Like the Nihilist Terrorists of Old

The Wikileaks “heroes” are little more than a provisional wing of the crackpot subculture of 9-11 Truthers and Holocaust deniers. Michael C. Moynihan reports in Reason.

Last week, I wrote that the widely-linked article positing that the CIA was behind a Swedish woman’s accusation of rape against Julian Assange was authored by a Russian-born, Swedish-domiciled, multi-aliased anti-Semite and Holocaust denier currently writing under the name “Israel Shamir,” a.k.a. Adam Ermash or Jöran Jermas. The broader point had little to do with the efficacy or morality of WikiLeaks—there are plenty of debates available on the narrower issue of government transparency; this isn’t intended to be one of them—but was concerned with how ideology and confirmation bias (WikiLeaks is a good thing, therefore Assange must be defended, and the CIA has done bad stuff in the past so—cui bono?—Assange’s accuser must be a Langley asset) can lead mainstream media figures into the fever swamps of Internet conspiracy theory.

Expect the THEREfores to include negatives that can’t be proven, and allusions to mysterious characters who will later emerge, based solely on the first unassociated name or face that comes along.

Three of the journalists interviewed for the story—Cecilia Uddén, Lotta Schüllerqvist, and Peter Löfgren—claimed that Wahlström falsified quotes, leading the magazine to withdraw the story and issue an apology. Heléne Lööw, a historian of fascism and European neo-Nazism, commented that the Wahlström story contained all the “elements that one would find in a classic anti-Semitic conspiracy theory.”

A member of Ordfront’s editorial board, writing in the newspaper Dagens Nyheter, lamented that the piece was ever published, citing Wahlström’s “close working relationship with Israel Shamir,” without pointing out just how close the two were.

The famously sober and accurate Russian media is a perfect hand-in-glove fit for the fevered brows of this sort too.

According to reports in the Swedish and Russian media, the broad strokes of which have been confirmed by a WikiLeaks spokesman, Shamir serves as the group’s content aggregator in Russia, the man who “selects and distributes” the cables to Russian news organizations, according to an investigation by Swedish public radio. In the newspaper Expressen, Magnus Ljunggren, an emeritus professor of Russian literature at Gothenburg University, outlined Shamir’s close ties to WikiLeaks and his position “spreading the documents in Russia.” (The article is illustrated with a picture of Assange and Shamir in an unidentified office.)

Isn’t the heroic cry of the Wikileaks siren so much like the “calls for transparency” that 9-11 Troofers and heeb-hating Holocaust denying obsessives? It’s not so much that it has the same stench, but the same characters involved, and strikingly, popular support from the same “normal”(ish) people crawling around among the broader public that give it a margin of respectability.

Wikileaks’ entire exercise doesn’t just look like the act of a handful of loons able to function in a larger ‘straight’ world, but of a classic effort geared at using the press to construct doubt in spite of common sense.

There’s nothing Quite like Presumptive Do-gooders Flinging Dung Like Irate Zoo Primates

Cancun Climate Protesters Throw Feces, Destroy Property

As usual, protestors representing all sorts of causes and organizations were present at the confab. They included anti-globalization demonstrators, communists waving flags featuring mass-murderer Ernesto “Che” Guevara, save-the-trees types, native American groups, and countless more. Most were upset about different aspects of the “climate” negotiations going on inside — secrecy, bullying, exclusion, bribes, and countless other problems — and were there to demand some sort of remedy. Others were simply upset with “capitalism.”

What? No Rotarians? Focus, now, people! It’s civilization we’re after!

The irony is that they tend to trash things and create bad press at events meant to pander to them, and basically exceed to their terms in spite of “the will of the people”.

Gogo-Gôchistes Pédophiles

John Rosenthal follows the money on the state sponsored hate speech behind Roman Polanski’s film The Ghost Writer. It won “best picture” in the European Film Academy awards, and like virtually all European films shows in the credits a gaggle of state funded sponsors, and other barriers between the product and its unviability.

The entire effort is to advance the “lapdog” argument, as if the tunnel of mirrors, the same one that convinces people to ignore or even defend Polanski’s pederasty, isn’t one big lap of operant conditioning and servility.

