The Friends of Which Workers, Exactly?

11 September, 2001 – the Communist Party of the Workers of France issues a press statement indifferent to the cause of the Jihadists because it would not serve any “progressive” causes or the people of “Palestina”, but did manage to denounce what America might do.

The symbols of the financial, military and diplomatic power of US imperialism have become the target of attacks of an extent hitherto unseen on American soil. The strongest power on the planet, sure of its invulnerability, has promised to avenge itself. One must fear the worst!

The attack psychosis has spread to all capitals. Plans of control and of police and military surveillance, such as the "vigipirate" plan in France, have been set up. NATO has been placed on maximum alert. The declarations of war are multiplying.

These attacks do not serve any progressive cause, neither that of the struggle of the Palestinian people nor the popular protest which is developing against the politics of US imperialism and other imperialist powers, as the huge demonstrations against imperialist globalization show.

We denounce in advance all the acts of reprisal that will be taken against the peoples, in the name of a so-called "war on terrorism."

We denounce as well the measures against democratic rights, particularly the right to demonstrate.

We reject the calls for a "holy alliance" with the imperialist power of the United States, which has to its account, the largest number of wars of aggression.

Our total disagreement with the methods and goals of those who have ordered these attacks will not cause us to lose sight of the antagonistic class interests between us and the imperialist powers.

The imprint of the structural aggrieved insanity of the far left is all right there. Who was denied the right to demonstrate, or lost their rights to vote or speak? Who exactly was it, through either words or actions that declared war that day? It doesn’t matter: they have an imprinted attitude easily filled by a predetermined pattern, and a mechanism that lets them ignore a defense of ‘the people’, so long as ‘the people’ match a constructed mental image that they have.

May revolution indeed find you. May you suffer for what you wish for.

The Pride and Dignity of the Diversity Agenda

It’s all sunshine and lollipops, as you know because it’s what we’re told with Stalinesque repetition. Let me correct that. It’s all sunshine, lollipops, and child abuse:

JEONJU (SOUTH KOREA): A transgender father of four was sentenced to a two-year jail term for abusing his children, who refused to call him "mom", according to South Korea's Yonhap news agency, citing a local court on Wednesday.

The poster children of diversity, as with every other one of the left’s cultural re-education efforts are normally exempt from the kind of attention borne by human frailty, of course. The same people who tell us not to feed the wildlife because it might change their nature, might make them greedy to violate norms, and make them dependent can’t seem to understand that this also goes for humans.

During court trials, he showed strong desire to receive a sex reassignment surgery to become a "real woman."

That was at HIS trial for the abuse of his children. Somehow, as predictably as a NYT tirade anything social aberrant to those with any common sense and kindness, it stops being about the issue at hand.

It became about him. It became about his identity. Little does any officially “socially aware” type realize that abusing his children just said a lot more about his identity than a reality defying hatred of how he was born.

He Calls Himself Russell the Love Muscle

French reporting-of-self yields to bragging about their meatwhistles. The same study shows that those self-reporting are being mendacious about their pecker-hood by the same difference between the great national French Johnson and –measured- American willies.

Predictably, Arabs, Italy, and other sad, real-life reflections of their stereotypes, seem to report the most “grade inflation”, all reflecting a similar level of “great national” powerlessness and propensity to blame anything they don’t like on someone else. They are also places where men are the most p-whipped.

Just Keep your Hands off Yopliat and Danone!

In the face of hostile takeovers, largely by French companies, some of them partially state owned, Italy is raising barriers to M&A and buyouts.

French cheese giant Lactalis said on Tuesday it had reached a deal to increase its stake in Parmalat to 29 per cent despite a government warning of measures to keep the dairy group in Italian hands.

Lactalis the single largest shareholder in Parmalat, which had grown into a global dairy leader before collapsing in 2003 due to financial fraud by its founder Calisto Tanzi in a scandal that was dubbed "Europe's Enron".

Lactalis' move triggered a vociferous response from the Italian government, dismayed by a recent buying binge by French companies in Italy recently.

If French yogurt production somehow could have been declared strategic, one would imagine that this would engender a similar philosophical respect for other nations’ industries, state owned or not – especially those of their fellow EU cartel members.

