Request

Can anyone direct me to some interesting Swedish blogs? I'm having some trouble finding them...

(Swedish or English language is OK)

The big O

I used to think Oprah deserved a lot of credit for getting where she has got. I never subscribed to her philosophies or beliefs, but I never thought she was this barking mad...

Oprah Feels Islamists' Pain

Idiocy, thy name is Kofi

What a fucking loon this idiot is...

World must race against time to save Darfur - Annan

Annan warned rich nations at a pledging conference in neighbouring Ethiopia that they would end up having to finance an "epic relief effort" if more violence made food even scarcer in the vast western region of Sudan, Africa's largest country.

"We are running a race against time. The rainy season and the 'hunger gap' are approaching fast, making our relief operations more difficult," Annan said in a speech at African Union (AU) headquarters in Addis Ababa.

"If violence and fear prevent the people of Darfur from planting and growing crops next year, then millions will have to be sustained by an epic relief effort which will stretch international capacity to the maximum."

How many months have you had to do something about it already you twat? Now of course the "rich nations" will be at fault for not coughing up enough dosh, while the UN gets to send useful-as-tits-on-a-bull special advisory teams to establish that in fact, yes, those people are all dead oh the horror oh the horror Halliburton!

Why don't they just ask the US to swing a motorised division round the corner from Iraq and clean the bastards out? They could root out all the other vermin on the way. Oh wait, the US military showed the UN up in a major way during the tsunami so we can't have them doing it again.

Want your nuts in a blender?

Who can resist pointless personality tests? Via NZ Pundit (Via David Farrar) I find that my Star Wars personality is...


Somewhat unexpected... At least I'm not a lame-ass Jedi or a fricking Ewok I guess!

Gulag on the Göta älv

Even Sweden is getting into the hand-wringing over the most recent Amnesty International report. Apparently there are death camps all over Sweden, forcing people to mine meatballs while blaring Dancing Queen over loud speakers all day and night.

When is someone going to call the bluff of these dodgy organisations, hand over all the terrorists and assorted unsavouries and let them sort them out as they see fit?

Actually, that'd be really fun to watch.

UPDATE.
RJ Rummel has the following to say about AI:

That's a crazy morality. But it is the morality of AI and many such groups, and the morality that few are willing to speak out against.

Can you handle the truth?

Want to know the truth in the Star Wars universe, what Lucas is keeping from you? The Rottweiler has a two part special detailing the cover-up being perpetrated, the tissue of lies and deceit being peddled as the truth. Through thoughtful and rational analysis of the six movies they show you what really happened.

Yes, these damnable Jedi were guardians of the Old Republic, and the Old Republic was a backwards cesspit of crime, corruption, kickbacks, and simmering grievances, and had been for thousands of years. The Jedi maintained the status quo, and maintained their position at the apex of the pyramid by decapitating all rivals, and that's just one of their many sins. They were more than just the guardians; they were the locus of the rot that was the Republic. They were insular, guarded, and reactionary; always digging up obscure thousand-year-old precedents and legends like some sweat stained Wahabist scholar. They were the force that kept the Republic from evolving. They were the enforcers of continued dysfunction, the self-styled protectors of virtue and preventers of vice. They were the rotting fish in the marketplace of ideas.

They'd so divorced themselves from real feelings, from rage, from lust, from joy, from love, that they no longer understood what made people tick. All they had were ancient screeds blasting forth about how people should tick, how things should work, the revealed "truth". They were like post-collapse communists running back to Marx for insight on software prices, or Imams searching the Koran for advice on JDAMs. If it walks like a dumbass, squawks like a dumbass, and talks like a dumbass, it's a Jedi. Lucas could've given them poofy turbans to go with their robes, but I guess it would've hit too uncomfortably close to the truth.

It only gets better, with analyses of the major players.

Political pop

While cruising the channels last night I came across a program called something like "The story of pop and politics". I say something like, because it was titled in Swedish but apparently a German production so who knows how the German->Swedish->English Chinese-whispers thing went.

Anyway. It was about "pop" and politics, here pop apparently broadly meaning music that the German producers liked to link to politics. Now it was fine for potted histories of such things as punk, hip-hop and reggae. But the politics? Ah, well it seemed on the surface what you'd expect. All the usual people out to make a difference through their music, giving voice to the oppressed or whatever, etc etc. On some reflection it was much less than that.

For one thing, it was very focussed on two or three narrow streams. One, the "folk" protest type movement of the Vietnam era. Two, punk and its varieties. Three, "black American" music.

This immediately gives it a heavily American flavour, apart from the punk thing which mainly focussed on Britain. This I suspect is due to the producers being German and what they view as political music in Germany, at least since the Second World War. One useful notion that was reinforced is, yes, German hip-hop is atrocious.

So we had various well known faces scrolling past, from Bob Marley, to Dylan, to Ice T and many more. The immediate impression was, why are these people all so vacuous in their beliefs? I mean, Springsteen was on there and basically couldn't form a coherent thought into a sentence about anything, let alone anything political. No wonder he was such a failure as a campaign aid in the last US presidential elections. Then we had Ice T in his earlier days blithering on about free speech and how it was good but that he couldn't say everything he liked so really the constitution was not all it was cracked up to be. Somehow blithely missing the point he was on TV saying exactly what he pleased and that congress was passing no laws to stifle him. There were a variety of others in a similar vein.

Then there were what one might call the pasty white guys. For some reason these were all old white guys, I suspect music producers or aging former movers-n-shakers (and Martin Sheen for christ sake, sitting on a park bench holding a pair of spectacles and looking concerned, or perhaps constipated, as he pontificated about something being lost from the 60s. I think he may have lost his stash or something equally tragic). They had nothing but positive statements about everything to do with every style of music and every artist. The dribble about hip-hop was the most egregious. Without a doubt the music gave voice to people who wanted to be heard. But, is it really possible to say nothing at all negative about the subculture that grew around it? Is it really honest to say that every rapper has something valid and valuable to say? There was one, who I didn't recognise, who gave a speech about the kids not knowing anything about politics but knowing the music and that the music has to give them the information to go out and vote etc... but then the lyrics he was pushing were so blatantly biased in favour of one party (curiously, the party of Sen. Robert "KKK" Byrd, go figure) that it contradicted his desire to get the kids engaged. As always, beware of anyone "doing it for the kids". There was also one who dribbled on about institutional racism. The thrust of his argument was that now he could eat in restaurants without being turned away at the door, but people still didn't want him their. Who knows, maybe they don't, but it did sound like an effort to justify a continuing anger to sell to the kids.

Noticable by its absence was anything other than these narrow views of pontificating rappers, aging hippies and somewhat obscure music people. I guess it doesn't play well in Germany, but I suspect country music is/was at least as influential in American politics as hip-hop has been but for a less "noticable" crowd. Curiously there was nothing about the old blues guys, from whom so much is derived. But maybe that isn't so big in Germany either, or maybe it is out of their time-frame (ie not Vietnam onwards).

Some counter-pointing to the pervading attitude of all voices being valuable and positive would have been useful. I'm sure there was a lot of politically inspiring music in Germany through the 20s and 30s, articulating the desires of an oppressed people and giving lift to their desires. Not to mention the stirring numbers composed for the various workers revolutions. I'm sure they were valuable and positive voices then too, just not necessarily in the rear-view mirror of history.

The irony is that most of these people interviewed have been wildly successful. What are Ice Cube and Ice T doing now? Has Springsteen left to take up residence in his beloved Havana? Nope, the system they called for the demise of has given them more than they could have hoped for. Not without changing some along the way of course, but not by being torn down.

