Oh boy:

Silvio Berlusconi’s private disco featured women dressed not just as sexy nuns and nurses but also as President Barack Obama and a prominent Milan prosecutor the former Italian premier has accused of persecuting him.

Those are some of the details that have emerged Friday during the first public sworn testimony by the Moroccan woman at the center of the sex scandal involving Berlusconi.

I've never had the opportunity to host (or attend) a bunga-bunga party, but President Obama's likeness is about the last thing I'd want to see.

And food for thought: would Berlusconi's ladies have had to dress up as John McCain, if he won the election?

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An MP for the ultra-right Golden Dawn party, Panayiotis Iliopoulos, was ejected from a session in Parliament on Friday after the deputy used derogatory language to revile fellow MPs, according to Ekathimerini. He reportedly shouted "Heil Hitler" while defaming fellow parliament members as "wretched sell-outs" and "goats."

Venezuela really needs some:

To avoid getting caught with their pants down, Venezuelan officials say they will confront a toilet paper shortage by importing 50 million rolls to meet demand.

Toilet paper is just one of the basic goods and foodstuffs that have been disappearing from store shelves over the past few months, as the government and private companies blame each other for the scarcity.

Venezuelan Minister of Commerce Alejandro Fleming announced the toilet paper measure on Tuesday, the state-run AVN news agency reported.

Repeating the government's stance, he blamed the media for provoking fear in consumers, who in turn begin hoarding items.

(AP Photo)

As the Syrian civil war grinds on, proponents of getting the United States involved have resorted to moral condemnations to goad President Obama into action. "Syria may prove to be Obama's Rwanda," writes Peter Feaver. His Shadow Government colleague Kori Schake accuses President Obama of "moral negligence" for not allowing Syria's lung-eating rebels access to more advanced means of killing Assad's troops (which they promise, cross their hearts, not to turn on their American sponsors, unlike some other people Washington has armed in the past).

As moral cudgels go, the Rwanda charge is useful -- no less a figure than President Clinton has acknowledged, and apologized for, American inaction.

But it raises a couple of big questions: what could the U.S. have reasonably done in Rwanda, and are even those measures enough to help anyone in Syria?

It's easy, with hindsight and a wave of the hand, to insist that there were easy solutions within reach in Rwanda (ignoring the more debatable claim that it was up to the U.S. to "do something" in the first place). But the reality was far more complex. There was a reason that President Clinton didn't act.

Samathana Power, long a critic of America's failure to "do something" in Rwanda, wrote what is likely the definitive look at the policy options available to the administration at the time. Reading it, it's not clear why any of the measures proposed to the Clinton administration would have been decisive and, as Power recounts, there was deep skepticism at the Pentagon about a U.S. commitment there. The suggestions short of direct military intervention -- such as jamming "hate broadcasts" issuing from the country's radio stations and imposing embargoes on arms that weren't instrumental in the killings -- may not have done anything.

"Pentagon planners understood that stopping the genocide required a military solution," Power wrote. "Neither they nor the White House wanted any part in a military solution. Yet instead of undertaking other forms of intervention that might have at least saved some lives, they justified inaction by arguing that a military solution was required."

But this is deceptive. Another way to frame the Clinton administration's logic is that the Pentagon did not want to be drawn into Rwanda's conflict, so it refused to take steps along the road to being drawn into that conflict. All or nothing is not a false choice, because ultimately a "something" choice immediately ensnares the U.S., and the logic of doing more only grows more powerful. In for a dime, in for a dollar.

Now, unlike Rwanda, "other forms of intervention" in Syria consist of riskier policies than jamming radio stations. Things like arming rebel groups and establishing no-fly zones -- i.e. policies that even more explicitly tie the U.S. to the fighting in Syria. But like Rwanda, these interim steps are almost certainly not going to "help" Syria in the humanitarian sense of the word. They will help depose Assad, but absent a means to stabilize a post-Assad Syria, there's liable to be a failed state and all the attendant bloodshed and lawlessness that implies.

It's no surprise that the Obama administration is reluctant to "do something" more than it has already done. It has nothing to do with moral abdication and everything to do with common sense.

(AP Photo)

China isn't the first country you typically think of when discussing Arctic matters, but they've just been admitted to the Arctic Council on an observer basis and will now have a seat at the table when Canada, the U.S., Russia and the Nordic countries set about wrangling over Arctic policy.

According to Gwynn Guilford, China wants in on Arctic issues less because of the region's reputed storehouse of hydrocarbons (an estimated 13 percent of the world's undiscovered oil reserves and 30 percent of undiscovered gas deposits) but because of its fisheries:

The ”new fishing grounds” will become “the world’s largest storehouse of biological protein,” wrote Tang Guoqiang, China’s former ambassador to Norway, in a recent paper.