The film is a kind of amalgam of “good European” pieties (e.g., the righteousness of the International Criminal Court) and delirious anti-American phantasms. It follows the trials and tribulations of a ghostwriter working on the memoirs of a former British prime minister. In the midst of his assignment, the ghostwriter gradually uncovers the “appalling truth” — as the official synopsis puts it — that his employer had been under the control of the CIA while residing at 10 Downing Street.

Never mind that the population is so cheap and lethargic that “Culture Ministries” are needed to buoy the arts, films, and the like, even those that pander to the obvious which one would think not need state support, get it.

Full of delusions and excuses, dependant on enablement and ignoring the norms of right and wrong, we might as well call it the politics of pedophilia. A fitting end to a society that largely believes that children aren’t worth having, were it not for one’s need to see others as creatures only worth keeping around to exploit for your ego and pleasure.

And Daddy Drinks Because you Cry!

Australia’s foreign minister :

said Wednesday that the U.S. government is responsible for the leaking of hundreds of thousands of classified diplomatic memos and cautioned against blaming the website that published the secret cables and its founder.
U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton and other American officials have said that WikiLeaks acted illegally when it posted the sensitive files — memos from American embassies around the world

Assange:

In an interview with MSNBC on Wednesday, Assange called Manning a political prisoner and said he believes the U.S. is trying to get the soldier to testify against him. He called on human-rights organizations to investigate.
“If we are to believe the allegations, then this man acted for political reasons. He is a political prisoner in the United States. He has not gone to trial. He has been a political prisoner without trial in the United States for some six or seven months,”

You can attribute political motives to anything – including serial killing. Did that make Jeffery Dahmer a “political prisoner” too? This is what the bien pensent global governance simpletons call justice and transparency: any sort of treason that makes them feel good.

Someone Tell Yngwie Malmsteen that Putin his Stolen his Mullet

The next step, of course, if for the Neo-Soviet Russian strongman to appear in a gold lamé unitard.

What you End up with when You Believe in Nothing

And here, I thought ”values” were to be officially regarded as a “wedge issue” of those evil conservatives. Otherwise:

The crisis of Europe is a crisis of values. In the last few years there has been no equivalent of the idealism that cemented the European project back in the 1950s. I am on the side of those who believe that ideas do matter and that the EU cannot simply be run by competent technocrats (no matter how efficient they may be). Technocrats may offer a brain to the EU project (although this is debatable!) but they cannot offer a soul. And it is the soul that is currently lacking in the European project.

Actually, you don’t sound like that at all. You sound like someone who is comfortable with the idea of non-management of the mechanism of a state with unchecked powers led by an ideological class that doesn’t share, preferably without a means of succession of power consistent with societies outside of the third world.

Plus, the world knows how Europeans have historically filled power vacuums, even when practicing some form or another of participatory government. Somehow kreeping leftist authoritarianism is what they’re left with – even the feel-good stuff ends up looking like Soylent Green in one way or another.

Too many commentators focus on covering the current European financial problems. Although the deadlocked financial situation of the EU cannot be disregarded one should also pay attention to the political/ideological vacuum of the European Union.

Really? I guess that sort of “soul-searching” isn’t going to stop the commentariat from fantasizing about forcing an ideology on the proletariat:

A crisis of ideology is also evident in the EU. The uncritical acceptance of a deregulated free-market vision within the EU circles has damaged the economy of the Eurozone and is no longer viable. The EU became a political space where a conservative free-market mentality has gradually taken over without any major thinking and debate. This kind of “acquis” has silently been imposed in every EU policy area by the large majorities of the EU establishment.

Funny how some world-views are expected to defend their lives, and take the heat for all of the world’s problems – even those caused by the irrational, never-ending expansion of the welfare state.

They Seem to Only Know One Way

If you don’t think the European ‘sense of self’ requires an irrational hatred of the US, then read this article. Don’t read it for the content – read it for the authors' forgone conclusion, and (what are likely the editors') specious, unrelated comments.

Reeking of retrograde supremacism, the author laments that Europe being ‘only’ 10% of global GDP where it was once 20% requires an ignorance of what is taking place in the world: the percentage of the world living poverty is shrinking, and no-one sought Europe’s permission for that to take place.