Which leads to the thought. When is the struggle over? There are still poor people, poor black people, drugs etc etc. But when does the "movement" become anachronistic and counter-productive? Clearly the protest-folk thing died a while ago. Antiwar music in general has become trite since Vietnam as people realise that sometimes blind opposition is not the answer. Hip-hop and its offspring is no longer what you could really call such a movement, being wildly successful commercially with celebrities galore and every kid in very neighbourhood listening to it. Just like the vacant singer from Coldplay railing against capitalism it all sounds so incredibly childish.

And of course the music quickly becomes dated and lacks an enduring quality, except for those that held it up as their message. Which is why I in general have an intense dislike for political music, the fact that listening to the lyrics just makes you want to say "what a bunch of posey wankers" even if the music itself is great. Musicians are very rarely skilled political thinkers.

Oh, and German hip-hop is *still* crap.

Not sympathetic but...

Ex-pat Kiwi produces film depicting 9/11 hijackers

Screening in New Zealand's inaugural Human Rights Film Festival is Hamburg Cell, a film about the men behind the September 11 terrorist attacks in the United States. Ex-pat New Zealander Finola Dwyer produced the film and talks to Maggie Tait about the experience.

Terrorists come in all shapes and sizes, expatriate New Zealander Finola Dwyer discovered as she worked on a drama based on the men behind the September 11 bombings.

OK. Having not seen the film or anything I'll reserve judgement. But...

Dwyer believes New Zealanders would be open to the film and be interested in learning about the terrorists' motivations - such as the Palestinian problem.

"I hope it will provoke people to think about the situation because these things don't just happen out of the blue. It's not because these people are all lunatics.

"There's something behind their actions you need to contemplate and in no way are we sympathetic to these terrorists at all but they don't go around blowing themselves and other people up just based on nothing."

How about...

Dwyer believes New Zealanders would be open to the film and be interested in learning about the einsatzgruppens motivations - such as the Jewish question.

"I hope it will provoke people to think about the situation because these things don't just happen out of the blue. It's not because these people are all lunatics.

"There's something behind their actions you need to contemplate and in no way are we sympathetic to these terrorists at all but they don't go around murdering people just based on nothing"

No? No, I didn't think so either. Few actions are "based on nothing", however, that does not make all "based on something" actions any less reprehensible or justifiable or in need of "understanding". The correct response to Nazi atrocities was stomping it out of existence. The correct response to Soviet domination was forcing its collapse. The correct response to terrorism is wiping out the rotten core of Islamofascism. I can "understand" why the Einsatzgruppen did what they did, just like I can "understand" why murderous "insurgents" do what they do... because they share the common thread of a fanatical insanity.

Sir Humphrey's

Thanks to Sir Humphrey's for the promo!

Connect the dots

Well, it seems that arty types aren't crash hot at spotting connections. Two headlines, very close to each other in time:

Jury unimpressed with Cannes films

As the credits rolled on the 11-day movie marathon, Emir Kusturica made no secret of his disappointment at the 21 films in the official selection.

"We had a selection where I think the average wasn't very high," he told a final news conference.

"I felt that most of the films were a little bit less good than I expected."

Sex is central to edgy new films in Cannes

Barry Pepper clips and smells his dirty toenails in The Three Burials of Melquiades Estrada before rising from the couch for a quick, animal-like sex session with his bored wife while she continues to watch television from the kitchen.

Perhaps the most controversial film is director Carlos Reygadas' Batalla en el Cielo (Battle in Heaven). It starts with a teen girl performing fellatio on an obese middle-aged Mexican who later has graphic sex with his even heavier wife.

So... lots of films which are little more than porno, with about as much interest. Funny, but the subject of the second article is not mentioned in the first.

Blowing their cover by giving Herr Blimp, el-fatso Moore, an award last year might have something to do with it as well.

Eurovision

Who can pass up comment on the Eurovision contest? That time when the many nations of Europe get together to share crap music and vote according to whom they dislike this year rather than on the best song ("best" being a relative term).

Sweden came 19th, the worst showing since 1992... the fact that this bit of information is even available to be found shows how seriously this is taken in Sweden. For some unexplicable reason. I think they can't let go of the hey-days of Abba and Carola. The key is to have an entry whose name sounds like a model of automobile, who wouldn't want to drive a Toyota Carola?

Greece won. But Sweden half claims a victory since Helena Paparizou comes from Gothenburg as well.

Here is what they are saying about it on the wire...

Ukraine, last year's winner, hosted the contest in what was widely seen as a means to showcase the country after last year's Orange Revolution protests.

When you have narrowly avoided falling under Eastern dominion again, what better way to celebrate and showcase the country than by holding a celebration of crap music?

"I am so happy that this finally came to Greece," Paparizou, an ethnic Greek raised in Sweden, told reporters.

Because, you know, Greek history is just a bit spare. I mean apart from giving birth to Western civilization and all that, what have they *really* achieved?

What's with the "ethnic" Greek?

A hot favourite before the contest, she paid tribute to last year's Ukrainian winner, Ruslana, whose frenetic Wild Dances was similar in using folk themes.

"Ruslana was an inspiration for other countries to do more traditional things," said Parizou, sporting a revealing short dress like virtually all the female competitors.

"Hot" seems to be the most important quality these days, judging by recent results. Revealing short skirts are traditional in most European countries it seems. Not that this is a bad thing, just curious.

President Viktor Yushchenko, who has pledged to take Ukraine closer to Europe after winning last year's bruising election, took to the stage to present an additional prize, a golden fern.

"This is a Ukrainian prize for the best European performer in favour of uniting Europe," the president said, embracing Paparizou on both cheeks.

"And this year's winner of the Gross Deutschland Panzer Division medal is..."

OK, cheap shot, but really you'd think Ukrainians would be more wary of European unity which has tended to shit all over them from all sides in recent years.

Embracing both cheeks??? I'm sure there are many people who'd like to... oh I see.

Some 120 million viewers tuned in to the broadcast, little different from past editions of varying talent, trite lyrics and flamboyant performances.

In other words, same crap as always but nice short skirts ladies!

Moldova, an outsider finishing close to the leaders, underscored folk music with a smiling elderly woman in traditional dress beating a drum.

Moldova not quite getting the point at this stage of the competition. Hot chicks and short skirts! Drums optional.

Many had hoped the contest would help change Ukraine's image after years of association with political scandals, corruption and the effects of the 1986 Chernobyl nuclear disaster.

But really, how much can one dodgy competition aid a tarnished image?

No, God, I Can't Believe It

From Democratic Peace...

In 1932, Stalin went to war against Ukrainian nationalism and resistance to collectivization. His weapon of choice was enforced famine. Stalin won. The "war dead?" About 5,000,000 Ukrainians who starved to death or died of associated diseases.

The death of one man is a tragedy, the death of 5 million need never be mentioned in the pursuit of the revolution.

Never mind the bollocks.

There comes a time when you just can't be fagged reading some sites. Two such have reached that point for me today.

One being the NZ Green party blog. Predictably leftist attitudes and rationalisations for things, but really this takes the cake...

Tax cuts for the rich

The Herald, guided by what it thinks Dr Cullen will do with the income tax thresholds today, is estimating that someone earning $70,000 a year will gain $22 a week by the changes, compared to $6 a week for someone earning $40,000 a year. This really is shameful for a social democratic government.

Let’s be clear: what Dr Cullen is doing amounts to cutting tax. If he raises the threshold for the top rate of tax from $60,000 to $70,000, he’s handing a tax cut to everyone who earns between those two amounts. And let’s also be clear: it will be the relatively wealthy who benefit most from these tax cuts.

The Labour government is FINALLY getting around to adjusting the tax bracket thresholds to account for inflation pushing peoples' salaries into higher brackets for no equivalent increase in spending power and what do they do? Whine that it is a tax cut! Shit a brick, but really! How can such small minded peons of the great envy machine be opposed to that? It is only fair, it makes your income effectively the same as it was "yesterday" before it was inflated. Of course it will "benefit" higher income earners more in absolute terms, but so fricking what? They paid more to start with and over-paid more tax due to inflation. It isn't rocket science, or even high school economics.