Dream on. Add (impotable) UHT milk production to the strategic yogurt production list, including watchmaker to the rich despots and the vane, Bulgari and asset manager Pioneer.

The moves come amid a backlash against whole or partial takeovers by French companies of energy group Edison, jeweler Bulgari and dairy company Parmalat.

In a sign that the backlash is affecting business plans, Federico Ghizzoni, chief executive of UniCredit, said he could pull the sale of the bank’s asset manager Pioneer, which is valued at €2 billion - €3 billion ($2.8 billion - $4.2 billion).

Pioneer, which is in the final stages of a lengthy auction, has attracted bids from French companies Amundi, a joint venture between Société Générale and Crédit Agricole, and Natixis.

Deep Inside the Machine

Don’t forget that these are the polished, polite, and compliant elite that the North Koreans are letting the camera see.



This is a view of the engine room of a state propaganda apparatus.

Treat them Like they Treat you? Sure....: "Iron my Shirt, Bitch!"

The recreational revolutionaries drawn to Wisconsin to overturn the will of the majority “for the sake of the majority” have nothing on the suffering sisters of Sappho across the pond:

Last summer the Fawcett Society attempted to create a precedent: they challenged the legality of a government budget. In response to the coalition's proposal for deficit reduction, which foresaw 500 000 public sector job cuts, the feminist pressure group put in an application for a judicial review. The Treasury, they claimed, appeared to have failed to honour its legal duty under the Equality Act to give "due regard" to the impact on women.

There are takers, and there are makers. You can guess which one Gal-Queda can be counted among. The expectation is simple: all of society exists to serve the political purposes of feminists employed outside of the Private Sector where both economics, and socially responsible decisions can be bypassed in the interest of a small political coterie.
It does not mean that they can be made exempt from the hash facts of life by a mere accident of birth – much as the selfish cretins of political feminism think that this is not what equality and equal opportunity actually mean. I wonder if there are any women left who don’t realize that they are nothing but a corrupt cartel, willing to fight to the last gullible “student volunteer.”

Cries Heard from the Fake Crisis Management Center

The desperate pleas are deafening!

Spectrum crisis vs. bandwidth crisis

However, the "spectrum crisis" is only part of the equation wireless providers and network operators face. Another challenge is the "bandwidth crisis," the increased demands on bandwidth as a result of the growing number of mobile users...

TMC Net:

...Nevertheless, all telecommunication sectors experienced a slow down following the global financial crisis...

Capacity runs short DESPITE a slow down... now THERE'S a crisis, if nothing else than of basic cognition.

The Left’s Vengeance Campaign

Century-plus old failed Marxist tripe and revolutionary violence.

A former official of one of the country's most-powerful unions, SEIU, is detailing a secret plan to "destabilize" the country.

Specifically, the plan seeks to destroy JP Morgan, nuke the stock market, and weaken Wall Street's grip on power, thus creating the conditions necessary for a redistribution of wealth and a change in government.

But you know, they’re just out there ‘defending working people’ and baby girls, puppies, and tax auditors too... The nearly unintelligible lout goes on:

For example, 10% of homeowners are underwater right their home they are paying more for it then its worth 10% of those people are in strategic default, meaning they are refusing to pay but they are staying in their home that's totally spontaneous they figured out it takes a year to kick me out of my home because foreclosure is backed up

If you could double that number you would you could put banks at the edge of insolvency again.

And if that doesn’t sound enough like he crawled out of Ed Asner’s ass:

We have a very simple strategy:
- How do we bring down the stock market
- How do we bring down their bonuses
- How do we interfere with there ability to be rich...

ABILITY TO BE... It has nothing to do with what they have, even if he does fantasize he’s entitled to it. This is somewhere between adolescent spite and the kinds of clepto-revolutions that are based on the idea that the lumpenproletariat would surrender their well-being and their freedoms if they can be bought off with high-minded sounding promises about getting something out of following ‘the leader with the great new idea’.

The idea, however, tested for more than a century failed, and produced nothing but totalitarianism, social nihilism, misery, and at some-point everywhere it was tried, the need to be defended with mass murder of the ‘liberated’.

