Monday Post

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Texas Senator Ted Cruz has thrown his hat into the presidential ring:

Texas junior Senator Ted Cruz, a Tea Party favourite, announced early Monday that he's running for the presidential nomination for the Republican Party.

The move would make Cruz the first high-profile Republican to formally announce his presidential bid, ahead of other likely contenders such as former Florida governor Jeb Bush and Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker. 

What differentiates Cruz from his competition, however, is that he was born in Canada — Calgary, Alta., in fact — to an American mother and a Cuban-born father. His heritage made Cruz a dual citizen at birth. Under U.S. law, being born to an American mother automatically gives you American citizenship, while being born on Canadian soil makes you a Canadian.

The U.S. Constitution doesn't preclude dual citizens from running for the presidency, but it requires presidents to be "natural born" citizens, which is commonly believed to be Americans born with citizenship even if they weren't born on U.S. soil.

So, Cruz is perfectly eligible for the White House. Two lawyers who represented presidents from both parties at the U.S. Supreme Court also recently wrote in the Harvard Law Review that Cruz meets the constitutional standard to run. 

However, things are not so straightforward  in the game of politics.

News of Cruz's Canadian birth surfaced in the U.S. media in mid-2013 — the same time he said he learned that he had Canadian citizenship, according to the paper that broke the story — and his opponents quickly jumped on the opportunity to call him "Canadian Ted." If the "birthers" who nagged Barack Obama about his citizenship were any indicator, it potentially could have caused a political headache for Cruz.

But any blossoming problem was quickly nipped in the bud.

Nine months after realizing he could have a passport emblazoned with the Arms of Canada and maybe even run for elected office in Canada, he officially renounced his Canadian citizenship in May 2014.

According to Cruz's spokeswoman, he said he was "pleased to have the process finalized" and that it "makes sense he should be only an American citizen."

(Sidebar: you're still a Canadian to me, Ted.)

 
Cruz has a lot of good buzz, despite the reflexive hatred thrown at him by frightened, little low-information voters. Hillary Clinton has too much baggage and is therefore a lost cause. Some Democratic supporters are pinning their hopes on the false aboriginal, Elizabeth Warren.

Obama could go either way. His era of screwing things up for the US term ends in a couple of years. If Warren were to win, the White House will remain in the incompetent hands of a Democrat. If Cruz were to win, he would inherit a fractured and economically depressed mess that Obama made. This would ensure that voters sour from anyone who is not a Democrat.

The United States will never be what it was. As with all empires, Pax Americana is gone. Obama was the nail in that coffin. United States does, however, have a chance to get back on its feet, something it cannot do with appeasement-ready statists.


Strolling down memory lane:

“This strategy of taking out terrorists who threaten us, while supporting partners on the front lines, is one that we have successfully pursued in Yemen and Somalia for years,” President Obama assured the American people last September.

**

Six months ago when President Obama publicly announced that anti-terrorism efforts in Yemen were working and Yemen stood as a "success story" for unrest in the Middle East, he clearly got it wrong. Yesterday, the State Department and the Department of Defense made a joint decision to remove remaining U.S. forces from the terrorist-filled country.

The State Department closed the Embassy in Yemen in mid-February and evacuated all State employees and security personnel after al Qaeda seized the Yemeni Army’s 19th Infantry Brigade’s Base. The Americans who were left behind were U.S. Navy SEALS and Delta Force commandos. Today, they too are exiting the country. According to major news networks there are approximately 100 U.S. troops evacuating the al-Anad Air Base in Yemen.

Hey, remember when people said that worries about terrorism were just bits of alarmism?

Members of Parliament, senators and their staff were told Monday to be leery when opening the mail after envelopes with unusual markings were delivered.

Protective services for the House of Commons and Senate issued separate warnings after the envelopes containing white powder arrived at the offices of two senators.

A later update confirmed that the substance in the envelopes, which carried a return address that read "Ottawa Shooting," was non-toxic.

Hundreds protest after an Afghan woman was beaten to death:

Hundreds marched Monday in the Afghan capital, demanding justice for a woman beaten to death last week by a Kabul mob over false allegations she had burned a Qur’an — a vicious killing that shocked many Afghans and renewed calls for authorities to ensure women's rights to equality and protection from violence.

The killing has also drawn condemnation from Afghanistan's President Ashraf Ghani, now in Washington on his first state visit to the United States since taking office in September, who denounced it as a "heinous attack" and ordered an investigation.

