Originally posted over at birdbrain.

In 1936, a country under a totalitarian government hosted the summer Olympics. The regime successfully projected an image during these Olympics that convinced a great number of people that the regime was benign and good. This regime, of course, was the Nazis, who later went on to kill twelve million civilians and start a world war in which even more people died.

In 2008, another country under a totalitarian regime is hosting the summer Olympics. This country, Communist China, has a horrible record on human rights. They censor their internet and imprison dissidents. Yet they won the bid to host these games back in 2001 because they promised to make the 2008 Olympics “green”. In the years leading up to the 2008 Olympics, China employed the services of internationally known architects and urban planners to completely redesign their city. They are putting up a face of Communism for the world to see, a face intended to deceive us. They would have us believe that Communism works, yet nothing could be further from the truth.

We all know the saying: “Those who do not learn from the past are condemned to repeat it.” Letting countries like Communist China or Nazi Germany host the Olympics just is not a good idea. By doing this, we (as in the free world) enable them with an excellent propaganda opportunity that can only serve to undermine us.

The more things change, the more they stay the same. Or, put more pithily, people never learn.

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Well, as per usual, the internet is buzzing with information, news, a wide variety of topics.  I’ve taken it upon me to find just a few of the most interesting, riveting, and thought-provoking bits.

CNN reported on the arrest of over 500 people allegedly linked to al Qaeda.  Liberals in America will be pleased to hear they won’t be going to Gitmo to suffer the atrocities of the American military prison system, but will instead be comfortably housed in Saudi prisons, where undboubtedly they will be treated with good, old-fashioned Wahhabi hospitality.

In a written statement, the ministry said the cell’s leader was found with a letter from al Qaeda’s second in command, Ayman al-Zawahiri, “urging him to raise funds and that [al-Zawahiri] will provide him with the personnel, whom they called the mujahedeen.”

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Obama is the consumate flip-flopper–not due, I suspect, to dishonesty, but rather to naivete regarding foreign policy.  He’s just outspoken enough to say something foolish before his advisers can correct him.  Or rather, with his comment of full support for Israel’s claim to an undivided Jerusalem, just foolish enough to say something good and honest and true before his advisers have time to reel him in, like when he said

Jerusalem will remain the capital of Israel, and it must remain undivided

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