European Culture Pretends itself to be a Delicate Flower about to be Sodomized by Mandingo

When freedom is called “freedom”, Markets are simply called in generalization to be called “capitalism”, and anti-campitalism is called “democracy”...

You see where this is going. While it’s cropped up many times before, the recipients of the message grew no more intelligent. The “leading lights” of the culture are using a fake global-warming crisis to rationalize individual will and democratic freedoms away.

It’s because without it, there would be no forum for anyone to disagree with them.

The debate about imposing authoritarian restrictions on basic human rights in order to safeguard the survival of the planet is fuelled by doubts about whether parliamentary democracies can provide answers to questions of ecological survival. The facts suggest they can’t: the US, the foremost proponent of democracy and the market economy, is among the world’s leading polluters. The cumbersome UN won’t be able to ward off the climate catastrophe. Even Germany, a self-appointed paragon of climate protection and environmental technology, is hardly making any headway.

No, authoritarianism is embraced by European elites whenever there is even the slightest possibility of them not getting away with shoving their egotistical, extremist notions on populations. Period. “Eco”-this and that is only this decades’ vain sales-tag.

The global community will be watching very closely to see who puts forth the best answer to the question of prosperity, stability and liberty: will it be unbridled capitalism made in the USA, the Chinese blend of state socialism and rampant capitalism, or an authoritarian raw materials-based regime à la russe? Europe, in contrast, could put forward a politico-economic export hit that might appeal to aspiring democracies like India, South Africa or Brazil.

Or not. Despite the writer’s notion that democracy is ‘just some sort of option’ worth expending when the going gets tough, it’s (basic notion of freedom of speech which some democracies still actually protect) in fact the tool by which such a foolish notion can be entertained. Advocating de facto smiley-face autocracy calling itself a free society for ANY purpose, as European “culture” has advocated persistently for the past century, has been a failure, and has always ended in tears and blood-bathes.

From Marburg in northern Hessen to the deluxe spa resort of Cancun, it’s about 8,600 km as the crow flies. The two places are a 12-hour flight and worlds apart. But they have one thing in common these days: they’re both grappling with the question how much freedom or constraint is needed to ensure our survival on the planet Earth. The question is whether we are heading towards an environmental autocracy.

No. Speak for yourself, asshole. You aren’t all of humanity, no matter how much the meeting look like the “It’s a Small World” ride at Disney World.

Knowing the moral turpitude and wrongness about calling for a suspension of people’s individual rights, they’re taking the passive-aggressive approach against by trying to redefine it as a desiccated form of its’ former self. It’s a clue: the ultimately don’t get it, or individual will, OR tolerance for others’ reasoning, OR what is genuinely regarded as diversity. They prefer the forced march, the one, the put-upon are told, is for the good of mankind, or in this case for the good of the planet because thinking people no longer buy the crypto-Troskyite rationalization for having things thrust upon them.

The question remains: is this issue even real, and why is there a class of intellectual ciphers pretending that man’s responsibility to a non-science – one whose “cure” could murder millions with privation – is “ours”.

Voila la Cul-ture Française

Le Monde reports that 43% of young men and 37% of young women from the “sensitive zones” are unemployed. Unemployment overall in ‘da hood is just below 19%, a figure they can’t even match in Michigan, as hard as they seem to try.

It’s obviously George Bush’s fault.

Don’t Forget to Double-Bag it

Yet another summit: EU summit to tackle Treaty change

And here I thought it was still called global warming. The rest of it sounds suspiciously like an unwanted email:

A range of enlargement issues and the EU's 2020 growth strategy are also on the agenda, with EU high representative Catherine Ashton and EU enlargement commissioner Stefan Fule scheduled to participate in a Eastern Partnership ministerial meeting in Brussels on Monday.

Not to get that confused with stuff they will do absolutely nothing realistic about:

Also on the agenda for Monday, foreign ministers will discuss developments in a range of different trouble-spots across the globe, including Sudan, the Middle East, Somalia, Côte d'Ivoire, Afghanistan and Iran.

They really should start wearing special hats at their conventions.

