Friday 03 July 2009
by: Jonathan Martin | Visit article original @ Politico
Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin on stage at the annual Senate-House Republican dinner. Palin will resign from her role as Governor this month. (Photo: Getty Images)
Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin announced Friday that she was resigning her office later this month, a stunning decision that could free her to run for president more easily but also raises questions about her political standing at home.
Palin disclosed the surprise news Friday afternoon from her home in Wasilla with her husband, Todd, and Lt. Governor Sean Parnell, who the governor said would take over the state on Saturday, July 25th.
By not running for re-election, Palin liberates herself from the political constraints that come with running for president while still in elected office.
Leaving office at the end of the month, the former vice presidential hopeful will be able to travel the country more freely without facing the sort of repeated ethics inquiries she’s been fending off since returning to Alaska earlier this year.
In making her announcement, Palin spoke directly to those inquiries, saying she wouldn’t stand by as taxpayer money was spent to investigate her.
Speaking outside of her home with Lake Lucille in the background, Palin derided the ’superficial political bloodsport” that has been aimed at her since rocketing into fame last summer.
And, in remarks that appeared to be off the cuff, Palin also recalled her days as a high school basketball point guard, arguing that she was advancing her state by stepping down.
’I know when it’s time to pass the ball for victory,” Palin said.
But Palin also hinted at her own national ambitions, invoking a quote that she credited to Gen. Douglas MacArthur: ‘We are not retreating, we are advancing in another direction.”
Palin has been dogged by a series of ethical complaints, many of which her allies consider as frivolous, and has had to set up a legal defense fund to pay her bills.
Just this week, the Anchorage Daily News reported that these complaints against her administration had reached almost $300,000, much of that sum owing to the so-called ‘Troopergate” probe of Palin.
Beyond ethical questions, Palin has continued to face other difficulties since her return to Alaska.
Legislators of both parties have complained about some of her time away from the state capitol and Palin has had to grapple with a series of tabloid-type stories relating to her family.
But Palin retains a strong following among many conservatives who were electrified when she was tapped to serve on the GOP ticket by Sen. John McCain last year. She drew thousands of people to a small-town festival in upstate New York last month, some of whom drove a considerable distance just to catch a glimpse of Palin.
Palin allies contend that her star power will still benefit her home state.
’This was a positive forward looking decision for her state, her family and cares so much for Alaska that she is going to get outside of the bubble and work to its benefit outside,” said Jason Recher, who worked for Palin on last year’s campaign.
But the decision to suddenly quit her post will also reinforce some of the very questions about Palin that were raised in the lengthy Vanity Fair story this week – whether she’s overly erratic and prone to ignore her own political advisers.
Two of own GOP allies were told this week that Palin would announce that she was definitely not running for re-election, but the move to outright leave office has caught many of her supporters by surprise.
Democrats, delighted at yet another opportunity to hammer prominent Republican office-holders, accused Palin of quitting on her state.
’Either Sarah Palin is leaving the people of Alaska high and dry to pursue her long shot national political ambitions or she simply can’t handle the job now that her popularity has dimmed and oil revenues are down,” said the DNC’s Brad Woodhouse. ‘Either way – her decision to abandon her post and the people of Alaska who elected her continues a pattern of bizarre behavior that more than anything else may explain the decision she made today.”
Palin’s office announced Friday morning that she would make an ‘announcement’ at her home in the afternoon but said nothing more until the governor stood alongside Parnell and much of her cabinet.
Source: www.Truthout.org
It could have been easier for us if France had communicated to us the list of Airbus planes not good to fly 
US Intervention in Somalia? God Forbid!
July 1st, 2009Source: Africanexecutive.com 07/01/09
Although the situation in Somalia does not need to be worsened, the US is doing just that by shipping arms and military advisers to the embattled Somalia Transitional Government. Faced with inevitable defeat by a loose coalition of forces dubbed with the sobriquet of ‘Muslim militants,’ and the reluctance of regional nations to get involved militarily in what so easily could become a Somali quagmire, the government- such as it is- has thrown out the usual bogeys about ‘al-Qaeda and militant Islam threatening world security’ to attract support for its losing cause.