Lerner, by the way, likes to take the form of a “socially concerned reformer” when he shows up on CNBC, and pens articles that are meant to be caring and thought-provoking at the hive of the Queen of aggregation, The Huffington Post, as some sort of "banking watchdog" who also organizes "janitors" on the side.

Palpitation Nation

It has become a pattern of German foreign policy not only to be right all the time but also to let others know so that they can duly acknowledge Berlin’s wisdom.

It rings quite true to all familiar with it, but dispute limiting the observation of this trend to Germany. Punting most any issue, no matter what shadow it seems to cast while pretending to be the humanitarian and the force behind it is now the European norm.

The Germans were playing it carefully, though. In Tunisia, Egypt and Libya they were only demanding things once they seemed to be happening anyway. Before Westerwelle or Merkel started talking about ‘orderly transitions’, the dictator in question had usually packed his suitcase and withdrawn the funds from his Swiss bank account.

In Libya however, Germany’s ingenious strategy backfired. Germany had never been willing to participate in any military operation anyway.

Read it all here. Elsewhere the oddball excuse making and covering-action continues.

The French want to keep NATO out because they want to prove that THEY are the true friends of the Arabs, and they'll keep that bad NATO away.

Continental consensus: try the same old one trick pony baloney

Other noteworthy observations simply look at German attitudes repeating themselves out of simple convenience of the day. Clarsimonius notes the numbingly dull repetition of it all:

In a recent talk show, German Development Minister Dirk Niebel found “it is notable that exactly those countries which are blithely dropping bombs in Libya are still drawing oil from Libya.”

I found his comment quite notable too, but maybe that’s just me. I found it notable to have been placed into a time warp without my expressed written consent and to have landed back in the good old Germany of those good old German Gerhard Schröder days (author of the old saying-no-to-an-allied-attack-on-Saddam-to-get-re-elected trick).

The Bearded Clam Speaketh

“We believe that atomic energy is a blessing given by God,”

- Mahmoud Ahmadinejad

You are Free to Agree with Him

And little else

If we have a serious problem, we are tasked to re-engineer the world using the best political, psychological and technological tricks we can come up with.

Thinks Jullain Assange of the “Realpolitik” construction of a new society structured to eradicate what he calls global warming. He himself eschews the cutsie-poo “we win either way” Realpolitiker referencial terms like “climate disruption”, “climate change” and so forth.

Save your “tricks” for the women you can’t seduce.

What Do Julian Assange’s Thoughts Turn on Christmas Eve?

Things that give him a woody. 24 Dec 2006

The pending total annihilation of the US regime in Somalia

The US backed Somali "government", the Somali Transitional National Assembly (TNA), faces total annihilation, avoidable only by an Ethiopian invasion of Somalia and the creation of a Quisling regime.

In the past year the TNA has been routed from all regions of Somalia by the Union of Islamic Courts (UIC) and now holds only Baidoa, a middling town close to the Ethiopian border. The "government" has already lost the capital, Mogadishu. The TNA is a US supported power broker club with many detested warlords, including those behind the 1991 atrocities in Black Hawk Down. Its hold on Baidoa is weak and has only been maintained in the last 24 hours by aggressive Ethiopian air-strikes, artillery and the invasion of 10 to 20 thousand Ethiopian troops. Ethiopia is the traditional, hated enemy of Somalis. Whatever legitimacy the TNA may have had with Somalias is now completely lost. The Molotov-Tribbentrop Pact is statesmanship compared to cynicism behind the TNA inviting Ethiopian troops and artillery into Somalia.

Not that he didn’t appear to take joy in it, linking all of the miseries of the Somalis to it when he gets the urge to write the words. Like a conditioned pigeon, parroting the fictional Manchurian Candidate’s behavior, he thinks wildly creative and witty to call his public thoughts about it: Black Hawk Down, White Wash Up

With the characteristic inferences drawn by a teenager trying to mimic the house organs of the Soviet age, he arrives to this: the American Revolution was illegitimate, nor is the notion of western-style participatory government, and...

...God.. Creator.. Men are created equal... Life, Liberty,... pursuit of Happiness.. Safety and Happiness... [followed by 26(!) paragraphs of hatred for the abuses of King George].