The Pause that Refreshes

Crazy Mixed Up Pup, 1956



An animated fillum directed by the criminally insane Tex Avery, inventor of characters like Screwy Squirrel, Chilly Willy, Daffy Duck, and Porky Pig. Find me JUST ONE of those characters that isn’t struggling with their inner demons, why dontcha?

Trees are Farmed, You Idiot

As in, they are no different than any other agricultural product. A trained chimpanzee could figure than out. Then again, we have confirmed to us the fact that Greenies aren’t quite as intelligent as trained chimpanzees.

Via Tim Bleeeah, we find something I’ve run into elsewhere, (with the evil LEED mafia,) wherein they do not want you to print their document in order to “save the trees”. They do this by locking the PDF file that it’s formatted in.

These people are inept:

The WWF format is a PDF that cannot be printed out. It’s a simple way to avoid unnecessary printing. So here’s your chance to save trees and help the environment. Decide for yourself which documents don’t need printing out – then simply save them as WWF.

To illustrate the enfeeblement of these louts, think of it this way. Not printing a document that you will use, as if the tree it came from wasn’t already replanted, is like not eating corn to conserve corn-cobs. What with all of those corn-type farmers committing suicide, and all... even if you won’t buy the fact that it’s old growth corn, that there won’t be anyone left to plant it.

Global Warming Continues Apace

In Sweden. Does the Gore Paradox apply to societies that have a “progressive” rep too?

Sweden in 'coldest December in 100 years'

“There were a number of days in a row with below-freezing temperatures, so called ice days. And that we have that before Lucia (December 13th) hasn’t happened in more than 100 years,” she said.

Bush!

Leftism is Now Little More than an Adolescent Lynch-mob Fantasy

Proven to us every day by those that promote it. Even adherents to the (more or less) decayed ideas of envy-laden, class-warfare promoting Marxist-Leninism find that to be true. Don’t be surprised:

Then almost immediately, [the blogger] History is Made… told me, he turned to Indymedia to find it full of claims that Wikileaks is a Mossad/CIA false flag operation to deflect us away from the real conspiracies…

It’s a natural fit for “troofing” in it’s many forms, repeated over and over, over time with no actual examination of the events, outcome, origins, or anything else. For these buffoons, it all comes out the same way:

“Sadly, Indymedia offers a platform to invent caricatures of the Israeli state and of its policies. Instead of recognising the political context, it helps to perpetuate an image of Israel, and of Jews, as sinister conspirators with a secret plan to turn the world into one massive settlement.”

Once the lying starts, expect it to continue. The question really isn’t one of the promoters of these idea thinking that people are after them, (given their importance, and all that divine illumination that they offer,) but why people really AREN’T after them.

Chalking it up to yeaning for a hip edge, those that want to remain respectable are in on the act too.

Aren’t they Just so Cute when they’re Pretending that they Matter?

Berlin, Paris and Warsaw keen to beef up EU military muscle

Or is that Russell the Love Muscle?

Grow a Nut Sack

The European mind is such that it seems to need a fake crisis over which to seem a heroic champion of. Below is a survey of what the editors looking at the work of editors find important: pretending that the non-existent global-warming tidal wave is coming, putting billions into a fund to support the non-existent effects of global-warming on their favorite among poor victims, etc.:

Il Sole 24 Ore - Italy: World becomes more multilateral

De Volkskrant - Netherlands: Breakthrough next year - maybe

Neue Zürcher Zeitung - Switzerland: Progress in climate policy

Expansión - Spain: Hope of partial success in Cancún

Elsewhere: The NYT is too passive-aggressively anti-American to realize that it’s answering its’ own question. From a article titled Europeans Criticize Fierce U.S. Response to Leaks, previously condescendingly titled ”Many Europeans Find U.S. Attacks on WikiLeaks Puzzling”, we find the following with nary a blink:

The Russians seemed to take a special delight in tweaking Washington over its reaction to the leaks, suggesting that the Americans were being hypocritical. “If it is a full-fledged democracy, then why have they put Mr. Assange away in jail? You call that democracy?”

Speaking for a government that has a recent history of murdering journalists and suppressing dissent. Never mind what they would do to an outfit like Wikileaks who published THEIR internal traffic.

