Oh fine

While you weren't paying attention Commander Guy slapped some kind of sanctions on the government of Sudan the other day, and now the Sudanese ambassador to the US, some guy named John Ukec Lueth Ukec, whom the Washington Post's Dana Milbank insists on calling Khartoum Karl - for no other reason, apparently, than that he's into nicknames - is threatening to strike back.

What's more, the good and peaceful leaders of Sudan were prepared to retaliate massively: They would cut off shipments of the emulsifier gum arabic, thereby depriving the world of cola.

“I want you to know that the gum arabic which runs all the soft drinks all over the world, including the United States, mainly 80 percent is imported from my country,” the ambassador said after raising a bottle of Coca-Cola.

A reporter asked if Sudan was threatening to “stop the export of gum arabic and bring down the Western world.”

“I can stop that gum arabic and all of us will have lost this,” Khartoum Karl warned anew, beckoning to the Coke bottle. “But I don't want to go that way.”

That's nasty. I mean, hey, the Russians tested some kind of really evil new missile the other day blah blah blah but this is bad.

Link: Dana Milbank - Denying Genocide in Darfur -- and Americans Their Coca-Cola - washingtonpost.com