ABOUT THE EMASSY BURNINGS

The Reniassance Man has just two quick comments to make about the burning of the Danish Embassies in Syria and Lebanon.

The first is that the Renaissance Man believes that this is the work of Hezbollah. This Islamofascist organization operates a "State within a State" inside Lebanon, is funded by Iran and provided Syria with significant muscle during their occupation of Lebanon. Thus, insofar as Syria goes, it is ideally situated to organize a distraction (from Syria's problems with the UN over the Hariri investigation) as it can mobilize angry mobs at a moment's notice.

In Lebanon it is especially capable, given the weakness of the Lebanese State and the inability of the State to deal with this true threat to Lebanese sovereignty.

In respect to this, it is interesting to note that the Lebanese mob attacked a Maronite Catholic Church. Apart from the hypocrisy of thios (supposedly, these Muslims are up in arms about insult to a religious figure, yet they do the same), to the Renaissance Man this is just another fingerprint of the radical Hezbollah group.

The second point is this. The Vienna Convention on Consular Relations (See Article 31 about State's "special duties") requires host states to protect embassy and consular facilities within their countries. In both cases, Syria and Lebanon have failed to do this. Syria failed to provide added protection in the days before the attack despite requests from the Danish Embassy. In both the Syrian case and the Lebanese case, such security officials as there were disappeared, leaving the Embassies and their staffs to fend for themselves.

This is a clear violation of the rules of International Law for which the States must be held accountable.

Incidentally, this is more evidence of Hezbollah invovement. They are the well known surrogate of the Iranian regime.

The Iranian regime followed a similar pattern when it permitted the occupation of the US Embassy by radical students. In particular, it failed to provide added, or adequate security to the Embassy and consulates when asked, despite prior attacks on the facilites by mobs. Later, when the students occupied them and took the staff hostage, the Iranian State tried to hold out that it was a group of students and not the government that was responsible (their subsequent ratification of the student's acts and awards to them belied their position on this).

The current Iranian president was one of the student leaders involved in this outrage, and the Renaissance Man is of the view that the mindset of that fanatic allows him to believe that if the technique worked once, it can work again. This time the surrogates are not Iranian student radicals, but Hezbollah terrorist/radicals.

The Renaissance man says that if it looks like a duck and walks like a duck...well you know the rest.