Even The Financial Times Deutschland (independent of the English-language Financial Times), said that “the already damaged reputation of the United States will only be further tattered with Assange’s new martyr status.”

It sounds like they’re fond of the new islamist agitprop definition of “martyr” – regardless if Assange is still alive.

The left-wing Berliner Zeitung wrote that Washington’s reputation had been damaged by the leaks. But the reputation of United States leaders “is being damaged much more right now as they attempt — with all their means — to muzzle WikiLeaks” and Mr. Assange.

As if the douchebag neo-Marxists with populist lynch-mob fantasies at BZ were actually concerned with the United States reputation. The mention and tone in all of the reports is made solely out of bitterness and a desire to smear a large, democratic state that is in reality the only defense that they have against the autocrats of the world and potential autocrats within.

So the way it works, is that even when you’re right, you’re wrong. One of the especially arrogant pretenses of European self-regard is that they do anything realistic or meaningful to advance their adopted virtues: human rights, individual will, etc. That is, when they arent triangulating or doing business that bolsters the worst human rights abusers in the world:

Le Figaro, said that he was impressed by the generally high quality of the American diplomatic corps. “What is most fascinating is that we see no cynicism in U.S. diplomacy,” he said. “They really believe in human rights in Africa and China and Russia and Asia. They really believe in democracy and human rights. People accuse the Americans of double standards all the time. But it’s not true here. If anything, the diplomats are almost naïve

If you don’t see that there is a blinding self-importance in what Europe thinks IT thinks, you’re simply too used to the pedantry of their trope.

No-one outside of the echo chamber of their thinking is puzzled at their puzzlement - trust me on that one. Humanity does not exist to play dress-up for your self-delusions - so if you can't accomplish anything relevant, stay in your playpen for the time being.

You Know the Jig is Up When...

...Even German Leftists Notice the Gore Effect
From Berlin’s normally smug, “social justice” loving BZ



...„and when Cancun fails?”
...„This is no time to be accurate, Luv.”

Sauve Qui Peut

The Future, as Always, is Bleak

Consider yourself having been Bolkenstiened.

Frits Bolkestein:

Commissioner Frits Bolkestein who remarked that Dutch Orthodox Jews should consider "emigrating to the United States or to Israel," because there is “no future for them” in the Netherlands

Geert Wilders:

"it is the anti-Semitic Moroccans who should emigrate."

So Long, Suckers

Seeing the EU for all it’s glory and efficiency, the Nordic nations want to Federalize.

Without them. And they actually want to FEDERALIZE:

The United Nordic Federation would only have powers that are expressly ceded to it by its members. Foreign and defence policy would be federal matters; economic and labour-market policy would need to be co-ordinated; and research policy would probably also be best served at federal level.

Thism in a sharp contrast to the EU which, any time anyone asks, says one shall renders anything unto Ceasar that ain’t bolted down, even if the real outcome is that there isn’t much of an effective defense or International Affairs structure to centralize anyway.

The Federation would work in the same way, as an arena for comparisons and co-ordination, without the need for decisions to be unanimous before they can be implemented. Most taxation would remain at national level, as would most social services, perhaps including social security, unless it is generally agreed that a joint system would be more beneficial.

Which in it’s original intent would make it look a lot more like the United States than Switzerland, as the author suggests – but then again, there subjects that are still taboo to discuss in a favorable light.

However, in one strange twist alluding to the idiotically unrealistic self-regard the EU sees itself in, we find this bit of rayonnement.

Nordic co-operation can function as an example and a model for the wider European community.

How do you say “bureaucrottes zéropéens non-élus” in Finnish anyway?

Doorbusting Geopolitical Events

Which is to say, the very opposite of the NorK condition, unless fascism becomes an Olympic sport.

Pyongyang, November 21 (KCNA) -- The Puebla State Branch of the Mexican National Preparatory Committee for Commemorating the Centenary of Birth of President Kim Il Sung was inaugurated on Nov. 13.

Arturo Mauricio Juarez Lopez, president of the Mexican Puebla State Association for Friendship with the Korean People, was elected chief of the branch.

The branch decided to briskly conduct colorful commemorations till 2012, centenary of birth of the President.