On Thursday, a mob of men beat a 27-year-old religious scholar named Farkhunda to death, threw her body off a roof, ran over it with a car, set it on fire and at the end, threw it into the Kabul River near one of the Afghan capital's most renowned mosques, the Shah Doshamshera.

The attack was captured by cellphone cameras and has been widely distributed on social media.

Farkhunda, who like many Afghans had just one name, was buried amid a huge public outcry on Sunday, her coffin carried by women's activists who defied the tradition of men-only pallbearers and funerals.

Protesters who gathered near the Shah Doshamshera mosque on Monday demanded the government prosecute all those responsible for the death.

Kabul's police chief Abdul Rahman Rahimi said 18 people had been arrested and all had confessed to their role in Farkhunda's death.

Rest assured that those responsible will not pay for their crime as a woman in Afghanistan is worth much less than a man. If Farkhunda was on equal legal footing, the men would never have confessed knowing that doing so would seal their fate.

A fire has broken out near the North and South Korean border:

A fire broke out in North Korea on Monday and was rapidly spreading to the South Korean side of the inter-Korean border, South Korean authorities said.

The blaze started at around 11 a.m. near a North Korean guard post located about 600 meters north of the Demilitarized Zone, military officials said.

By 3:45 p.m., it had spread close to the Dora Observatory in Paju, north of Seoul, a popular tourist destination.

The observatory was closed to visitors on the day, and no casualties or damage was reported, officials added.

More than 50 South Korean firefighters were putting out the fire, Paju city and military officials said, adding that three helicopters were awaiting the approval of the United Nations Command to aid in the process.

The cause of the fire was unknown, according to an official at the South Korean Joint Chiefs of Staff.

South Korea is polluted with fine dust from China and domestic sources:

Along with yellow dust from China in spring, ultrafine dust or particulate matter 2.5 ― particles 2.5 micrometers or less in diameter ― have become a major threat to public health.

Last year, the Seoul Metropolitan Government issued ultrafine alerts 11 times, triple the number from the year before, city officials said.

The capital also saw an average ultrafine dust concentration of 25.2 micrograms per cubic meter in 2012, which is more than double the safe level advised by the World Health Organization, according to the Environment Ministry.   ...

While China has generally been blamed for the murky air in the case of yellow dust, the significantly lesser-known cause of the ultrafine dust comes from home, experts say.

Recent studies have found that the majority of PM 2.5 here originates from within the peninsula.

In 2013, ultrafine dust from China only accounted for 30 to 50 percent of the total, the government’s data showed. The rest was triggered by local coal-fired power plants and diesel cars. 

If only South Korea could get a cleaner and more ethical energy source from somewhere...


Russia- ever the opportunist- talks unfair trade with North Korea before Kim Jong-Un's proposed visit to Moscow in May. China hopes a new ambassador will re-warm the cool ties with its erstwhile buffer state:

The new Chinese ambassador to North Korea, Li Jinjun, is expected to make efforts to warm relations with the wayward ally, while "facilitating" long-stalled multilateral talks aimed at persuading Pyongyang to give up its nuclear ambition, a state-run Chinese newspaper said Friday.
  
The appointment of Li, former vice minister of the Chinese Communist Party's International Department, which has been closely engaged in contacts with North Korea's ruling party, comes as political ties between the two nations remain strained because of Pyongyang's defiant pursuit of nuclear weapons.
  
North Korean leader Kim Jong-un has yet to visit China since taking the helm of the reclusive state in late 2011. Kim is likely to visit Russia in May in what would be his international debut and an apparent message of affront against China.
  
Li "is on a mission to warm up relations between the neighbors against a backdrop of the DPRK's recent outreach to Russia," the state-run China Daily said, using an acronym for North Korea's official name, the Democratic People's Republic of Korea.

It is almost comical to watch China and Russia play political football. When in collusion, they are the best of friends. Then they take out the knives.


A little late but still cool:

With the number of foreigners in Korea increasing steadily, celebrations of overseas festivals are becoming quite familiar.

On St. Patrick’s Day ― Irish cultural and religious festival ― Koreans and foreigners wore green and drank Guinness together, celebrating the onset of spring.

If all nations could put down their guns and wear green, we might have fewer wars or at least be colour-coordinated.

And now, cats stealing pizza because cats stealing pizza: