Well, a very funny thing happens.
Or at least a very funny thing happened when the Sudanese delegate to the United Nations climate talks in Copenhagen conceded the reality of the Holocaust. And, no, he wasn't even talking about the "holocaust" visited by the Jews on the Palestinians.
According to a Reuters dispatch he was talking about the real Holocaust. But he was comparing it to the plan agreed to by President Obama of the United States and the leaders of China, India, South Africa and Brazil to combat global warming. (By the way, where was Russia in this configuration?)
The Sudanese emissary Lumumba Stanislas Dia-ping said that the pact agreed on was "a solution based on values, the very same values in our opinion that funnelled six million people in Europe into furnaces ... (It) asked Africa to sign a suicide pact, an incineration pact, in order to maintain the economic dominance of a few countries." There, Barack Obama, take this and take that.
Dear reader: Take note of the fact that Sudan is no longer part of the Arab consensus that denies the Holocaust. But Sudan still engages in holocaust denial, the holocaust visited by the Sudanese on the people of Darfur.
Dia-ping happens to be the chairman of the Group of 77 which is now, in fact, a group of 120 "poor" countries which includes rich countries like Singapore, Saudi Arabia, Oman, Kuwait, the United Arab Emirates, Qatar, Libya and Venezuela. I point all this out if you don't think Sudan has any influence in the world.
It's kind of charming that Sudan leads the Group of 77 and that the Libyan Arab Jamahiriya holds the chair of the U.N. General Assembly. But it's charming in a very ugly way. And the president thinks he can accomplish something with these folks.
Dia-ping was designated from birth to be a demagogue by being named after Patrice Lumumba after whose memory the Soviets created a university. You can imagine what kind of university it was.