Oh and the petty hitjob they did on David Bellamy as well, along with their outstanding internet research to "disprove" his points.


Second on the list we have Hard(ly) News, which is about as devoid of news as you can be while still mentioning current events. Rather like CNN or BBC.

There are quite a number of reasons to dislike the expelled British Labour MP George Galloway, but it's hard not to admire the rhetorical flourish of his testimony this week to a US senate committee. He really did, as the Americans say, hand Senator Norm Coleman his ass.

More to the point, it would be hard to admire the rhetorical flourish of a fascist, racist, antisemtitic tosser who resorts to jew-baiting to get elected while being on the take from a fascist, racist, jew-baiting mass-murderer. But he got the better of a Republican senator (although not the Democrat Carl Levin who also interviewed him, strangely omitted here) so that makes him a good sport.


You might as well go read Kos or the Democratic Underground to get as much sense.

Plonk plonk plonk I say. There must be a couple of more worthy NZ sites worth visiting... off to find them.

God's rods

What do you do as a major Swedish daily when you have nothing to lead the world section on a slow news day? Recycle a New York Times article about US space warfare as something new and ominously threatening to the world.

Trouble is, it is pretty much a load of toss from the get go, as outlined at Defense Tech:

It's from this collection that the Times' Tim Weiner draws at least some of its examples of weapons in orbit. And I'm afraid Weiner may have confused the Air Force's equivalent of day dreams with full-blown, big-money Pentagon development efforts.

Yes, "Rods from God" is mentioned in the 2003 "Flight Plan." But the idea was debunked so long ago that's it's hard to believe the service is actually pursuing the Rods in any serious way. As Columbia University physics professor Richard Garwin noted, the Rods could only work if they orbited at low altitudes. And that means they "could only deliver one-ninth the destructive energy per gram as a conventional bomb."

(Hat tip Instapundit for the Defense Tech link)

I hate hippies!

Good fucking grief!

Coldplay irked by corporate pressures

NEW YORK: British rock band Coldplay played Manhattan yesterday to promote their highly anticipated new album and said they are uncomfortable that they sell so many albums they can move a major corporation's stock price.


EMI, the world's third-largest music company and owner of Coldplay's label Capitol, warned in February that profits would be lower because the band took longer than expected to finish their first studio album in three years.

But lead singer Chris Martin said in an interview, "I don't really care about EMI. I'm not really concerned about that.

"I think shareholders are the great evil of this modern world," Martin told Reuters before a concert at Manhattan's Beacon Theatre.

But however uncomfortable Martin is with what he called "the slavery that we are all under to shareholders," the reception to Coldplay's third studio album will be closely watched by EMI shareholders.

The band was formed in 1998 and hit big in the United States in 2002 with the release of A Rush of Blood to the Head.

Having sold 20 million albums worldwide to date, their June 7 album release and subsequent two-month tour of North America in August and September will play a large role in determining EMI's corporate profits.

Martin said the album was delayed because their first eight months of recording sessions produced songs that lacked the "spark" of such earlier hits as Yellow, Clocks and The Scientist.

Jesus! What a whiny little wanker!
If the talentless tosser is so abhorred by companies and shareholders then why the fuck is he signed to a major label??? What exactly is he promoting his music for? If he hates it so much, stick it on the internet and let people get it for free and cut out those evvvviiiilllll shareholders. But of course he won't do that, he is an archetypal leftist entertainer. "I hate capitalism, I hate shareholders, I hate money, but I love my jetset lifestyle!"

Hint to the wet little twat... grow the fuck up! Stop the faux socialism and admit you like making the cash, which also employs the people who do the production work for the drivel you turn out as well as paying a dividend to the people willing to take the risk of investing in the label so you can distribute the drivel far and wide. How many people do you think would listen to the masturbatory crap you churn out if there weren't a few punters willing to take a bet?

OK, rant off.

Little-known famous event of WW1

'Christmas' comes in May for European film industry

CANNES: An emotional film based on a true story about a Christmas truce that brought German, French, and British soldiers out of their World War One trenches made its multi-lingual world premiere at Cannes.

But unlike so many European co-productions before it that were lost in translation and disparaged as "Euro-pudding" flops, Joyeux Noel (Merry Christmas) takes a little-known story of a 1914 fraternisation of enemies and makes it an ode for peace.

Little known story??? I thought this was one of the best known events from the First World War! Maybe to the twits of the film industry it was little known I guess, but somehow this countryboy from small-town New Zealand knew of it as a kid. Go figure.

Details of what exactly happened along the front were long sketchy or little known in many countries because there was hardly any recorded official evidence of what was surely an embarrassment for military leaders in the warring nations.

Again, is it really that unknown? And was it an embarrasment to the military then? Truces are hardly unknown in wartime after all and it has hardly been covered up.

The book's author Michael Juergs told Reuters in 2003: "If there had been live television at the time and people had seen pictures of this truce, it would have been the end of the war."

What? The deaths of millions wasn't enough to stop it until 1918 when Germany was forced to defeat, yet live TV of a singular event would have halted it all??? After all, live TV of other wars has stopped wars hasn't it? Well, OK maybe Vietnam but that was a concerted effort by media with far from noble intentions. Colour me cynical but.

It's uncertain how it began, but many accounts – and Carion's film – trace the start to Germans singing Silent Night in their trenches adorned with candle-lit trees on Christmas Eve. In the film that was followed by applause and a bagpipe encore from a trench with Scottish soldiers nearby.

Soldiers from the two sides emerge from their trenches after Germans shouted: "We not shoot, you not shoot," and shake hands. Some accounts say the truce began along a short stretch near Ypres and spread rapidly.

"They all share the same longings when they come out of the trenches to shake hands," said German actor Benno Fuermann, who plays an opera singer turned soldier. "It an important film for Europe because it shows what we can do, but also for humanity."

So let me get this straight. You have this wonderful event in the midst of chaos where the lads lay down their guns for a few hours for a bit of a party, then afterwards it's back to a few more years of slaughter, followed by a couple of decades of general chaos with civil war and revolution left, right and centre over the continent followed by the conflagration of the Second World War which unleashed the depravities of Nazism and Communism on the world which were to dominate well towards the turn of the century. Uh huh, one little event like that looks like, well, a slight aberration in the whole scheme of the century really.

Don't get me wrong. It would have been wonderful for those troops to have had the party and thought better things for a while. But let's not kid anyone here, it can't be turned into some wonderful metaphor of the European condition. But it is at least free from shallow Amerika bashing, since the peace loving continentals managed to start the whole thing by themselves.

Still, it does bring to mind that song about Snoopy and the Baron... which seems to be inspired by these events (little known as they are).

SSU lied. People left.

The Swedish Social Democratic party youth league (SSU) has lost a third of its members. You see, when you inflate your membership roll to include people who didn't renew memberships or just plain left the league, all to gain more state funding, the "members" don't like it much.

The SSU was forced to send out letters to the entire membership asking if they wanted to remain in the league. Over 9000 of 29171 said "screw you and the horse you rode in on, hippy", or words to that effect in Swedish.

"That so many have now chosen to leave the SSU means that there have been faults in the handling of memberships," says the SSU's secretary Sara Heelge Vikmång in a press release.

No shit Sherlock.

I say, remove state sponsorship of political party youth wings, make the buggars work for donations, mow lawns for pocket money, or whatever.

"Horrible windmills" = "tourist attraction"

'Windy hole' view of Palmerston North blamed on turbines

Supporters of the Tararua 3 wind farm extensions point to tourism as a positive spin-off to having windmills in the area - but opponents suggest the opposite.