How very cosmopolitan. It’s almost like an Ice Capades of authoritarian leftism. They insist that a desperate world yearns for their wisdom! They will not disappoint!

Can’t We All Just IMAGINE our Way to a Better World?

The morons at Propagandastaffel still refuse to admit that markets don’t work when they smother them with onerous demands. Real estate in Paris is expensive, but not by the standards of cities of similar size in similar economies. It is, nonetheless, expensive, and is the result of the fact that it isn’t profitable to build in a city that dense that maintains height limitations, has political parties that seem willing to impose price xontrols at the drop of a hat, and there is a “constitutional right” to be housed at the cost of a property owner.

Housing is one of the great scandals of the French. As the country continues to grow, the working and middle classes are forced to devote an ever increasing share of their income to this basic needs, and prices become prohibitive as a result of property speculation.

Never mind the single greatest cost people are forced to exceed at the cost of their well being: taxes.

Large cities, primarily Paris, are the scene of a silent exclusion mechanism, a deadly hunt that imposes itself more on the less fortunate citizens who are doomed to spend hours in transport, adding to it the consequence of emitting polluting carbon dioxide into the atmosphere.

The blissfully laissez-faire expect that rising prices will lead to a greater supply that will ease the market. But the argument that the inner-city construction market is inherently limited by regulation is a chimera designed primarily to protect the interests of owners and real estate professionals. Without strong intervention of public power, urban apartheid will continue to grow. Taxation of empty homes, causing some rents (for small areas, for example), affirmative action programs for construction, release of certain allowances, acceleration of Greater Paris, you can discuss all the details. But with a market failure or too unfair, the failure of the community is tantamount to abandonment. Or desertion.

Why not call it ultra apartheid? Why not bring the image of Nazism into the fact that demand is forced to recognize the existence of a supply one may not really add to?

A minor matter? A silly, throw away subject just to throw fuel on their revolutionary lynchmob fantasies? Hell no. France 24 has been giving it “the embarrassing American story” treatment for the past 24 hours: which is to say repeating it incessantly if it gives a warm, wet handjob to the minds of the editors.

Having worked on the building of buildings for 20 years, I can think of a dozen things that would salve their complaints far quicker than their typical demand for a heavy hand of government to simply “declare” what rents should be.

Solution: bureaucrottes non-élus

Given that there is enough demand to drive up rents and real estate prices, the next fix in their (literal) authoritarian Marxist-Leninist solution to the problem will be the assignment of housing to people based on a standard of need or personal social standing.

Further “Bravitude” in the Face of 4 Measly inches of Snow

There’s much Spaßmachen among those hardy Berliners too. They’re rough and ready for the new literary season.



Pffft!!!

The Hero of the European Left Shows the Way

Venezuela's Chavez blames capitalism for deluges: Chavez blames rich countries for climate problems

He seems to have forgotten that the capitalist west is the one that started the environmental movement, created all the of technology to clean the environment, created the efficiencies that allow for clean industrialization, despite the uninformed howling of the closet authoritarians of the “green” movement, and that the Marxist-Leninist regimes of old that he lionizes were so poisonously polluted and so willing to choke their own populations with toxic waste, that it was the one form of opposition that they couldn’t rationalize silencing.

The amateurishly operated Chernobyl nuclear plant and the cover-up of its failure was, of course, some sort of capitalist plot too, I imagine.

Failed State

Channeling al Jezeera sur Seine

Call me when your moral compass stops spinning.

While belittling the death of American civilians is nothing new, this cartoon published on the web page “All Voices”, one which purports to reflect the opinions of “a world that has no other outlet,” it displays quite plainly that to many out there the WikiDump is not about “transparency”, but another quietly celebrated missile fired at Americans and at the United States.

Unwitting Political Statement of the Year

Purdue website calculates asteroid damage
Indianapolis Business Journal

...how much damage a comet or asteroid would cause if it hit Earth? ...You can customize your asteroid and pretend it's headed for the Windy City. The code jockey is quoted as saying:

Dude, we're hosed!

Dude! I’m Sooooo Wasted

Camel milk, camel steak, camel headcheese, camel florentine...