Because it’s in bad taste? Because it might offend someone named Julian two centuries later? The question with all of his thoughts, other than the proof that he is unpleasable as a shoeless Imelda Marcos, is to ask “what crawled up HIS ass and died? He prattles on:

In other words, religious feeling (x2), equality, life, liberty, happiness (x2), safety and above all, an extreme hatred for the brutal acts, preferment, and corruption of foreign influenced or controlled government. It’s funny thing for a fellow traveller in Australia’s recreational revolutionaries taking up stance for a genuine and native anti-Commonwealth, Australian Republic movement to hold, as it seeks to divest itself of the symbolic allegiance to Great Britain and no longer have the British Monarch as its titular head of state.

Not once does democracy or shopping appear.

Where foreign influence is promoted in the American Declaration of Independence is beyond me. In fact it seems to rather explicitly seek to end it, which Assange views solely as “rudeness” toward the British Monarcy.

It seems that even past figures HAVING principals of their own that he doesn’t approve of is criminal. I wonder if he even notices what an authoritarian reflex he’s hiding under his awkward, affected manner.

Compare and Contrast

"All the other large and small nationalities and peoples are destined to perish before long in the revolutionary world storm… these residual fragments of peoples always become fanatical standard-bearers of counter-revolution and remain so until their complete extirpation or loss of their national character… [A general war will] wipe out all these petty hidebound nations, down to their very names. The next world war will result in the disappearance from the face of the earth not only of reactionary classes and dynasties, but also of entire reactionary peoples. And that, too, is a step forward."

- Friedrich Engels, "The Magyar Struggle," Neue Rheinische Zeitung, January 13, 1849

“As the Imam said, Israel must be wiped off the map,”

Elsewhere

“There is no doubt that the new wave (of attacks) in Palestine will wipe off this stigma (Israel) from the face of the Islamic world, ...”

- Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, “The World without Zionism.”

When the Shinkansen Hits the Fan

What to make of a society that can build robots that play the violin, but not one that can take the place of a man climbing into a reactor chamber? The answer from Germans is always the same: panic.

No, Germany doesn’t get hit by earthquakes. But it regularly gets hit by seismic waves of extreme and indulgent panic like the one that has just rolled over the country shortly after the monster quake hit Japan.

Otherwise Geiger counters are selling like bad ideas in the land that coined and added to its' wildly successful imports, the term angst.

The German news folks have all hightailed it down south to Osaka and are reporting from there (or maybe they’re in Taiwan by now).

Their rescue teams have headed back to Germany after declaring that there is no one left in Japan to be rescued.

Where are the Radiation Alarms ALWAYS Going off?

You guessed it!

Stop Whining. You've Created your Own Worst Stereotypes

Now iss de time on Schprockets venn ve tance.

The Nanny State will Protect You.

Canada's tsunami warnings include many of the erstwhile dominion's highest points, inluding much of the canadian Rockies.

The Diversity of Outlook in the Caliphate

The usual brutal carrying-on in those genteel and thoughtful Muslim-dominated societies makes this no real surprise:

The father of the Muslim woman was killed by his cousin because he did not kill his daughter to preserve the family's honor, which led the woman's brother to avenge the death of his father by killing the cousin.

Pourquoi, you ask?

The village Muslims blamed the Christians.

Of course the causes are obfuscated away at the top of their delusional lungs. The "family affair" shouldn't be confused by more lethal and common events:

A mob of nearly four thousand Muslims has attacked Coptic homes this evening in the village of Soul, Atfif in Helwan Governorate, 30 kilometers from Cairo, and torched the Church of St. Mina and St. George. There are conflicting reports about the whereabouts of the Church pastor Father Yosha and three deacons who were at church; some say they died in the fire and some say they are being held captive by the Muslims inside the church.

Witnesses report the mob prevented the fire brigade from entering the village. The army, which has been stationed for the last two days in the village of Bromil, 7 kilometers from Soul, initially refused to go into Soul, according to the officer in charge. When the army finally sent three tanks to the village, Muslim elders sent them away, saying that everything was "in order now."

A curfew has been imposed on the 12,000 Christians in the village.