Fitzherbert East Road resident Eddy Fischer said wind farm developments are doing a lot of harm to national perception of Palmerston North and Manawatu. A talkback radio survey about three months ago asked listeners to name the worst place to live, Mr Fischer said.

"Palmerston North gained the most votes by an overwhelming margin."

The city was described as a "windy hole" even by people who haven't visited, and callers were asking: "Why would anyone want to live there? It must blow all day there, why else would they put all those horrible windmills on their hills?"

Thanks to wind turbines Palmerston North is seen as a windy, unattractive place, Mr Fischer said.

The last submitters gave evidence against the proposed development at the fifth day of the resource consent hearing yesterday.

Farmer David Argyle said he regularly saw native falcon or karearea in the sky above his farm.

When he attended TrustPower's open day in April he was disappointed that when he mentioned the karearea, their existence was quietly doubted

"They are certainly in these ranges at present and as the Aokautere Forest is milled, more karearea can be expected to inhabit the area," Mr Argyle told the hearing.

Turbines kill birds everywhere else they exist - just because bird strikes are not counted in New Zealand doesn't mean turbines don't kill birds, he said.

"Our natives birds have been decimated by thoughtlessly introduced incompatible species. Here we are introducing another: -the turbines."

The hearing concludes tomorrow.

Palmerston North is a city in the lower North Island of NZ. It is quite windy.

Now, regarding tourism... would YOU visit a city just because the skyline is covered in turbines? No, didn't think so. But "tourism" is the catch-all rationale for most any project in NZ if you want to push it ahead against opposition.

And where are the greenies defending the native falcon? Do turbines trump birds if the dead birds aren't counted?

Maybe someone should advocate the falcons as a tourist attraction and complete the triangle. Then let's see which side the eco-blitherers come down on.

"Conservatives won and they can't stand it"

Jim Peron at the Institute for Liberal Values contends that the push for gay marriage is a sign that the Right/conservatives have finally won the last battle in the sexual revolution without even knowing it.

The Right won and they don't even realise it. The radical Left understands it which is why they condemn marriage or civil unions as a sell-out. It is not a sell-out. It is the realisation that the alternative view lead to disasters. It killed people and it made those who survived unhappy.

An interesting idea with a lot to be said for it.

A great essay

A most remarkable essay through Chapomatic (via The Ten O'Clock Scholar) by Professor Gaddis, a rather fiery Bush critic.

A few cherry-picked paragraphs...

So please be advised of the following: “This lecture will contain material that some may consider to be complimentary toward the Bush administration. It may, therefore, strike some listeners as unsettling, naïve, partisan, propagandistic, chauvinistic, muddle-headed, or paid for by Karl Rove.”

I’d been told, first of all, that the President never read anything beyond his daily press and intelligence digests. So it was certainly a surprise to find that he had read my book, and that he had done so ahead of his own staff. We’ve since learned, of course, that the President has a pretty eclectic reading list, ranging from Nathan Sharansky and Ron Chernow to Tom Wolfe.

That’s why I found it so frustrating, at noon on Inauguration Day, to find that nobody in the Yale History Department had the speech on as it was being delivered. All the television sets were unplugged, and of course my generation of professors doesn’t know, on short notice, how to plug them in program them. So I missed it. The speech just wasn’t considered important.

This historian is also leaning, somewhat more controversially, in the direction of acknowledging that George W. Bush is likely to be remembered as the first great grand strategist of the 21st century. He is, however, somewhat ahead of most of his faculty colleagues and many – though by no means all – of his students in this respect.

I particularly like that one about the Yale history professors not even watching it. History professors... living through a turbulent period of massive realignments of global power and changing of the old order... not even considering the second inaugural speech important! Hah!

The whole essay is great, there are points where disagreement may be had with the author but in general it is a clear and rational analysis of why, just perhaps, Bush may actually be on the right track. It certainly ought to be read and digested by any of the moronic Blood-for-oil or Halliburton! crowd, but I doubt it will. Still, a good read.

Newsweek lied, People died. TT spins.

Well the blogosphere is alive with Flushgate, or how Newsweek jumped the gun and got a few people killed (but it's OK, because it wasn't in Iraq or done by the USMC). So how is the retraction of the whole load of lies dealt with by TT, the Swedish news service? Let's see over at Göteborgs-Posten...

Newsweek denies Koran desecration

KABUL

After harsh criticism from the White House, Newsweek has now backed down and denies information that insulting of the Koran took place in the Guantanamo prison on Cuba.

"With respect yo what we now know, we deny [retract?] our original article claiming that an internal military investigation revealed insulting of the Koran at Guantanamo," write cheif editor Mark Whitaker in a one-line release. Yesterday the newspaper made an apology after it was admitted that facts in the article were untrue.

"I find it notable that Newsweek admits that the facts were wrong and that they refuse to publish a retraction," said White House spokesman Scott McClellan earlier on Monday. In the controversy that followed Newsweek's article on May 9 around the Muslim world at least 16 people have died and over 100 been wounded.

Sunday's notice that the details were perhaps not correct were greeted with scepticism.

"We won't be deceived by this," commented Mullah Sadullah Abu Aman in the North Afghan province of Badakhshan.
"This is a decision which the USA has taken to save itself... it is understandable even to normal farmers who can't read."
Mullah Aman leads the Afghan Koran teachers who on Sunday threatened the USA with holy war - Jihad - in three days if the military leaders who it is claimed have violated the Koran are not handed over. The Jihad threat stands, they said earlier today.

A number of the British who were detained in Guantanamo on Cuba came forward on Monday and said that they had seen many times how the guards put copies of the Koran in the toilet and threw the holy book on the ground.

One of the previous prisoners, Moazzam Begg, said that it is ridiculous of Newsweek to retract the article.

No mention that the article was in fact based on (now withdrawn) claims from a sole source, or the fact that the paper agreed during the 2004 presidential campaign to withhold any information damaging to Kerry. The spin above seems to be that the story would stand, except for pressure from the White House. Somehow the threat of Jihad from a bunch of Afghan whackjobs is also relevant to the whether or not the story is true (even the "normal farmers" who can't read can see it is true). Also, a bunch of former inmates has come forward to say they saw it, honest guv, but somehow didn't feel like reporting it earlier.


Original:

Newsweek dementerar Koranskändning

KABUL

Efter hård kritik från Vita huset backar nu tidskriften Newsweek och dementerar uppgifterna om att skymfning av Koranen ska ha ägt rum i USA:s fångläger Guantanamo på Kuba.

- Med utgångspunkt för vad vi nu vet dementerar vi vår ursprungliga artikel om att en intern militär utredning avslöjat skymfning av Koranen vid Guantanamo, skrev chefredaktören Mark Whitaker i ett enradigt uttalande.
I går bad tidskriften om ursäkt sedan man erkänt att visa faktauppgifter i artikeln inte stämde.

- Jag finner det märkligt att Newsweek medger att faktauppgifterna var fel och att de vägrar publicera en dementi, sade Vita husets talesman Scott McClellan tidigare under måndagen.
I de kravaller som följt på Newsweeks artikel den 9 maj runtom i den muslimska världen har minst 16 människor dödats och över 100 skadats.

Söndagens besked om att uppgifterna kanske inte var korrekta mottogs med skepsis.

- Vi låter oss inte luras av detta, kommenterade mulla Sadullah Abu Aman i den nordafghanska provinsen Badakhshan.
- Det här är ett beslut som USA har tagit för att rädda sig självt. . . det begriper till och med vanliga bönder som inte kan läsa.
Mulla Aman ledde de afghanska koranlärda som i söndags hotade USA med heligt krig - jihad - om tre dagar om de militära förhörsledare som påstås ha kränkt Koranen inte lämnas ut. Jihad-hotet står fast, sade tidigare i dag.