As we recently discussed, fishing is a big business for China, so much so that it’s raiding the territorial waters of other countries. Arctic nations are currently mulling an accord to prevent fishing in the open water above the Bering Strait until scientists can assess fish stocks. The objective would be to manage commercial fishing, not to protect the fish habitat, noted the New York Times.

Europe's growing north-south divide.

While the U.S. focuses on the fallout from Benghazi and the world focuses on Syria, the Eurozone is once again silently sliding toward chaos: Slovenia may become the sixth nation -- after Portugal, Ireland, Greece, Spain and Cyprus -- to possibly require a bailout. (See map above. All six countries are highlighted in blue.)

Currently, the country plans to implement reforms, such as a tax increase and bank privatization, and Prime Minister Alenka Bratusek boldly claimed, "This program will enable Slovenia to remain a completely sovereign state."

But, we've heard that before. The Eurozone kabuki dance usually plays out like this: A struggling country insists it doesn't need financial assistance; it implements "reforms" which don't actually help; and, inevitably, it comes begging for money. Will Slovenia receive Bailout No. 6?

It looks that way. Recently, Moody's cut Slovenia's bonds to "junk" status, and the EU's top economics official, Olli Rehn, said that it's unknown if Slovenia's reforms will be sufficient. That's not exactly a vote of confidence.

The EU is supposed to discuss Slovenia's situation further on May 29. Be prepared for bad news.

(Image: amMap.com)

If you spent the weekend reading about Iran, you may have encountered two articles. The first, by Reuel Marc Gerecht asserts unequivocally that Iran does not have a right to enrich uranium even though it is a signatory to the Nuclear Non Proliferation Treaty (NPT).

On the other hand, Flynt and Hillary Mann Leverett argue (equally unequivocally) that they do have such a right and failure to recognize it is one of the key stumbling blocks reaching a negotiated settlement.

So who's right? Well, according to a close-read of the relevant treaty and expert commentary around it, Nathan Donohue concludes ... that there's no firm understanding of what "rights" the NPT actually affords:

The NPT does not clearly set out the rights of a state. Instead the language is vague and open to interpretation, possibly as a direct result of the dominant negotiating parties of the NPT. Whether this is the case or not, this inherent ambiguity has made it even more difficult to establish a common understanding between negotiating parties. In the absence of some resolve, the inherent ambiguity within the NPT will likely be a stumbling block for further negotiations between Iran and the P5 + 1 countries of the United States, China, Russia, Germany, France and Britain.

So there you have it.

(AP Photo)

A new survey from the UN has found that over 50 percent of Chinese men have abused their partners in the past.

The results are equally shocking looking at the Asia-Pacific region, where six countries (China, Cambodia, Indonesia, Papua New Guinea, Sri Lanka and Bangladesh) were surveyed. One-in-four respondents admitted to having raped a woman, and one in 25 said they had taken part in a gang rape.

James Griffiths has more:

Speaking at a UN symposium on Gender-based Violence and Research in Beijing, James Lang, program coordinator of Partners for Prevention, called the preliminary findings "shocking".

"Violence is a complex phenomenon. Much of the research has been focused on women, but when we try to come up with solutions to reduce violence, we have to include men. That's the whole motivation behind the study," he said.

Researches in China interviewed more than 2,000 men. Over half of respondents confessed to physically or sexually abusing their wives or girlfriends. More shockingly, 25 percent of respondents said they had raped a woman, and one in 25 admitted to taking part in a gang rape.

In this context, monkey-mauling bear bicycle races seem downright enlightened.

In the Shanghai Wild Animal park, they race black bears and monkeys on bicycles (for some reason). It doesn't end well for the monkey.

Famed physicist Stephen Hawking announced that he would join an academic boycott of Israel. Israelis greeted the news with outrage but Nitsana Darshan-Leitner of the Shurat Hadin Israel Law Center went one further, insisting that if Hawking really wanted to send a message to Israel, he should avoid using their technology:

"Hawking's decision to join the boycott of Israel is quite hypocritical for an individual who prides himself on his own intellectual accomplishment. His whole computer based communication system runs on a chip designed by Israel's Intel team. I suggest that if he truly wants to pull out of Israel he should also pull out his Intel Core i7 from his tablet," she said.

"He calls [the boycott] an independent decision based on the unanimous advice of his own academic contacts here. I propose he first seek the advice of Intel engineers working here. He seems to have no understanding of this world."

