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Remember Lenin's quip that 'The capitalists would sell us the noose to hang them with'? Talk about the inevitability of history. Now the statement seems to apply more to the communists.

When UN sanctions went into effect against North Korean, Beijing vowed to enforce them, at least, as much they vow to enforce anything other than repression of their own people's freedoms. Remember how atwitter Condi Rice was about China's willingness?

But a look along its border with Kim Jong IL's potentate's paradise reveals that goods and services are passing the Chinese boarder guards as freely as they did before sanctions were imposed. And to think that we expected China to forgo profit for principles, when it has obviously attached itself to the principle that the best way to defeat the capitalists is to do business better than they do.

One of the more notable ironies is that, while America is the most forthrightly feisty about imposing sanctions, and the heck with the economic liabilities we incur, China is a lot closer to North Korea than we are.

A similar rony applies to our advocacy of sanctions against Iran, while formerly communist Russia, as a trading partner with the mighty mullahs, resists. The cynically calculating Putin is puttin' on blinders even though Iran is just next door.

The only voice that seems willing to call a nuke a nuke is Ehud Olmert of Israel, who came out squarely against Iran's possession of nuclear power. While he doesn't have anything to lose in terms of trade, at least, he's able to appreciate how close he is Iran and what Iran's president has repeatedly voiced about his hope for Israel to be 'wiped off the map.'

Meanwhile, think how upset the fiery communist Lenin would be if he knew about all the hanky panky by communists present and past. It would be enough to make him sit up and bang his head on the lid of his glass coffin.