IR and Political Science links threads

[Cain]

http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601102&sid=asYXmlwaWSfQ - what seems to be missing in all the reports about violence in Haiti is how the Haitian police are responsible for a lot of it.  Also, as an aside, keeping aid from people will probably, in the long run, make violence worse, since people who are starving will likely attack people who aren't giving them vital supplies (isn't reality so random like that).

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2010/jan/21/i-fought-to-survive-guantanamo - Omar Deghayes, former Camp X-Ray detainee gets interviewed by the Guardian

http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/adamcurtis/2010/01/yemen_the_return_of_old_ghosts.html - Adam Curtis explains how the conflicts in Yemen today are the result of British policy 40 years ago, only the media are too vapid and historically unware to report this fact.

http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Southeast_Asia/LA23Ae01.html - Look out for political instability in Thailand

http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=122780633&ft=1&f=1010 - Biden is being sent in to smooth sectarian tensions before the Iraqi election?  Are they aware of this man's reputation?

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/01/21/world/asia/21taliban.html - the Taliban seem to be figuring out fighting a (more or less) clean war does has its advantages, though I will be surprised if this is anything more than propaganda to make up for the fact they caused more civilian deaths than NATO this year

http://blog.newsweek.com/blogs/declassified/archive/2010/01/20/al-qaeda-wack-a-mole-he-s-dead-he-s-not-dead-he-s-captured-he-s-not.aspx - I think the URL says it all.  Al-Qaeda commanders have made more comebacks than, uh, something that comes back a lot

http://www.chinasmack.com/stories/shanghai-man-survives-suicide-jump-blowup-sex-doll/ - again, the URL explains this story quite well

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/01/21/education/21chinese.html?em - both the Chinese government and the people taking these courses are being relatively smart.  China has a lot of untapped, latent cultural potential which is mostly blocked by the language barrier.

http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/story/31820385/osamas_prodigal_son/ - an interview with Omar Bin Laden, the son of Osama Bin Laden

http://www.wired.com/dangerroom/2010/01/secstate-clinton-on-net-freedom-tear-down-this-virtual-wall/ - tear down this firewall, Mr Jintao!

http://www.neweurasia.net/politics-and-society/down-that-dark-way-the-future-of-human-rights-in-kazakhstan/ - worth a read, Kazakhstan is at the centre of the Central Asian Great Game, but gets barely any press coverage at all.

http://walt.foreignpolicy.com/posts/2010/01/19/joe_nye_was_right - Stephen Walt talks about the empirical evidence for "soft power".

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2010/01/22/wto-chief-us-china-trade_n_432620.html - Trade friction between China and the USA is rising

http://www.politico.com/blogs/laurarozen/0110/Man_charged_in_Arkansas_shooting_claims_Yemen_Al_Qaeda_ties.html - sounds dodgy to me, personally.

[Reginald Ret]

And how much of that is due to aid agency intervention?

By the mid-1980s foreign aid was 58 percent of Somali GNP (UNDP 1998: 57) compared to only nine percent today (UNDP 2001).

[Cain]

OK, but this still seems to be a case that basically Somalia's government was really, really, REALLY awful, and things got a little better when it died off.  By any objective standard, living in Somalia is still like being force-fed shit sandwiches.

Also it seems most of that aid was put by the government into procuring arms.  Direct spending by such agencies may be achieving more with less now due to the lack of interference on their spending.

[Cain]

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/world/saudis-suffer-heavy-losses-in-yemens-other-war/article1442483/

Playing the Saudis for fun and profit.

If [the Hashed are] given the mission of taking a particular mountain, for example, they'll call up the Huthi leaders and tell them: 'We're getting five million riyals to take the mountain. We'll split it with you if you withdraw tonight and let us take over'... After the tribesmen take charge, they hand it over to the Saudis... The next day, the Huthi return and defeat the Saudis and retake the mountain... It's been happening like this for weeks.

[Cain]

http://tpmcafe.talkingpointsmemo.com/2010/02/13/several_years_ago_i_met/?ref=mp

I love shit like this.

The author also sees what this writer has argued: that American obsession with Afghanistan and an ever-expanding quest to stamp out Islamic insurgencies will "further chip away at the United States' strength, aggravate its strategic adversity, and increasingly narrow the room for maneuvers on other issues."

[Reginald Ret]

OK, but this still seems to be a case that basically Somalia's government was really, really, REALLY awful, and things got a little better when it died off.  By any objective standard, living in Somalia is still like being force-fed shit sandwiches.

Also it seems most of that aid was put by the government into procuring arms.  Direct spending by such agencies may be achieving more with less now due to the lack of interference on their spending.

Very true.
This only disproves the statement 'government is always better than anarchy'.
Somalia still is a very very very bad place to live.


Oh regarding somalia:
http://www.globalsecurity.org/military/world/para/pirates.htm
One of the main pirate groups call themselves the The National Volunteer Coast Guard.

Attacks by pirates and privateers were a major problem in the Americas between the sixteenth and eighteenth centuries. Privateers were licensed by a government to raid the ships of declared enemies and shared their gains with the licensor. Pirates were not loyal to any country and attacked indiscriminately for their own gain. Governments with American colonies attempted to suppress privateering and piracy.

Statist display of blindness to own inconsistencies.

In international law piracy is a crime that can be committed only on or over international waters

Sounds like the somali pirates aren't pirates as long as they stay in somali waters.
Why is NATO (and a shit ton of others) interfering with somali internal affairs?
It's like they don't think they are bound by their own rules or something.

[Cain]

My view is that while living in a state is not necessarily better than living in anarchy, the opposite is also true.

Also, reading from the Asia Times http://www.atimes.com/atimes/South_Asia/LB20Df01.html  This is a very good piece about the institutional fascination of the American military with German methods of waging war, despite their utter uselessness.  The German school of thought is ultimately codified Napoleon, whose own innate brilliance came from the fact he couldn't be entirely codified and was actually rather unpredictable on the battlefield.  Subsequent German military forces and current American forces are the modern day equivalent of the Prussian Army at the battle of Jena-Auerstedt - so caught up in their rational and codified military procedures they lose the very flexibility they think they possess, allowing them to be beaten by numerically and technologically "inferior" (for a given value of inferior) forces.

[Requia ☣]

Why would you imitate people you beat twice 

[Cain]

The most hilarious part about that is in WWI and II most officer training courses in France, Germany, America and the UK used almost exactly the same methods anyway.  WWI was a slaughterhouse that was won through attrition and WWII was lost because, essentially, Hitler was insane.  There was no tactical or strategic genius on any side, it was either squandered or purposefully kept out of any theatre of war which might matter.  Sun Tzu is spinning in his fictional grave.

[Requia ☣]

IIRC WWI ended specifically because Americans weren't using the same tactics.  Both sides would shell the enemy for a week or so before making a charge.  Which was useless, because it let the enemy know where to send reinforcements for the next attack.  The Americans decided to shell a completely different part of the trenches in order to draw troops away from the actual place they were attacking, which let them break through the German line.

[Cain]

I'm sure that played a role, but by the end of the war, people who'd been right all along about the uselessness of trench warfare were pretty much the only officers left standing, and so ideas like stormtroopers (Germany) and front-line penetration with tanks (the British) were being tried by both sides.  It was still mostly attrition either way - Germany gave up not because it was pushed into a position where it had to stop the war or be occupied, but because it was literally out of supplies.  German troops were still on French soil at the end of the war - that was one of the reasons for resentment after the war which fed into the Stab In the Back myth which fed antisemitism and Nazi conspiracy theories.

[Cain]

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2010/03/09/iran-torture-trials-begin_n_492349.html?ref=email_share

LOL, Iran investigates deaths during torture, while the USA does not.

[Cain]

http://fistfulofeuros.net/afoe/economics-and-demography/german-exports-and-that-looming-double-dip/ - as the URL suggests, Germany could see a "double-dip" recession (rumours I've heard is the Germans are so hysterical about the Greek economy because they did very similar stuff).

http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/ArmchairGeneralist/~3/Cc4zLpdTBg4/educating-the-media-.html - Congress is actually debating Afghanistan!  Its cute, how they think it matters.

http://washingtonindependent.com/78975/jack-bauer-does-not-exist-people MI5's former head thinks the Bush administration was too influenced by "24", and may have a point.  However, people in glass houses, throwing stones etc

http://clsline.wordpress.com/2010/03/08/due-process-victim-or-savior-of-counter-terrorism/ - this is how the UK views counterterrorism now, but I think under the Tories, things will change...

http://www.vanityfair.com/politics/features/2010/04/david-cameron-201004?currentPage=1 - an OK profile of David Cameron.  It gets some things wrong, but its good if you know nothing about him

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/03/12/world/asia/12tibet.html?ref=global-home - crackdown in Tibet by Chinese security

http://blog.newsweek.com/blogs/declassified/archive/2010/03/09/pennsylvania-jihadjane-indicted-in-bizarre-plot-with-links-to-ireland.aspx - the strange story of Jihad Jane (I believe Faust referred to this earlier in the week).

http://www.democracyarsenal.org/2010/03/where-have-all-the-strategic-thinkers-gone.html - I can answer this one: they've all been thrown out for being trouble makers, not "following protocol" or upsetting their technocratic bosses. 

http://intelligencenews.wordpress.com/2010/03/11/03-154/ MI5's released some files.

http://www.juancole.com/2010/03/mahmoud-and-robert-show-comes-to.html - Gates and Ahmadinejad's argument: full of sound and fury, signifying nothing.

http://www.politico.com/blogs/laurarozen/0310/What_Biden_told_Netanyahu_behind_closed_doors_This_is_starting_to_get_dangerous_for_us.html - Biden is finally starting to get through to the Israelis that they should stop being stupid pricks

http://offshorebalancer.wordpress.com/2010/03/10/no-clout-for-blood/ - couldn't agree with this more.  Britain does not get enough clout on Capitol Hill for the sacrifices it makes on America's behalf.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/michael-j-martin/chinese-media-warns-of-mo_b_495458.html - China is cracking down in Xinjiang as well.

[Cain]

http://www.google.com/hostednews/ap/article/ALeqM5g8xENaRiR-6dXpvFkGeL4tv5znBQD9I3M23G1

Chinese steel mills and mobile phone factories are being idled and thousands of homes in one area are doing without electricity as local governments order power cuts to meet energy-saving targets set by Beijing.

Rolling blackouts and enforced power cuts are affecting key industrial areas. The prosperous eastern city of Taizhou turned off street lights and ordered hotels and shopping malls to cut power use. In Anping County southwest of Beijing, an area known as China's wire-manufacturing capital, thousands of factories and homes have endured daylong blackouts over the past two weeks.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2010/sep/08/security-forces-kabul-bank-run

Afghan security forces used batons on unruly customers scrambling to withdraw their savings today from the country's biggest bank, which is mired in a scandal of corruption and mismanagement.

Kabul Bank's troubles have threatened to add a financial crisis to Afghanistan's other woes, with military and civilian casualties at record levels as a Taliban-led insurgency grows ahead of parliamentary elections on 18 September.

Officers from the National Security Directorate struggled to maintain control of up to 200 people outside one branch in the capital as desperate customers tried to take out money ahead of a three-day Muslim holiday.

The crisis developed after the company's top two directors resigned amid allegations of corruption.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/today/hi/today/newsid_8977000/8977025.stm

"Huge quantities of black money, Russian money, have been kicking around in London for a long time," he asserts. "We chose to ignore it because Russia is, in many ways, a totally criminalized state. We have to bear that in mind. And it is a rich one."

This cash, he believes, helped bolster the UK's banking system during the recent financial meltdown – an intervention happily ignored by those in the know.

"The whole nature of big banking is about looking away," he says.

...

"The whole anti-terror threat has been terribly useful to politicians," he says. "It has been a way of manipulating us, it has been a way of giving police excessive powers, which they then misuse, I think we've got to draw back from that."

Arguing for a restoration of civil liberties, le Carre warns against the insidious power of what some in the United States term the "deep state".

"We have so many people who are indoctrinated, who are admitted to the secrets of state, and we have the people outside the circle.

"We have a situation where it is possible to go up to MPs as a whip in the House of Commons, as happened I think before the outbreak of the Iraq war, and say: 'If you have seen the papers I have seen, I know how you will vote.'

http://www.vanityfair.com/business/features/2010/10/greeks-bearing-bonds-201010?currentPage=all

In addition to its roughly $400 billion (and growing) of outstanding government debt, the Greek number crunchers had just figured out that their government owed another $800 billion or more in pensions. Add it all up and you got about $1.2 trillion, or more than a quarter-million dollars for every working Greek. Against $1.2 trillion in debts, a $145 billion bailout was clearly more of a gesture than a solution. And those were just the official numbers; the truth is surely worse. "Our people went in and couldn't believe what they found," a senior I.M.F. official told me, not long after he'd returned from the I.M.F.'s first Greek mission. "The way they were keeping track of their finances—they knew how much they had agreed to spend, but no one was keeping track of what he had actually spent. It wasn't even what you would call an emerging economy. It was a Third World country."

