Filled with gratitude for saving her 2016 election campaign, Hillary Clinton gave Vladimir Putin a big wet kiss. Afterward, Putin said it was a good kiss but not a great kiss, his arrogance undiminished by his success in the recent sparring over Syria. Had Obama gone ahead with bombing Syria, Clinton's chances of getting elected in 2016 would have been about the same as those for Ronald McDonald even though he would likely do a vastly better job than most politicians of the last few decades.
There's not a lot of reason to comment on politics as that arena has descended into cartoonish absurdity. The reason this comes up at all is the Nobel Peace Prize awarded to Obama and, given his behaviour since election, that award is as ludicrous as a wolverine trying to run a chicken ranch but it's Nobel who has my attention.
For most it's only an answer to a trivia question that Alfred Nobel invented dynamite but this wasn't a result of pure science in the way Einstein made it possible to make an atomic bomb; Einstein wasn't trying to create weapons. Instead, Nobel invented a series of explosives and owned Bofors and other weapons manufacturing companies, some of which are still producing high-power weapons to this day. It was only after he realised how he would be remembered after death that he decided to create the Nobel Prizes.
Hopefully Nobel has made more of himself through the Prize he created than he did through his actual work but he isn't the primary reason for my interest either. Sweden is typically a neutral country but how can there be neutrality from a country that manufactures weapons. Right now they are manufacturing a rocket-propelled grenade that is a one-man device with unbelievable destructive power.
The Swedish RPG has a switch on the side of the device to select single or double explosions. In single-mode, both charges in the warhead explode at the same time blowing all to hell whatever it hits. In double-mode, the first charge in the warhead explodes and the second charge explodes just after. The first charge blows a hole in the target and the second charge goes through it to blow up whatever is on the other side. I've seen a televised demonstration in which this device first blew a hole through six inches of reinforced concrete and then destroyed and blew shrapnel all through a room-size container on the other side.
Sweden's neutrality is no different from the absurdity of a winner of a Nobel Peace Prize talking ardently of war with Syria particularly when he has only the thinnest justification for it. After the record of Obama's administration, perhaps most particularly the rampant abuses of power by the NSA, it will be difficult for Clinton to get elected but bombing Syria would likely have made it ridiculous to even consider registering to run for the office.
Maybe most fascinating of all is Russia playing the role of peacemaker and apparently with great sincerity. The Russians are great weapons exporters too and the AK-47 is trying hard to kill as many Asians as malaria so who would have predicted Russia would be so strongly advocating peace.
Notwithstanding the egregious hypocrisy governments have been displaying, there is some reason for optimism in seeing the cooperation between the U.S. and Russia to bring about a peaceful resolution of the problem with chemical weapons in Syria.
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