A Grand Utopian Failure: Quotations from Gadaffi’s “Green Book” [iv]

The hits just keep on coming from Daffy Gadaffi, rationalizing theft:

Land is the private property of none. Rather, everyone has the right to beneficially utilize it by working, farming or pasturing as long as he and his heirs live on it - to satisfy their needs, but without employing others with or without a wage. If lands were privately owned, only the living would have a share in it.

Land is permanent, while those who benefit from the land undergo, in the course of time, changes in profession, capabilities and existence.

The aspiration of the new socialist society is to create a society which is happy because it is free. This can only be achieved by satisfying, man's material and spiritual needs, and that, in turn, comes about through the liberation of these needs from the control of others. Satisfaction of these needs must be attained without exploiting or enslaving others; otherwise, the aspirations of the new socialist society are contradicted.

BFFs

You can tell a lot about a "world leading" autocrat by who salad he's tossing.

Chávez has refused to condemn Libyan dictator Muammar Gaddafi for his massacres of unarmed protesters, claiming to have "no information" on events that to the rest of the world are as plain as day.

Chávez posted a message on Twitter last week saying "Long live Libya and its independence! Gaddafii faces a civil war!" He has also stated

"A campaign of lies is being spun together regarding Libya," adding, "I'm not going to condemn him. I'd be a coward to condemn someone who has been my friend." Let ye be judged by your friends.

Slurp, slurp.

Indeed Chávez has phoned "his friend" to offer to create a commission of "friendly countries" to mediate between him and the revolutionary forces. An offer they have quite rightly refused with contempt. Gaddafi, his dreadful sons and his entourage of butchers deserves not mediation - nor even a bolt hole in Caracas if he flees - but summary justice from the people he has exploited and oppressed.

May they both feel the sharp end of lots of "imperialism".

A Grand Utopian Failure: Quotations from Gadaffi’s “Green Book” [iii]

Like Hitler before him, Gaddafi was a sort of eugenicist. He also sounds an awful lot like Margerete Sanger and the suffering sisters who worship her today:

The latest age of slavery has been the enslavement of Blacks by White people. The memory of this age will persist in the thinking of Black people until they have vindicated themselves.

This tragic and historic event, the resulting bitter feeling, and the yearning or the vindication of a whole race, constitute a psychological motivation of Black people to vengeance and triumph that cannot be disregarded. In addition, the inevitable cycle of social history, which includes the Yellow people's domination of the world when it marched from Asia, and the White people's carrying out a wide-ranging colonialist movement covering all the continents of the world, is now giving way to the re-emergence of Black people.

Black people are now in a very backward social situation, but such backwardness works to bring about their numerical superiority because their low standard of living has shielded them from methods of birth control and family planning. Also, their old social traditions place no limit on marriages, leading to their accelerated growth. The population of other races has decreased because of birth control, restrictions on marriage, and constant occupation in work, unlike the Blacks, who tend to be less obsessive about work in a climate which is continuously hot.

Mistake number one by him and everyone like him, is the de-personalization of individuals by any metric such as the color of their skin. It isn’t just simplistic and comically unserious: it contributes to the dumbing down of civilization.

A Grand Utopian Failure: Quotations from Gadaffi’s “Green Book” [ii]

Nothing quite like a rationalization for tyranny – or course “in the name of the people”... He always DID work the Commie angle anyway:

Plebiscites are a fraud against democracy. Those who vote "yes" or "no" do not, in fact, express their free will but, rather, are silenced by the modern conception of democracy as they are not allowed to say more than "yes" or "no". Such a system is oppressive and tyrannical. Those who vote "no" should express their reasons and why they did not say "yes", and those who say "yes" should verify such agreement and why they did not vote "no". Both should state their wishes and be able to justify their "yes" or "no" vote.

What then, is the path to be taken by humanity in order to conclusively rid itself of the elements of dictatorship and tyranny?

The intricate problem in the case of democracy is reflected in the nature of the instrument of government, which is demonstrated by conflicts of classes, parties and individuals. The elections and plebiscites were invented to cover the failure of these unsuccessful experiments to solve this problem. The solution lies in finding an instrument of government other than those which are subject to conflict and which represent only one faction of society; that is to say, an instrument of government which is not a party class, sect or a tribe, but an instrument of government which is the people as a whole. In other words, we seek an instrument of government which neither represents the people nor speaks in their name.