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-11189609

Officials in Belarus say a prominent opposition figure found hanged at his weekend home outside the capital, Minsk, on Friday committed suicide.

Forensic examiners established that, apart from the noose mark on Oleg Bebenin's neck, there were no other injuries, a local prosecutor said.

Mr Bebenin, 36, founded Charter 97, a leading opposition website critical of President Alexander Lukashenko.

Colleagues said they could not believe the father-of-two had killed himself.

They pointed out that he had left no note and Charter 97′s editor, Natalia Radina, said he had not been having any family or health problems.

He had, she told independent Moscow radio station Ekho Moskvy, been absorbed in his work and campaigning for opposition presidential hopeful Andrei Sannikov.

Most independent media in Belarus have closed down and the authorities barely tolerate political dissent, correspondents say.

[Cain]

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748704621204575488361149625050.html?mod=WSJ_hps_MIDDLETopStories

The Obama administration is set to notify Congress of plans to offer advanced aircraft to Saudi Arabia worth up to $60 billion, the largest U.S. arms deal ever, and is in talks with the kingdom about potential naval and missile-defense upgrades that could be worth tens of billions of dollars more.

The administration plans to tout the $60 billion package as a major job creator—supporting at least 75,000 jobs, according to company estimates—and sees the sale of advanced fighter jets and military helicopters to key Middle Eastern ally Riyadh as part of a broader policy aimed at shoring up Arab allies against Iran.

The moment the Saudi forces met anything near the determination of an enemy like the Iranians, they'd break and run all the way to the Yemeni border.  "Low morale and training" doesn't even begin to cover it.  Meanwhile, in living memory the Iranians were using mass charge tactics through minefields and having mustard gas lobbed at them day and night.  I suppose it makes the House of Saud feel safe, but they're more worried about internal subversion than the Iranians anyway, at least on a "imminent cause of death" level, not so much on the geopolitical one.  Also, I wonder exactly how much the bribes for these contracts added up to?

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-11277466

Military police are investigating claims that British soldiers may have trafficked heroin from Afghanistan.

The Ministry of Defence said they were aware of "unsubstantiated" claims that troops were using military aircraft to ship the drug out of the country.

Gosh, who could've forseen leaving troops (who just recieved a pay freeze) in a hell-hole which just happens to be the supplier for 90% of the world's heroin could have unfortunate consequences of this kind?  At least stuff like this didn't happen in the Vietnam War, or back in the Empire's heyday.  Meanwhile, Canada is refusing to even investigate similar allegations against their own troops.

http://www2.macleans.ca/2010/09/11/should-the-pope-face-charges/

God in the Dock, meaning God on trial, is a familiar concept in Britain, both from the title of a famous collection of essays by C.S. Lewis and as a general term for skepticism about religious belief and doctrine. But Pope in the Dock? Literally? Perhaps not in our lifetimes, as British lawyer Geoffrey Robertson concedes in The Case of the Pope: Vatican Accountability for Human Rights Abuse, a book set to appear just one week before Benedict XVI makes the first-ever papal state visit to Britain. But, Robertson argues, the once unthinkable idea that Benedict or a successor could be charged with obstructing justice or for "harbouring pedophile priests" is now very thinkable, and—given evolving trends in international human rights law—may soon be practical.

The plain facts of the case to be answered are horrific and undeniable. Since the dam crumbled around the turn of the decade, a cascade of child sexual abuse by Roman Catholic clergy has come tumbling into the open. So many cases emerged that the U.S. Catholic Bishops Conference commissioned an expert study, which concluded in 2004 that, since 1950, 10,667 individuals had made plausible allegations against 4,392 priests, 4.3 per cent of the entire body of clergy in that period. The total bill in settlements with victims is spiralling toward $2 billion and won't stop, Forbes predicts, this side of $5 billion. Depressingly similar stories from other First World countries, including Canada, soon emerged; the situation in Latin America and Africa, where no investigations have ever been made, can only be imagined.