Flera britter som suttit i Guantanamolägret på Kuba trädde på måndagen fram och sade att de själva sett flera gånger hur vakter lagt in exemplar av Koranen på toaletterna och slängt den heliga boken på marken.

En av de före detta fångarna, Moazzam Begg, sade att det är löjligt av Newsweek att dra tillbaka sina uppgifter.

Europe unites in hatred of French

A survey done by the Telegraph has humorous results, if you aren't French (Telegraph | News | Europe unites in hatred of French)

"Interviewees were simply asked an open question - what five adjectives sum up the French," said Olivier Clodong, one of the study's two authors and a professor of social and political communication at the Ecole Superieur de Commerce, in Paris. "The answers were overwhelmingly negative."

The results?

Interestingly, the Swedes consider them "disobedient, immoral, disorganised, neo-colonialist and dirty".

Disobedient and disorganised, perhaps the ultimate in Swedish disdain.

Perhaps unsurprisingly, Britons described them as "chauvinists, stubborn, nannied and humourless". However, the French may be more shocked by the views of other nations.

For the Germans, the French are "pretentious, offhand and frivolous". The Dutch describe them as "agitated, talkative and shallow." The Spanish see them as "cold, distant, vain and impolite" and the Portuguese as "preaching". In Italy they comes across as "snobs, arrogant, flesh-loving, righteous and self-obsessed" and the Greeks find them "not very with it, egocentric bons vivants".

Ah the joys of European unity! The survey didn't even ask for negative views, just five adjectives of any flavour.

The only thing I find strange is no mention of god-awful ugly cars.

(Hat Tip, Q and O)

All the same

Not Sweden or NZ related, but interesting none-the-less.

The Opinion Journal has a piece that shows how little there is that is new under the sun. It concludes with:

If some liberals are now afraid that certain Christian fundamentalists will reintroduce new forms of intolerance and excessive religious zeal into American political life, perhaps we should concede the possibility that they know what they're talking about. But they might also meditate on the current election and why there has been an apparent rightward shift in political sentiment in the U.S. It could be that a great many voters have taken a good look at the fundamentalists on the religious right and the fundamentalists on the political left and made up their own minds about which pose the greater threat to their own private and public values.

The year it was written? 1984.

Me, as a libertarian sort with strong atheist tendencies, I find the "fundamentalists on the political left" far more terrifying than the "fundamentalists on the religious right". For many and varied reasons, but I just do.

Women for oil, or why no one wants the Greens

The Swedish Green party has, in the space of a month, dropped 1.4 points to 4.2%, just above the 4% threshold for getting into parliament under the Swedish system. Naturally this causes concern, particularly for a party that is officially aiming at 10% in the coming elections...

Mp har olika förklaringar till raset
Green party has different explanations for decline.

Explanations in the article fall into two camps:

1. The launch of the new "party", Feminist Initiative, has drawn supporters away even with the Greens having just held their conference under the title "With feminism in focus". Plausible, although it is difficult to imagine such a huge hit on support coming from a very narrow-minded personality band-wagon such as the Feminist Initiative.

2. High oil prices. Apparently some in the Green party consider that continued elevated oil prices are being blamed on the Swedish Green party. Somewhat more of a stretch and not subscribed to by all members of the party.


The first reason has some plausibility, the second not much since it is hard to see that present Green voters would really mind the continued price of oil. Both seem to be missing possible deeper issues, with the continuing growth in support for the liberal alliance and the drop in support for the Social Democrat coalition government. Recent months have seen a series of hits on the credibility of the leftist parties, ranging from Göran Persson's dubious honorary doctorate, the Left party's ongoing debate about its communist past, the bizarre formation of the Feminist Initiative which can't quite make up its mind about being a political party or how they disguise what is a thinly veiled vehicle for one or two personalities who crave media attention. Bizarre outbursts from various members of government, such as Margot Wallströms recent claim that opposition to the EU will lead to new concentration camps, hardly helps matters. Growing scepticism with green policies world-wide seems to be impacting more than the local party would like to admit and is in some ways analagous to the Democrats in the US trying to understand why certain people don't want to vote for them.

Despite their claims of unity, the leftist parties are highly fractious and far less amenable to harmonious alliances than are the liberal parties. Some would see something dark in this about those on the right, but it is a worldwide phenomenon and is indicative of the narrowly-focused and oppositional mindset of most current leftist parties. It wasn't always that way but today most have morphed into highly factionated parties that appeal to very few. Not that it is a bad thing, quite the contrary and hopefully it will continue and erode the power of the loonier elements on that side of the political spectrum.

Education, it's about the lightbulbs

Here is a NZ headline that, if the sexes were reversed, would have people screaming bloody murder...

Girls better in every subject

However, reading the article:

Girls-only schools dominate all NCEA levels. Their pass rates are far above the national average.

...

NZQA has warned that trying to compare schools with one another was dangerous territory under NCEA. Schools did not follow the same programme of study any more.

Now, the first sentence appears at the beginning of the article, while the qualifier appears as the second to last sentence of the article. Thus, the new system has made comparison between schools dubious, with inconsistent programmes of study. Note also the the first sentence is PASS RATES are above national average... not grades per se, since these are no longer comparable. So really, the article is about nothing. Brilliant.

There are other bits and pieces

Boys' literacy results were also a concern, only 65 per cent of male pupils passing level one literacy credits compared with 75 per cent of girls.

Wellington High School principal Prue Kelly was not surprised.

English was particularly geared toward girls and many of the topics did not interest boys, she said.

So, the curriculum is geared toward girls in the areas where boys are lacking... not rocket science to figure out the connection. No doubt if the English curriculum was aimed at boys then the girls would be lacking. Hardly equality of opportunity so why the wonder?

Education Ministry learning policy manager Steve Benson said the gender gap was a big issue. A research project was under way to address boys' under-achievement but there were no easy answers.

"One of the most bizarre suggestions I've heard for getting boys to achieve was to change the brightness of the lightbulbs in classrooms."

Others had suggested the problem lay behind typical Kiwi attitudes to masculinity, with boys more interested in rugby than study.

It was hoped research would provide practical changes for schools to implement as soon as possible.

Wellington College principal Roger Moses was concerned about boys' low achievement. The NCEA system did not work as well for boys as it did for girls, he said.

"Girls tend to be more organised. The old system with one big exam at the end seemed to suit boys' learning styles more. But that's not an excuse – we do need to look at ways to help boys' learning."

Change the lightbulbs. Brilliant. Boys attitudes? Well, they used to do well at school AND play rugby so what has changed? But the NCES system DOES NOT WORK AS WELL FOR BOYS, so what genius designed it with such an obvious bias against half the population then? Frankly, how can a single end-of-year exam be biased against organised students??? I smell a red herring.

Why doesn't someone stand up and say that the geniuses who designed the new system failed miserably, making schools incomparable to each other and disadvantaging a signifcant fraction (ie half) of the population forced to sit through it?

So, there is a problem with boys results, but we aren't sure because schools can't be compared, but we know the system is biased against boys anyway, but we will change the lightbulbs and that will fix everything. I think my kids are going to be home schooled.

The final sentence...

Spokeswoman Heather Church said parents should read schools' Education Review Office reports when choosing a school for their children.

As this keeps up, watch for school choice to disappear in a couple of years.

Coordinating unemployment

You know, it is hard not to be too cynical sometimes when politicians have articles published in major newspapers. Take today in GP where Lena Hallengren, the Social Democrat government's Youth Minister, describes youth unemployment as a serious problem needing urgent attention because of later consequences. The unemployment rate is, somewhat naturally, higher among the 18-24 year-olds than the total market. OK, good and well, unemployment is a root of many problems. But, what does the minister in her wisdom propose?