You can’t say that! It isn’t in the script!

Didn’t you know it was those freakin' amis that have an absolute monopoly on violence?

A Grand Utopian Failure: Quotations from Gadaffi’s “Green Book” [i]

By the mad dog from the Jammin’ Jamhiriya himself:

If the instrument of government is dictatorial, as is the case in the world's political systems today, society's awareness of deviation from its laws is expressed only through violence to redirect its course, i.e., revolution against the instrument of government. Violence and revolution, even though they reflect the sentiments of society regarding deviation, do not constitute an exercise in which the whole of society takes part. Rather, violence and revolution are carried out by those who have the capability and courage to take the initiative and proclaim the will of society. However, this unilateral approach is dictatorial because the revolutionary initiative in itself provides the opportunity for a new instrument of government representing the people to arise. This means that the governing structure remains dictatorial. In addition, violence and effecting change by force are both undemocratic, even though they take place as a reaction against an undemocratic prior condition. The society that revolves around this concept is backward. What, then, is the solution?

The solution lies in the people being themselves the instrument of government whose authority is derived from Basic Popular Conferences and the General People's Congress; in eliminating government administration and replacing it by People's Committees; and finally, in the General People's Congress becoming a truly national convention where Basic Popular Conferences and People's Committees convene.

So how are those Committees going, Mo?

Noch Wieder mits’ Achtung, Baby!

They’re coming for your inter-tubes!

America's Like a Broken Down School House... No Class

The far left, particularly those with the moral compass that spins enough for them to express an admiration for Socialism, love to discuss classlessness as a goal. Well, Americans really eliminated class distinction to a degree that no society has managed to, not least of which compared to the aristocratic nature of Socialist, Marxist-Leninist, and the rest of the quasi-intellectual variants thereof. We have few living examples left, but they are pure and consistent:

In North Korea, one's songbun, or socio-economic and class background, is extremely important and is primarily determined at birth. People with the best songbun are descendants of the anti-Japanese guerrillas who fought with Kim Il-song, followed by people whose parents or grandparents were factory workers, laborers, or poor, small farmers in 1950. "Ranked below them in descending order are forty-seven distinct groups in what must be the most class-differentiated society in the world today." Anyone with a father, uncle, or grandfather who owned land or was a doctor, Christian minister, merchant, or lawyer has low songbun.

Then there’s the ubiquitous, ass-kissing nature of low-level cronyism:

After songbun, the next most important influence on North Korean life is Kim-Il-song sangsa, or the thought of Kim Il-song. Within certain narrow limits, one's devotion to the thought of Kim Il-song can improve one's songbun, and disloyalty can lower one's songbun.

Not to mention the classlessness of hereditary succession. And don’t bet that the fate of the higher classes isn’t tied to el hefe, and that they will get their when he finally gets his.

Achtung, Baby!

They’re coming for your vapid Hello Kitty memorabilia!

Gramscian Sleeper Cell

And to think it only took Spiegel 40 years to notice:

Germany's domestic intelligence agency has warned of "extremist structures" within the Left Party. A new report lists a number of left-wing extremist factions within the party, including the Communist Platform, the Marxist Forum and a pro-Cuba group.

As if decades of the Red Brigade, the RAF, the Bader-Meinhof Gang, and a variety of stooges that the KGB didn’t even have to keep bankrolling after a while wasn’t enough to show them what these “revolutionaries” want “revolution” and that peace, to them, is just another word for nothing left to lose, nothing to gain, and no actual self.

The Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution is responsible for monitoring political extremism in Germany. Among its main focuses are far-right extremists, far-left extremists, Islamist terrorists and the Scientology organization. According to the agency's 2006 annual report -- the most recent available -- there are around 31,000 left-wing extremists in Germany, of whom around 6,000 are prepared to use violence to achieve their ends.