All that is but half of Robertson's case. And for the former president of the UN War Crimes Court in Sierra Leone and author of a landmark judgment on the illegality of recruiting child soldiers, it's actually the lesser half. Any institution can have criminal employees; what matters is its awareness of and response to their illicit acts. Church legislation against clerical sexual abuse dates back to the fourth century, and in 1952 Gerald Fitzgerald, the American founder of the Paraclete order, which treats erring priests of all sorts, brought a specific warning to Rome. "Leaving pedophile priests on duty or wandering from diocese to diocese," he said, was a moral evil and a scandal waiting to break.

See, sometimes international law can be useful.  Usually this is only by accident, though.

http://blogs.forbes.com/jeremybogaisky/2010/09/09/eroding-chinas-grip-on-rare-earth-metals/?boxes=financechannelforbes

If China is trying to give its manufacturers a leg up by restricting exports of rare earth metals, it may find the advantage temporary.

With prices spiking following the latest in a series of annual export quota reductions by Beijing earlier this summer, miners have been scrambling to develop deposits of the essential industrial minerals worldwide. Now Japan's Nikkei business daily reports that Japanese manufacturers have developed technologies to make automotive and home appliance motors without rare earth metals. Hitachi has come up with a motor that uses a ferrite magnet made of the cheaper and more common ferric oxide. Meanwhile the chemicals conglomerate Teijin and Tohoku University have co-developed technology to make a powerful magnet using a new composite made of iron and nitrogen.

It's nice to read some good news for once.  I wonder how quickly the weapons applications of these new technologies will be exploited?

http://fistfulofeuros.net/afoe/spains-economy-re-enters-contraction-mode-in-the-third-quarter/

Well, that didn't last long, now did it. Two consecutive quarters of minimal GDP growth seem to have exhausted the forces of a more than fragile Spanish economy. All the post-June data we are seeing suggests the economy has now turned the corner (in the bad sense), and we should expect a negative quarterly GDP reading in the July to September period.

Perhaps the clearest indicator we have so far of the shape of things to come is offered by the August services PMI reading, which shows the sector went back into contraction in August, a performance that for a country which depends to some significant extent on tourism is really pretty striking.

More at the link.  Not good, as Spain is supposedly the domino which can collapse western Europe's economies.

http://www.wired.com/dangerroom/2010/09/israel-russia-in-drone-deal-laser-tech-next/

First, Israel will beef up Russia's robotic air force. Down the road, perhaps, Vladimir Putin may return the favor, by equipping Israeli drones with Russian laser tech.

On Monday, Israeli Defense Minister Ehud Barak and his Russian counterpart, Anatoly Serdyukov, signed a first-of-its kind military agreement between the two countries. It's the latest step towards cooperation for two countries that have traditionally been at each other's throats.

In 2009, Moscow bought a dozen Israeli unmanned aerial vehicles — two Bird Eye 400 systems, eight I-View MK150 tactical UAVs and two Searcher Mk II tactical short range UAVs, according to the well-connected Defense Update. That was after Georgia relied on Israeli spy drones during the South Ossetia War.

Now, Russian officials say, Jerusalem and Moscow have agreed to a second, $100 million deal for another 36 drones. Delivery is slated for later in the year. A joint venture to cooperate on UAV production, worth an estimated $300 million, hasn't been hammered out, yet. But both sides seem eager. Russian boss-for-life Vlad Putin says Russia is even "considering the possibility of equipping Israeli aircraft with our devices – space technology and laser technology," the premier said.

I'm pretty sure Pooty-poo means laser range finders, not blasters. But it is worth noting that the Russian military seems to be showing interest in rekindling its long-dormant energy weapons program. Reports out of Moscow "suggest that Russia has re-started work on a Cold War project intended to produce a laser cannon mounted on an enormous military transport aircraft," The Register's Lew Page notes. The most likely application for the ray gun: blinding enemy satellites.

Tensions between Israel and Russia haven't been blasted away, yet. As Defense Update observes, Russia is still working on plans to sell arms to Syria, including Yakhont P-800 supersonic anti-ship missiles which could keep Israeli naval vessels at risk throughout the eastern Mediterranean. Then there's Moscow's contract with Iran for advanced S-300 surface-to-air missiles. Tehran could make any strike on its nuclear facilities much more complicated with such an air defense system. So if that deal goes through, all the new good feelings between Russia and Israel could crash like a malfunctioning drone.