A "national coordinator" to find ways to make it easier for youths to get into the workforce. Along with a 10-point plan including all sorts of wonderful state sponsored measures like places for long-term unemployed youths (?) at schools, special "individual handling plans" at the reknowned (for being totally useless) unemployment service, job seeking training etc etc.

Glaring by its omission is any idea of GROWING THE ECONOMY so that employers will start demanding more employees. The only suggestion that comes near it in the 10-points is "encouraging more youth to start their own companies", like that is going to solve much... Sure, companies need starting but there are few 20-year olds who want to start their own right off the bat. Even this suggestion is relegated to failure by planning a three-year course in entrpreneurship... the government teaching innovation, what next?

The simple fact is that it is expensive to hire people, the economy is hindered by over-regulation and it is not in companies interests to take the risk of employing new people. Of course the inexperienced are the first to lose out in a tight market.

Of course, encouraging businesses to grow is not part of the Social Democratic plan. If the government isn't responsible for it then it can't be good. It is axiomatic. It is also moronic.

One Swedish commentator gets it

A surprisingly frank article about Swedish attitudes to terrorism was in GP yesterday. Anders Kilner wonders why his countrymen have been so complacent about the whole business of terrorism over the last twenty years, despite serious acts perpetrated in Sweden. Refreshingly he attempts no pseudo-intellectual moralising in attempting to analyse it to be the fault of the West. To be fair the US continually had similar warnings prior to 2001, but in contrast has shifted to a course of positive action rather than attempting to appease those who would destroy them. There is something of a "can't happen here" attitude that is pervasive in these parts, which leads to the conclusion that people here have not really woken to the threat. One can only hope like hell that they/we don't pay dearly for such an attitude, but history tends to suggest that hope and deliberate naivety are seldom rewarded.

I thought it was worth translating the whole thing, but I don't think I did it much justice. The Swedish version is below.

Was al-Qaida the first to wake us?

It is 30 years since the drama in Stockholm which ended with two diplomats murdered and a terrorist killed in an explosion, says GP's Anders Kilner.

When the West German embassy in Stockholm was occupied by six young terrorists from the Red Army Faction it was almost unreal. This group and others like it had long been hunted in West Germany. Many leaders had been caught, among others Andreas Baader, Ulrike Meinhof and Gudrun Ensslin. By taking hostages and threatening to murder them the occupiers were trying to get these three and over twenty others released. In the background were ideas with their origin in the Second World War, the Nazi regime and complaints against the previous generation for weakness then and later.

The Baader-Meinhof gang belonged to the extremists who put into practise their political theories. They robbed banks, conducted bomb attacks, took hostages and murdered. The core received support from many sympathisors.

It is 30 years since the drama in Stockholm which ended the terrorists' explosive packs exploding and killing one of them. Another was severely wounded and the others and many embassy personnel were injured.

By then two diplomats had been murdered to show that they meant business. The governments in Sweden and Germany had previously caved in. Now they did not. One badly wounded terrorist was among those who - after a legal decision by the government which was not uncomplicated but fast - shortly afterwards was transferred to West Germany. He dies there after a few days.

A couple of years later the police caught several people with the same background, among them many Swedes, who planned to take Justice Minister Anna-Greta Leijon hostage as revenge and to force the release of imprisoned terrorists. The result of the terroist campaign was the death of many and for some of the guilty, a long prison sentence. Dan Hansén and Jens Nordqvist have in "Kommando Holger Meins" separated their thoughts and actions.

The theories are known, also among the the extreme left in Sweden. They claim that citizens under the disguise of democracy are manipulated by an elite which rules the state. These rulers are prepared to use the apparatus of violence of police power against the people if their power is threatened. Meinhof and others wanted to provoke open violence so that the people would understand.

That the communist regimes in Eastern Europe were in reality governed in just this manner through violence and repression (Hungary 1956, Czechoslovakia 1968) was ignored or explained away by the extreme left. Swedish communists had good company there. In a blend of deception and naivety they praised the dictators for being democratic while the democrats were accused of manipulating the people. Such ideas still sprout now.

The other day Justice Minister Thomas Bodström said in Dagens Nyheter that we in the 1980s (not long after the embassy drama of 1975) and the 1990s a little naively didn't want to think that people who were involved in terrorist activities found their way to Sweden. He was interviewed about the criticism of the government for the decision in December 2001 to quickly send home two Egyptian citizens who were suspected terrorists, despite the risk of torture.

Did we not understand the danger of terrorists in Sweden before the attacks on the World Trade Center three months earlier, in September 2001? They weren't so new and remote.

Vaknade vi först genom al-Qaida?

Det är 30 år sedan dramat i Stockholm som slutade med att två av diplomater mördades och en terrorist sprängdes till döds, konstaterar GP:s Anders Kilner.

När den västtyska ambassaden i Stockholm ockuperades av sex unga terrorister i Röda Armé-fraktionen föreföll det nästan overkligt. Samma och liknande grupper hade länge jagats i Västtyskland. Många tongivande hade gripits, bland dem Andreas Baader, Ulrike Meinhof och Gudrun Ensslin. Genom att ta gisslan och hota att mörda den försökte ockupanterna få dessa tre och över tjugo andra frisläppta. I bakgrunden fanns tankegods med ursprung i andra världskriget, naziregimen och anklagelser mot föräldragenerationen för svek då och senare.

Baader-Meinhofligan hörde till de extremister som föresatt sig att omsätta sina politiska teorier i praktisk handling. De rånade banker, utförde bombattentat, tog gisslan och mördade. Kärnan fick stöd av långt fler sympatisörer.

Det är 30 år sedan dramat i Stockholm som slutade med att terroristernas sprängladdningar exploderade och dödade en av dem. En annan skadades svårt och de övriga och flera i ambassadpersonalen blev skadade.

Då hade två av diplomaterna mördats för att visa att man menade allvar. Regeringarna i Sverige och Västtyskland hade i liknande fall tidigare gett vika. Nu gjorde man inte det. En svårt skadad terrorist var bland dem som - efter ett juridiskt inte okomplicerat men snabbt regeringsbeslut - kort efteråt transporterades till Västtyskland. Där avled han efter några dagar.

Ett par år senare grep polisen några personer med samma bakgrund, bland dem flera svenskar, som planerade att ta justitieminister Anna-Greta Leijon som gisslan för att hämnas och få fängslade terrorister frigivna. Facit av terrorkampanjen blev många döda och för en del skyldiga långa fängelsestraff. Dan Hansén och Jens Nordqvist har i Kommando Holger Meins (Ordfront) skildrat deras tankevärld och verksamhet.

Teorierna känns igen, också hos den extrema vänstern i Sverige. De går ut på att medborgarna under sken av demokrati manipuleras av en elit som behärskar staten. Dessa styrande är beredda att sätta in sin våldsapparat polismakten mot folket om deras makt hotas. Meinhof med flera ville provocera fram detta öppna våld för att folket skulle förstå.

Att de kommunistiska regimerna i Östeuropa i verkligheten utövade just detta slags förtryck och våld (Ungern 1956, Tjeckoslovakien 1968) negligerades eller bortförklarades av extremvänstern. Svenska kommunister hade goda förbindelser där. I en blandning av förljugenhet och naivitet hyllades diktaturerna för att vara demokratiska medan demokratierna anklagades för manipulativt folkförtryck. Idéerna odlas fortfarande.

Häromdagen ansåg justitieminister Thomas Bodström i DN att vi på 80-talet (inte långt efter ambassaddramat 1975) och 90-talet lite naivt inte ville tänka tanken att personer som var inblandade i terrorverksamhet sökte sig till Sverige. Han intervjuades om kritiken mot regeringen för beslutet i december 2001 att snabbt skicka hem två terroristmisstänkta egyptiska medborgare, mot det brutala tillvägagångssättet och trots risk för tortyr.

Förstod vi inte faran för terrorister i Sverige förrän vid dådet mot World Trade Center tre månader tidigare, i september 2001? Så ny och fjärran var den inte.

The Freedomist Network

My thanks to Mr Rummel at the Freedomist Network for inviting this blog into the network. There is a lot of good reading there as well as at Democratic Peace.

Saint Gorby the Wise

I missed this in GP a few days ago

Början på ett nytt sorts krig

"The beginning of a new sort of war"

Even though it is by Ms Mattson, usually a reliable anti-USA in any form possible, it begins OK and gives a simple summary of the start of the Cold War. Unfortunately at the end she cannot help herself...

Det var Sovjet-ledaren Michail Gorbatjov som innebar den stora förändringen. Han lanserade begreppen "glasnost" och "perestrojka", öppenhet och förändring. Han släppte taget om öststaterna och inledde omdaningen av Sovjetunionen. Han tog initiativet till en fullständig skrotning av medeldistansvapnen sedan den amerikanske presidenten Ronald Reagan lanserat en ny generation kärnvapen, ett slags "Stjärnornas krig".
Utan det nya ledningen i Sovjet, med Michail Gorbatjov i spetsen, hade inte föränd-ringens vind svept över det blockerade Europa. Tidigare Sovjet-ledare slog brutalt ned försök till frigörelse bland annat i Ungern. En gammaldags Sovjetledare hade inte hanterat Reagan som Gorbatjov gjorde.

It was The Soviet leader Mikael Gorbachev who brought about the great change. He began "glasnost" and "perestroika", openness and change. He loosened the hold on the Eastern states and the Soviet Union. He took the initiative on the scrapping of medium range [nuclear] weapons while the American president Ronald Reagan opened a new generation of nuclear weapons, a sort of "Star Wars". Without the new leadership in the Soviet Union, with Mikael Gorbachev in the lead, the winds of change would not have swept over the divided Europe. Earlier Soviet leaders brutally repressed attempts at freedom, in Hungary among others. An old fashioned Soviet leader wouldn't have handled Reagan as Gorbachev did.

Christ, where do you begin? "Handled Reagan"? The Swedish left have a terribly hard time giving Reagan any credit at all. Talk to virtually any Swede and you will almost invariably find the collapse of the Soviet Union and its empire ascribed to Gorbachev planning it. Half of them don't even realise the man was a communist and don't seem to wonder how he came to be the boss. Hint, it wasn't because he was nice and lovely and played with kittens.

The utterly simplistic analysis of Gorbachev magnanimously doing away with medium range weapons while Reagan introduced new nuclear weapons in a sort of "Star Wars"? Errr, Star Wars was the missile defence program, not new nuclear weapons. Somewhat ahead of its time but still enough to help convince the Soviets that they couldn't win by a nuclear first strike. Reagan's build up of the military was in large part necessitated by the woeful administration of Carter and the reprehensible policy of detente (we'll let you do what you like, murder who you will, just don't invade us please, pretty please). In an analysis of the European theatre you can't not include conventional forces, of which the Soviets had an overwhelming numerical superiority. It was the nuclear arsenal aimed at them and the Soviet Union that prevented an invasion of the West, there was never any chance of NATO invading the Soviet Union, they simply did not have the forces to do it. The MAD doctrine prevented the massive nuclear first strike as an option, frightening as it was. However, with run down conventional forces due to Jimmah Carter, NATO was left relying on tactical nuclear forces. Use of those in response to an invasion was far more likely, which in turn would have caused the Soviets to use theirs and that would likely lead to the use of strategic arsenals. Reagan needed to get rid of the tactical weapons, thus the negotiations in which they were removed by the Soviets in return for the NATO arsenal. Gorbachev absolutely did not unilaterally remove an entire class of Soviet weaponry. He would have been mad to do so. So why did Reagan install those new weapons? Well, they were of course needed to bridge the time before the new generations of American conventional weaponry were available to counter the Soviet numerical advantage. But also to have them available to trade in negotiations to remove the threat of escalation in a conventional land war. Far from escalating the arms race, Reagan reined it in by apparently sacrificing a range of weapons while the Soviets retained their numerical advantage.

It is amusing to watch the paroxysms of delight that the old tants go into here when Saint Gorby is mentioned, but where they get these ideas from I have no idea. Just remember that in all analysis, Reagan = bad, thus Gorby = good. Reagan = stupid warmonger, thus Gorby = brilliant pacifist. The rest follows by induction.

More misleading headlines

Here is a headline from GP:

Göteborgs-Posten: "Många döda i USA:s nya Irakoffensiv"

"Many dead in USA's new Iraq offensive"

If you read on expecting to see a litany of deaths of civilians and children you'd be left disappointed. The "many dead" are in fact found to be 75 "motståndsmän", or opposition men. No mention of any other fatalities than 8 allied soldiers of unspecified origin. Thus a large number of terrorists are dead for little loss of allied forces. In any other world than the bizarro reporting world this would be counted a success, or maybe an offensive against the enemy is supposed to be pulled off with no casualties on either side. Just like D-Day, where thousands of men waded ashore and the thousands facing them managed to have a bang-up fight but everyone went home at the end of the day.

Buried in the article are slight mentions that the battles are mainly against non-Iraqi irregulars and that many ex-Baathists have given up the fight. Now that would seem to be more notable than the desperate twisting of numbers to make a misleading headline.

The PC assault on private diversity - Institute for Liberal Values

Another good post from Jim Peron about the inanity of anti-discrimination laws, The PC assault on private diversity - Institute for Liberal Values

His remedy won't be to the liking of the proponents of such laws though...

Of course a truly multicultural society with real diversity requires markets, private property and social tolerance. Social tolerance means the right to freely associate as people wish including their right to not associate. When that is allowed to happen the miracle is that virtually all groups are catered to by businessmen or groups seeking them out. There is a growing number of people seeking to do good in ways which the clients or customers appreciate. You get real diversity through freedom.

Hollywood the arbiter of history?

Hot on the heels of the Vietnam 30th anniversary comes the 60th anniversary of VE day. Of course for those who never fought it is another good chance for a whinge about American culture.

Freden 1945: Så banaliseras Europas historieskrivning

Peace 1945: How Europe's history is made banal

The article is cheifly about how attention is focussed on the Western Front of the European fighting and how this devalues or erases the atrocities of the Eastern Front and the contribution of the Soviets to the Nazi defeat.

Den ena efter den andra storfilmen handlar om de amerikanska krigen i Stilla havet, Pearl Harbor och så vidare.

...

På senare tid har tyngdpunkten flyttats till Europa. Förintelsen har ägnats kanske 100 filmer, men också nya hjälteepos om den amerikanska insatsen för Europas befrielse i form av Band of brothers, som sprids på film och tv.


One after the other big film deals with the American war in the Pacific, Pearl Harbour and so forth.

...

In later times the focus has moved to Europe. The holocaust has contributed to about 100 films, but also new heroic episodes about the American contribution to Europe's liberation in the form of Band Of Brothers, which is spread on film and TV.

I'm sorry, but where is it written that American's making movies about war must write to a specific agenda? "Hollywood" is as free as any to make films they like, for the consumption of people who go to see them. It is hardly surprising that they make films more directly relevant to the experiences of the people who go to see them. After all, they are first made for the American market, not the left fringe of Swedish academia, and many families in America still have veterans alive today. It is hardly surprising at all is it now? And excuse me, but there are plenty of early war films about the European theatre, just like there are actual films about the Eastern Front (with Cross of Iron, Stalingrad, Enemy at the Gates springing to mind just now). Speaking of Enemy at the Gates, it is mentioned in the article but also that it was boycotted in Russia. So? There are lots of shit movies made.

