Budapest

I’m here in beautiful Budapest and yet my mind is thousands of miles away.  In my last blog I said that if Bahrain remained true to form they would start to arrest ‘terrorists’ which is what they now call the peaceful protesters. They have.  Displaying a logic you can only find in the Middle East, the rulers of Bahrain ripped down the monument in the Pearl Roundabout, as though destroying the symbol of the movement would stop them in their tracks.  Instead it has incited more calls for protest.

The UN finally votes for a no-fly zone in Libya and yet they do nothing when Qaddafi and his sons speed up their plan to destroy everyone and everything in Benghazi, while his ministers say they are obeying the UN resolution.  In the middle of all of this we find that once again the USA has no consistent foreign policy that we can fall back on in times of crisis.  “In a Paris hotel room on Monday night, Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton found herself juggling the inconsistencies of American foreign policy in a turbulent Middle East.  She criticized the foreign minister of the United Arab Emirates for sending troops to quash protests in Bahrain even as she pressed him to send planes to intervene in Libya.”  (NYT)

And just when you think the world can’t get any nuttier, we discover that Utah has become the first state to vote to have an ‘Official State Gun’.  This must be just a test to see if a sense of humor can really help you stay sane!

Cindy has been dutifully going to her meetings and presentations at this conference while I’ve been wandering around this lovely city enjoying the architecture, markets and of course, the Danube. There is a part of me that would love to just hop on a river boat and head down river until I get to the Black Sea. 

Ciao, Wm