But he does know a lot about black holes.

UPDATE: Hawking's spokesperson said that his decision not to attend a conference in Israel had nothing to do with political views -- they were strictly health related. So that's the end of that micro-controversy. [Hat tip: Dave]

UPDATE II: Now there's an indication that Hawkings did indeed want to boycott Israel on political grounds. This story has fallen into its own black hole of confusion.

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Former basketball star* Dennis Rodman has waded into international politics yet again, this time pleading with the North Korean regime to "do him a solid" and release American Kenneth Bae, who was sentenced to 15 years of hard labor for allegedly plotting to undermine the Pyongyang regime.

Rodman visited North Korea in February where he supposedly made a "friend for life" in Kim Jong-un.

We'll see if that friendship will pay off.

(AP Photo)

(* Full disclosure: I am a New York Knicks fan. I disliked Rodman intensely when he played for the Chicago Bulls and I don't particularly like him as an international diplomat, either.)

Bret Stephens lists a variety of aggressive steps that Obama should take in Syria and then offers one unintentionally hilarious one:

(5) Be prepared to seize and remove Syria's chemical weapons stockpile, even if it means putting boots (temporarily) on the ground.

Mr. Obama has categorically ruled out sending troops to Syria, and he plainly regrets drawing a red line that he didn't mean to honor when it came to the use of chemical weapons. But even scarier than the threat of Assad killing more Syrians with those weapons is the possibility they would fall into terrorist hands—Sunni or Shiite—as Syria dissolves further into anarchy. That may have happened already. It will certainly happen if nothing is actively done to stop it.

Here's what the Pentagon had to say about a possible "boots on the ground" mission to neutralize Syria's chemical weapons arsenal:

The Pentagon has told the Obama administration that any military effort to seize Syria’s stockpiles of chemical weapons would require upward of 75,000 troops, amid increasing concern that the militant group Hezbollah has set up small training camps close to some of the chemical weapons depots, according to senior American officials.

There's nothing "temporary" about invading another country.

Syria is on fire and the brightest minds of the neoconservative movement think it's the height of strategy to put Americans in the middle of the inferno -- and then dump gasoline on it.

(AP Photo)

Speaks for itself, doesn't it? (Via Reddit.)

Motivational speakers are fond of telling a slightly corny, yet morally correct, story about a girl flinging starfish back into the ocean after a storm washed thousands of them onto a beach. The point of the story is that one person, while probably incapable of changing the world, can make a substantial difference in the lives of those whom they touch.

Unfortunately for motivational speakers, starfish may not be the most lovable example. To fishermen and marine biologists, starfish are an incredible nuisance. They eat oysters and clams, and they even destroy coral reef ecosystems, including the beloved Great Barrier Reef. To get rid of them, fishermen would chop them up and throw them back into the water.

The trouble with this strategy is that starfish can regenerate. A bisected starfish isn't a dead starfish: It's now two starfish. (And a starfish cut into five pieces turns into five starfish!)

In the world today, civilized societies are the fishermen, and terrorists are the starfish. If we leave the terrorists alone, they will destroy our global ecosystem; if we attack them, they multiply. This is the great paradox of foreign policy.

This paradox has received a lot of attention recently in regard to our drone campaign. Writing in The Atlantic, Hassan Abbas concludes that we simply don't know if drones are creating more terrorists than they kill.

Which is why the recent testimony of Yemeni writer Farea Al-Muslimi before the Senate is so troubling. He claims that drone strikes are terrifying his fellow countrymen and turning public opinion against the United States. Jihadists prey upon the poor, the angry and the fearful -- using their poisonous ideology to convert them into extremists.

This is largely what happened in Chechnya, the ancestral homeland of the Boston bombers. The Economist explains:

The nationalist cause that inspired Chechen fighters 20 years ago is now an Islamic one. Yet this mutation has as much do with Russia’s ruthless actions in the region as with the global spread of Islamist fundamentalism.

The article concludes that "suppression alone is unlikely to bring greater security to Russia."

Any marine biologist would have known that.

(Image: Starfish via TheMargue/Wikimedia Commons)

Suicide was the leading cause of death for South Koreans aged 15-24, according to a new report. That's 13 suicides for every 100,000 people in this age group -- up from 7.7 in 2001.

According to the Korea Herald, the country's suicide rate has been on the rise since the 1990s.

Not only are Korean youth killing themselves in greater numbers, there are also fewer of them. Young people (ages 9-24) accounted for 20 percent of the country's population in 2013, the lowest it's been since data was collected starting in 1970 (when the country's youth population represented 35 percent of overall numbers).

(AP Photo)