The US, naturally, with its missionary zeal to intervene in any conflict it perceives as threatening its image and strategy of international hegemony, cannot walk away from this challenge. As George Bush revealed when he said: ‘militant Islam must be confronted wherever it raises its head,’ the US under the ostensibly different Barack Obama, is confronting ‘militant Islam’ by doing the very thing guaranteed to worsen the situation- shipping arms and advisers to a losing government. No talks of mediation, no attempts to encourage a regional solution to a problem which could have been fixed since 2006. Instead, oil has been thrown on the fire to quench it.
In 2006 the Union of Islamic Courts, a loose grouping of moderate and radical Somali nationalists, primarily concerned with getting their nation back on its feet met and formed the Union after Somalis defeated the US backed gangs of warlords attempting by proxy to impose US writ on the country. For six months the nation had peace, commerce began to trickle back and a whiff of hope was in the air. However, like a destroyer of worlds the US determined that al-Qaeda was establishing a base and pushed its regional satrap Ethiopia to invade and topple the growing ‘Muslim’ threat.
The US, thanks to the French who have a Foreign Legion base in neighbouring Djibouti [the Djiboutis have no say in this] set up shop in Djibouti and sent in SEAL teams to assassinate and disrupt al-Qaeda ‘cells.’ It is amazing that eight years after 9/11, we still being fed this nonsense about the ubiquity of al-Qaeda. The US has successfully milked the al-Qaeda propaganda cow for all it is worth. Nevertheless the US backed invasion by Ethiopia did not work and after three years of inconclusive and bloody combat, the Ethiopians were forced to withdraw from Somalia early this year.
Somali nationalists, misnamed Islamic militants in the strident Western press once again have control of the high ground. The US instead of seeing the error of its interventionist ways chooses to inflame the conflict in order to control it by shipping arms and advisers to the Transitional Government. This unfortunately contradicts the much-trumpeted Obama doctrine of ‘engaging’ perceived US enemies. Instead of working with regional leaders to end the conflict the US is in a partisan manner providing arms to one side, guaranteed to exacerbate the conflict into a regional conflagration, for as the past has shown the Somalis will not down their arms and go gently into that good night.
The US seems to have developed an irrational blind spot when it comes to Muslim populations. The so-called Africa Command, led by the black general Ward has troops in the Sahel and all along West Africa where there are large Muslim populations, provoking conflict where none existed before. The US general Boykin famously declared to a Somali: ‘My God is greater than your God.’ The Honduran military recently arrested its democratically- elected President Manuel Zelaya and shipped him into exile [just as US troops did with Jean-Bertrand Aristide three years previously] and the US will issue lame generic denunciations about respecting democracy while at the time excoriating Iran for its handling of an internal electoral crisis.
Why the obsession with Islamic countries? There are some who still believe that President Barack Obama can change American foreign policy. Some think that he will favourably engage with the Muslim world in a new and pragmatic way but as pointed out in a previous pre-election article, Barack Obama functions in a political and military infrastructure that seem impervious to change. Surely there are Americans on the foreign policy desk that know that intervening in the Somali conflict by sending arms to a weak and distrusted government risks only widening the conflict in a way that will negatively impact US influence in the region and the Continent.
The errors seem set in stone. What can Africans do? The AU must reject foreign militarization of the Continent, urge the closing of all foreign bases and let the Somalis sort their problems by themselves, helping them only in arbitration and facilitation of internal dialogue. Foreign arms and foreign advisers will only prolong the Somali agony and drag Africa into a new era of destabilizing conflict. The AU needs to act decisively in Africa’s interests instead of debating endlessly around procedures and legalities.
Specialist in Spanish, Latin American, Caribbean as well as African History. He has also been a journalist, civil servant and graphic artist
Although the situation in Somalia does not need to be worsened, the US is doing just that by shipping arms and military advisers to the embattled Somalia Transitional Government. Faced with inevitable defeat by a loose coalition of forces dubbed with the sobriquet of ‘Muslim militants,’ and the reluctance of regional nations to get involved militarily in what so easily could become a Somali quagmire, the government- such as it is- has thrown out the usual bogeys about ‘al-Qaeda and militant Islam threatening world security’ to attract support for its losing cause.
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