After all, for all of their airy rhetoric, if you can find it, they are even more authoritarian than the absurdly misdirected people who monitor them by law. Trapped somewhere in the last century and taught one campaign du jour after another filled with loony allegations and false arguments, they reinforce the ideas that limit liberties that they purport to find lacking everywhere around them.

An Idiot in the World

CNN’s Wolf Blitzer plays up his “inside look” at North Korea that he’s trying to sell as unique and groundbreaking. In reality, a trained Chimpanzee using Youtube could get the same look at the minder-led sightseeing of the NorK Potemkin villages and monuments to Kim Il Sung.

Donald Kirk:

This flight of fantasy became even more ludicrous as Blitzer sought to give an impression of a "rare" look at the same stuff everyone gets to see on tourist trips to Pyongyang - the Great Study Hall of the People, once described to me by a North Korean minder as "the world's biggest library", classrooms of privileged kids studying English, a look at a fruit farm, a small "factory" of some sort, the usual empty streets and avenues.

The whole program, aired for nearly an hour by CNN last weekend, reached an apotheosis of silliness on the final day on December 20 when Blitzer wanted to believe he was hearing the distant explosions of South Korean military exercises in the Yellow Sea around the island that North Koreans shelled in November. Blitzer assured viewers that the island was not all that far away - apparently not willing to reveal that it was 150 miles (231 kilometers) due south, more than a little out of earshot of the loudest blasts.

Ground-breaking stuff there, Wolfie, but the fact remains that you’re a willing idiot and a flunky. A ugly, inhumane regime wanted a megaphone, and for the sake of a story, you gave it to them.

The North Koreans' greatest coup, however, was the skill and ease with which they got CNN to publicize their eagerness to negotiate while the South Koreans appeared as provocateurs for insisting on staging more exercises.

Namkung, a veteran of 40 visits to North Korea, appeared off and on throughout the program, offering supportive views bereft of any trace of doubt about the North's motives, much less any mention of the North's failure to live up to previous nuclear agreements.

Bush was right. It’s pointless to negotiate with them until their actions show a change in direction toward improvement – not the other way around.

Hurry up ‘n Wait

EU calls emergency Libya summit for 11 March

They’re running out of time to try to look important.

"I will make proposals to the European Council on the strategic lines of the European Union's reaction to developments in Libya and in our southern neighbourhood," EU Council President Herman Van Rompuy said in a written statement on Tuesday (1 March).

Note: not in the past tense. Let’s not forget the “land of debate”:

France is also keen to debate military support for humanitarian aid, economic assistance for the wider region and a general "reset" in EU relations with Maghreb countries.

Otherwise, they’re in no big hurry:

The diplomatic contact noted that new sanctions could be ready by Thursday and that the summit could be brought forward if "something atrocious" happens in Libya before next week.

Nonetheless, the obvious must also be stated:

Germany was initially reluctant to hold the Libya meeting, with German diplomats saying as late as Monday afternoon that the French idea is "not serious."

This will Surely Go Unspoken

Expect the canned, ritual explanations to be spewed. Expect French people to ask why there are laws against assaulting Jews, which is merely an extension of having a special law for cause-associated interpersonal crimes closely associated with an ugly feature of French parochial attitudes and history. Expect all of the same old stuff.

French police briefly detained British fashion designer John Galliano in Paris on Thursday evening for alleged assault and making anti-Semitic remarks, a police source told AFP on Friday.
The detention in Paris' fashionable Marais district came after Dior's chief designer allegedly verbally accosted a couple sat on a cafe terrace.

The Marais contains part of the quartier Juif AKA Le Pletzl, home to the only really interesting baked goods left in the city, and the Rue des Rosiers, which is a delight to the eyes and palate that rubs the senses raw, letting you start over.

The Marais is also Paris’ gay ghetto. Gays are prone to buying into the far end of the leftist obsessions.

Galliano, you might recall, was behind the boho-meets-hobo chic line. Inspiration for the line was based on the appearance of the homeless, and went from design studio to catwalk without any form of social or moral awareness of the situation being evinced – not until people who choose to live their lives in a living human society where personal bombast and self-absorption isn’t a prerequisite – had pointed out the tastelessness of the idea.

He was also named by The Independent on Sunday to be one of the most influential gay people in Britain, even though his lives in Paris.