'From Russia with Love' (Vlad's theme)

(My new American Thinker post)

As the world turns, Vlad from Moscow has a message for the American people:     

"We must stop using the language of force and return to the path of civilized diplomatic and political settlement.  A new opportunity to avoid military action has emerged in the past few days. The United States, Russia and all members of the international community must take advantage of the Syrian government's willingness to place its chemical arsenal under international control for subsequent destruction. Judging by the statements of President Obama, the United States sees this as an alternative to military action.""  

Mr Putin's op-ed raises a few question:  Who is going to supervise this "placement" of weapons?  Where exactly are these weapons going to be "placed"? How long is this going to take?  Who is going to tell Al Qaeda that Syria is now a "WMD free zone"?  

We have two recent examples of governments "surrendering" their weapons.  

The successful case was Libya, but it took an invasion of Iraq and capture of Saddam before Ghadafi said "I will call Bush".   

Today, Assad sees a US president and Secretary of State assure everyone that it will be "a very small attack".  Do you think that Ghadaffi would have surrounded his weapons if we had just fired a few missiles at Iraq?  

The unsuccessful case was Iraq.  We spent the 1990s watching Iraq make fools of the UN by violating resolutions and eventually kicking out the inspectors in 1998.   My biggest fear of this Russian proposal is that will turn into Iraq all over again, i.e. UN resolutions that are not enforced and a mockery of whatever is agreed on.  

Yes, a diplomatic solution is always better than sending young men to war.  However, allowing bad guys to "buy time" with diplomatic games is a lot worse.  

Last, but not least, I don't trust Vlad Putin.   

Worse than that, I am not sure that President Obama can play chess with President Putin.  

P.S. You can hear our discussion of Putin's op-ed here:

Listen To Politics Internet Radio Stations with Silvio Canto Jr on BlogTalkRadio

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Spank the leaders of the Mexican teachers union!

(My new American Thinker post)

It looks like more and more Mexicans have had it with the teachers' union.   

The public wants to send the leaders of the public teachers' union to the principal's office and force them to write on the board:  I will not block traffic, I will not block traffic,....1,000,000 times or until we run out of chalk!  

The bad news is that the Mexican teachers' union is shutting down traffic and making life miserable for commuters:     

"Thousands of striking teachers seized two of Mexico City's central thoroughfares on a double-pronged march to the president's residence Wednesday, spawning choking knots of traffic chaos after definitively losing their battle to block new educational reforms less than 24 hours earlier. The teachers disrupted the center of one of the world's largest cities for at least the 14th time in two months, decrying a plan that tries to break union control of Mexico's dysfunctional education system by requiring regular standardized teacher evaluations.  President Enrique Pena Nieto dashed the teachers' hopes of blocking the overhaul when he signed the new testing system into law Tuesday.  But the protests seem to be morphing into a near-daily feature of life in many Mexican cities, a form of political theater increasingly independent of the struggle that triggered them in the first place."  

The good news is that Mexicans are fed up with it.   Even better, President Pena-Nieto continues to stand up to the union and Mexicans support him.  

Fausta Wertz has an update on her blog about the outrage in Mexico.  

See the tweets coming out of Mexico!   

The union is losing the "tweeter war"!  That's "malo"!  

We looked at some of the tweets and they confirm what my friends in Mexico are telling me:  Mexicans are fed up with the public school monopoly and tired of teachers who treat their profession like an entitlement or inheritance.  

We congratulate President Pena-Nieto for tackling sacred cows, like PEMEX and the teachers' union.  

By the way, isn't it nice to see leadership?  Wouldn't you love to put some of that leadership in President Obama's morning juice?   

We need a Mexican chef at The White House. 

Let him put a little "jalapeno" in President Obama's omelette to wake him up!  

You can hear CANTO TALK here.

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