories, and burning down their own communities, as Otto Kerner said--that liberal icon until the feds put him away for bribery.

Barack says we need to have a conversation about race in America.

Fair enough. But this time, it has to be a two-way conversation. White America needs to be heard from, not just lectured to.

This time, the Silent Majority needs to have its convictions, grievances and demands heard.

(Purely personal piffle, especially regarding mein emphasis on the preceding: Methinks Pat Buchanan won't be satisfied unless White America's response is nothing less than a return to the likes of Jim Crow and apartheid--especially among such scions of "the Silent Majority" as are poor, undereducated or homeschooled and easily-influenced, let alone holding down menial positions with little or no real advancement potential and traditional prime targets for recruitment by the weird and unwholesome who take unscrupulous advantage of "white trash" elements.)

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