On the other hand, lots of rich ex-Russians who either have or "bought" proof of Jewish backgrounds now live in Israel, and are powerful in conservative politics there.  I wouldn't expect a huge rift between the two to occur anytime soon.

http://www.jamestown.org/programs/edm/single/?tx_ttnews%5Btt_news%5D=36807&cHash=dbe9c87c9e

August 2010 saw violent incidents all across Russia's North Caucasus region, above all in Dagestan, where rebels and Russian police dealt heavy blows to each other. On August 21, forces from Russia's Federal Security Service (FSB) and local police supported by army units conducted a joint special operation and killed the leader of Dagestan's Sharia Jamaat, Emir Seyfullah (aka Magomedali Vagapov), who was hiding in a private house in Dagestan's mountainous village of Gunib (www.rosbalt.ru, August 21). Apart from being the military commander of his own Sharia Jamaat, Emir Seyfullah also was the chief qadi (supreme judge of the Sharia court) of the entire Caucasus Emirate. That means that he in fact was one of the top leaders in the North Caucasus resistance movement. A highly educated man who held two degrees in Islamic theology from Islamic schools and proficient in several languages, Emir Seyfullah was held in high esteem by his comrades-in-arms and was steadily advancing toward assuming the post of Emir of Dagestan. Doku Umarov, Emir of the Caucasus Emirate, himself attached high hopes to the late Emir Seyfullah. Although killing Emir Seyfullah was no doubt a big success for Russian law enforcement, the painful blow nonetheless had little, if any, impact on the jamaat itself. Almost everywhere across Dagestan, armed jamaat members have been striking Russian interests, inflicting dozens of casualties on Russian law enforcement personnel (www.kavkaz.tv, September 2).

Also known as "just another day in the Russian Caucasus."

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/09/12/AR2010091200948_pf.html

ISTANBUL -- Turks approved sweeping changes to their military-era constitution Sunday - a referendum hailed by the government as a leap toward full democracy in line with its troubled bid to join the European Union.

With 99 percent of the vote counted, 58 percent had cast ballots in favor of the constitutional amendments, state-run TRT television said. About 42 percent voted "no," heeding opposition claims that the reforms would shackle the independence of the courts.

The referendum on 26 amendments to a constitution crafted after a 1980 military coup had become a battleground between the Islamic-oriented government and traditional power elites - including many in the armed forces - who fear Turkey's secular principles are under threat.

Voter turnout was 78 percent, and the result amounted to a vote of confidence in the ruling Justice and Development Party ahead of elections next year.

"We have crossed a historic threshold toward advanced democracy and the supremacy of law," Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan said at his party headquarters in Istanbul.

"The regime of tutelage in Turkey will now come to an end," he said. "The mentality will be so that those enthusiastic for military coups will see their enthusiasms stuck inside them."

The amendments make the military more accountable to civilian courts and allow civil servants to go on strike. The opposition, however, believes a provision that would give parliament more say in appointing judges masks an attempt to control the courts, which have sparred with Erdogan's camp.

Given how the courts were for a long time puppets of the military, and the previous constitution was drawn up by the military junta who took charge in 1980, I believe the correct way to describe the military's reaction would be "sour grapes".

And finally, proving once again that studying IR can improve your love life, we have dating advice from Berlusconi:

http://blog.foreignpolicy.com/posts/2010/09/13/dating_advice_from_berlusconi

No surprise that Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusoni and Libyan leader Col. Muammar Qaddafi seem to be extremely fond of each other: they're both prone to making extremely... questionable... comments. Berlusconi put on his old sage hat Sunday and offered this relationship advice:

I said to a girl to look for a wealthy boyfriend. This suggestion is not unrealistic.

Berlusconi, being famously wealthy himself, noted that women are drawn to him because he's a "nice guy" -- and oh yeah, that "I'm loaded." He went on to say women like older men because they think, "'he's old. He dies and I inherit.'" Classy.

Of course Berlusconi's trysts are well known. He's been accused by his wife of putting attractive young women on his party lists in European elections, and last year he was embroiled in a scandal over his 'companionships' with a slew of women. His wife is seeking a divorce.

As if his comments on women weren't bad enough, he went ahead and made a Hitler joke -- based on the premise of Hitler's followers urging him to return to power. Berlusconi preemptively acknowledged his crassness, saying "I already know I am going to be criticized."