I dream of camels, all day and night. I think they’re, like, after me or something.

Where are the Professional Complainers on THIS One?

Hardly a day goes by when there isn’t some verbal drive-by shooting of Vatican: the actual closure of the Galileo trial issues, or statements about the use of condoms notwithstanding, the play only makes reference to they “having taken so long”, not that they actually took place. It all arises from the Leftist commentariat’s culture of complaint. Perspective is never sought, and events are only cited as examples of their dissatisfaction at something “the others” are insulting their sensibilities with.

As with the bizarre, unrecanted and unrevised defense of the likes of Pol Pot and Mao, it’s not real. It’s only a show. It only bears mention when it is so far outside of common sensibility that it is morally indefensible. So where are they on this subject? A whole movement was silent about the Cultural Revolution, even as it was trying to convince us that the riot s were for “free speech”, despite the fact that all sundry knew that it was just another one of history’s Communist totalitarian roundups.

After 40+ years, the occasional former “students” in China who played out a much more vast Salem Witch Hunt in the Cultural Revolution are admitting some fault and express regret for the personal and social harm that they caused.

The reconciliation and apologies took place among a group of old people: Cheng Bi, retired teacher from the Beijing Foreign Language School, 86 years old; Guan Qiulan, retired teacher from the Peking University Auxiliary Middle School, 81 years old; Li Huangguo, retired teacher from the Beijing Mineral Industry Auxiliary Middle School, 79 years old. Across them are their former students: Shen Xiaoke, Hu Bin and Guo Canhui, all over 60 years old.

Which age, too much age if you ask me, they are seeking redemption and forgiveness to salve their souls.

Now, the Red Guards want to apologize to those teachers whom they and their "comrades" slapped and spit upon many years ago.

I say don’t give it to them, if they waited until the age in which one needs it to do it.

In recent years, Li was clearly suffering from dementia. She could not eat, she could not talk and she was clearly confused. It was hard to say if she was aware that someone was making an apology to her. When people visit her at night, she can occasionally name one or two of them. Her husband Dan Zhongjian told her, "Your students came in the afternoon to apologize to you." Li Huangguo nodded her head.

Which I suppose makes it an awful lot easier if a response isn’t expected due to dementia, emotional exhaustions, and the like.

It’s the kind of face saving that these “Talibs”, former “students,” simply do not deserve. They’re only doing it so that they could stop feeling bad, as if it was about their hurt feelings to begin with.

The Boîte Noire is in Charge

As if they haven’t spent the past century trying to convince French society to rise up in arms against “the system” and trying to scare them into the belief that there is a Capitalist under their beds, Propagantastaffel now propagandizes that, to the contrary,

The new far right not only exerts a growing influence on national governments, it is also organising at a European level and could soon weigh heavily on the very workings of the EU, warns French columnist Bernard Guetta.

Otherwise when not “saving the people”, the strange complex includes the notion that they are some sort of better-knowing elite that otherwise “hate the people”.

Buoyed by a wave of social discontent that has swept across the continent, it is in the process of mounting a platform that brings together the defence of the welfare state, an aspiration for protectionism, and an attachment to liberal values that are supposedly threatened by Muslims. Represented by pleasantly urbane leaders, who appear wholly contemporary, it has attracted a hefty swathe of the working-class and urban youth vote.

In other words, since it smacks somewhat of the lefts class-warfare bogeyman routine, and they supposedly have that copywritten, one is supposed to not just oppose it, but not notice pretend that the left’s crash-testing of civilization is to go unremarked.

Why Don’t They Just Go Back to Getting Hysterical about Google Street View ?

I really hope Europeans whip themselves up into their usual frothing impotent rage over the crumbs of hate that have been sprinkled by Wikileaks’ Julian Assange. Observing Hermann:

In an embarrassing embarrassment following Wikileaks’ leak of leaked US despatches, US diplomats in Germany have been caught making the very same derisive remarks about leading German politicians that Germany’s critical media makes.

The New York Times, one of members of the provisional wing of Wikileaks, calls what Wikileaks is doing an exercise in “seeking transparency."

Transparency, my ass.

If they were seeking transparency, they would publish ANY NATION'S confidential documents, but they aren't. Their actions are more than mere tacit support of al Qaida and the Taliban. Their mission has been to undermine the standing of the United States, and the United States alone, and they are doing it in close coordination with a small coterie of press operations.

To begin with, those with access to SIPRNET and the Diplomatic Communications network who have been giving Wikileaks the documents are breaking the law, and are being openly treasonous. Wikileaks on the other hand, is at the very least violating copyright and trafficing in stolen goods to such a great magnatude that they have committed a high crime.

Wikileaks intention is to introduce so much doubt inside the practices of the staff of the State Department, DoD, NATO states' governments, even the Pakistani governemnt, that it will tip the balance of power in favor of Iran, Syria, al Qaida, the Taliban, and their network. Nothing else.

It’s this simple: if I had ever even so much as lost a confidential document, I would have been in serious violation of Federal Law and the UCJ. Some wanker who feeds a nihilist like Assange a quarter of a million classified documents gets a smug nod, and acclimation by the detached commentariat that would, if they had a nutsack, kill US soldiers for recreation themselves in a fit of anti-Vietnam-War-protest emotional nostalgia.

That the cables are not big news is irrelevant. In fact if you put it in contrast to the polite and diplomatic statements of the State Department and DoD, you immediately see the contrast between them and the European governments who seed highly slanderous characterizations of foreign parties through the press all the time. i.e.: Spiegel getting opinionated, libelous, and clearly mendacious German government commentary about George Bush, coupled with the citation of one statement about Gerhard Schroeder which was broadly accepted in the press at the time, with a retort today that "Bush was a liar" when it's quite clear that Gerhard Schroeder is the liar trying to build himself a legacy.

Does anyone out there NOT think that Erdogan ISN'T a bufoon? Or that Sarkozy ISN'T practicing the usual haxagonal irrelevant self-importance? Or that Putin isn't a simpleton pulling moronic international stunts as a result of the impotence that blunts his megalomania?

And as to Westerwelle: why does anyone think the rest of humanity need the approving smile of a disinterested non-actor in risky and relevant security affairs such as the German Foreign Minister? It's like caring terribly about needing the approval of the 3rd Consul at the Albanian embassy in Rome. I’m sure THEY think that THEY matter, but the rest of humanity doesn’t agree with them, and just nods as long as their checkbook is open.

What does Assange want? A world where governments exist in order to be accountable to the image-based reputations and opinions of some like him, but are unable to protect their populations. While he migh think that this will all turn us into Luxembourg, it is more likely to turn Luxembourg into Transnistria.

So as far as I’m concerned, let the bitches in Europe’s “grand nations’” “grand capitols” get worked up about a few mild little comments. It took them 5 years to get past ONE incantation of the term “old Europe”, and ONE little utterance of the words “Freedom Fries”, so let them pop a blood vessel. It will make a nice break from them beating off to the sounds of their own voices.

Whatever Gave You That Idea?

Former external relations commissioner Chris Patten in 2004: The EU will never be a real power

Mr Patten expressed his scepticism that the EU will ever become "a real power," because "there is always someone in the room who is overly cautious, and will insist on looking at matters 'sensibly'," the cable reads.

They haven’t been “ready for prime time” for what seems like decades now. This, of course, as they’ve held one fake celebration after another inferring that their founding on paper half a century ago was serious or significant.

It’s a hard thing to believe, because they still aren’t serious or significant.

"To be a real power, Patten said, a country must be ready and able to adopt and implement a policy, even if the rest of the world considers it unwise. Europeans may agree or disagree with US policy, but they admire that the US is ready to carry out the policies it thinks best, no matter what the rest of the world thinks."

Sensible, meaning providing enough time and enough cover to enable inaction.

In Europe, "Let's roll" Means “Let’s Roll up into the Fetal Position”

"New Orleans! Haiti! Pakistan!... Flanders!!"
Heavy rains have provoked floods in northern Belgium, leading to three deaths.

The Death Camp of World Peace

Are the collectively thoughtful looking for a gift ideas for “Wither White Night”? Then go no further than to fuel the petit bourgeoisie behind the Ché bobblehead.

Superstitions and Savagery