The rest of the article goes on to detail the Eastern Front, highlighting the horrors inflicted by the Nazi death squads and the damage done to the Soviet Union. The question is asked why the Soviet defeat of the Nazis is not so heavily detailed in the West. One, the West had its own battles to fight with victory hardly a foregone conclusion. Two, the Soviet Union and Nazi Germany are rightly regarded as two sides of the same coin of terror (witness the antics of the European and American left prior to and then following the invasion of the Soviet Union, first admiration for Hitler then loathing). The alliance with Stalin was making the best of an extremely bad situation. How would the story change if Stalin had struck Germany prior to the invasion of Poland? Third, the West was engaged from the end of the war in the Cold War. The Western Armies immediately demobilised most of their strength in Europe at the end of the fighting, while the Soviets never did, maintaining massive armies along the new frontiers. It is hardly surprising that people were reluctant to glorify those who were facing them across the Iron Curtain and fighting proxy wars for decades against the Communists. Fourth, the Soviets were as bad as the Nazis in their actions, both in murdering their own and those in the countries they occupied and in sending countless Russians, Germans, East and Central Europeans to the labour camps. The only difference really was the lack of industrialisationi in the process. Not really the sort of thing that good movies are made of.

Anyone who learns history from "Hollywood" is doomed to be badly misinformed... crap films abound and who seriously believes that the events of movies such as Kingdom of Heaven, Enemy at the Gates or Pearl Harbour are accurate reflections of what actually happened? "Hollywood" is under no obligation to produce films in a balance according to some history professors tastes. After all, when will a Swedish film company make the blockbuster movie about Scandinavian volunteers to the Waffen SS?

There are plenty of good books about every front of the war, it only takes some effort to find them.

Finally, it seems that the Russians seem not to have learned from the horrors they suffered through with their headlong rush to let Putin assume the powers of a new Stalin.

I give this non-review -1 out of 5

A particularly vacant review of Kingdom of Heaven in Göteborgs Posten, which gave the film 3 out of 5. Funny, but after reading the whole review the reader is left none the wiser about whether or not the film is worth seeing. You know, usual comments about acting, technical merits, plot development etc etc are all conspicuous by their absence. The only thing one learns is that the reviewer, one Emma Engström, is air-headedly anti-American and ignorant of a significant swathe of history. Still, at least Vietnam wasn't mentioned. She must have been having an off day.

Tankeflödena mellan det medeltida Palestina och det moderna Amerika bidrar till att göra Ridley Scotts Kingdom of heaven till ett komplext och intressant filmbygge, tycker GP:s filmrecensent Emma Engström.

Connections between Middle-Ages Palestine and modern America contribute to Ridley Scott's Kingdom of Heaven being a complex and interesting film, thinks reviewer Emma Engström.

Oh lordy. Already with the America crap. Regarding his previous Blackhawk Down...

Hur skulle han balansera bilden av USA:s agerande i världen efter att ha gett den amerikanska militären och dess världssyn en öppen kanal rakt in i miljontals människors hjärnor?

How could he balance the picture of the USA's actions in the world after he gave the American military and its world-view an open channel straight into millions of peoples' brains?

Right... Blackhawk Down was pushing the American military world-view. It sounds like this bimbo didn't even watch that particular film. But on with the show...

Inte helt väntat gör han det genom att berätta om 1100-talets korståg i Jerusalem. Och visst finns de bekanta inslagen där i form av religiös fanatism och politisk turbulens.

Filmen har sin historiska bakgrund i den korta tid av fred som rådde mellan det andra och tredje av de västerländska korstågen in i det heliga landet (Palestina). Det kungarike som korstågsfararna hade upprättat i Jerusalem styrdes i harmoni med muslimerna och sultan Saladin.

Not totally unexpectedly he did it by telling of the 12th-century crusade in Jerusalem. And of course there are familiar themes in the form of religious fanaticism and political turbulence.

The film has its historical background in the short time of peace between the second and third Western-nation crusades in the holy land (Palestine). The kingdom which the crusaders had established in Jerusalem was ruled in harmony with the Muslims and the Sultan Saladin.

Got that? The specifically Western crusades in the holy land of Palestine. Funny, but if she is going to refer to it as the holy land then wouldn't (Israel) be a better expression? It is rather ironic that the left here like to accuse Israel of imperialism and then refer to the region as Palestine, as if legitimising the Roman imperialism that birthed the name to piss off the Jews (remember that there weren't any Muslims around then and that the holy land was only holy to one religion at the time?) The religious fanaticism she refers to? Well, it might be too much of a stretch to expect her to be referring to murderous suicide bombers.

Skip over a bit of plot and actor descriptions, where we learn that during this brief time Muslims, Jews and Christian live in peace until... duh duh duh dah! the Knights Templar arrive to upset everybody. Somewhat of a liberty with history.

Det dröjer inte länge förrän tempelriddarna får mer makt och det är när de skriker: "Det måste bli krig! Det är Guds vilja" som man ser USA:s fanatiska kristna med Bush i spetsen framför sig.

It doesn't take long before the Knights Templar get more power and it is then that they shout "It must be war! It is God's will!" just like one sees in the USA's fanatical Christians with Bush in the lead.

Ah ha, there it is. Now we know who the fanatics are. Not the murderous crazies blowing up busses and beheading whoever they can snatch. Nope, it is that religious fundy W. Oh well, what do you expect from the idiot left in Sweden?

Of course, never explored are why are the Crusaders in Jerusalem. Why are Muslims in Jerusalem (and for that matter Africa, India, Spain etc etc?)

Is it too much to fricking ask that bimbo reviewers try and keep their "first-year of film school" reviews out of daily papers?

Instapundit gives review links here, here and here which are somewhat more critical of the historical factuals and the shallow political analysis. They are a lot more useful than the load of turd written in GP.

Leave the flag alone

Silent Running reports on further failed attempts to change the NZ flag.

They know what it looks like in East Timor. They know what it looks like in Le Quesnoy, they fly it there every day unlike most New Zealand schools. They know what it looks like in Afghanistan. They know what it looks like in Iraq. They know what it looks like in Turkey. They know what it looks like in Crete. they know what it looks like in Italy. The two cops who pulled one out of the rubble of the WTC didn't know who's it was but they sure as hell knew what it was and took the trouble to return it. If it had been a black flag with a logo silver fern on it they wouldn't have even glanced at it twice.

There have been on-going attempts to change it for years. The usual reasons cited are it isn't distinctive enough, or it isn't "representative" enough, or it is too "British". Various marketing types would change it every few years, devolving the whole thing into a farce. Rabid socialists hate the Union Jack, supposedly it is too colonialist. Nevermind that the vast majority of the population is descended from those countries so it is really quite representative. Some say it has no Maori influence, but then Maori never had flags and the Southern Cross is the distinctive feature of the southern Pacific night sky. The flag has been round for a good amount of time now and been the national symbol through many bad and good times. It seems a shame to chuck it out because a bunch of marketers and socialists want something they can bend to their own use while simultaneously ejecting the history of the nation. Some things should endure through time...

Red Plague

From RJ Rummel at Democratic Peace in a counter-point to all the May Day bullshit round the world...

Oh, yes, our academic and intellectual Marxists today are getting a free ride. They get a certain respect because of their words about improving the lot of the worker and the poor, their utopian pretensions. But when empowered, Marxism has failed utterly, as has fascism. Instead of with respect and tolerance, Marxists should be treated as though they wished a return of the Red Plague, which they do, passionately, blindly, innocently, or not, it would make no difference to the hundreds of millions that would be killed.

110 MILLION people killed by communism, not in wars of aggression or defence, but just in murdering THEIR OWN people. Great track record. Just great. And that doesn't even include the other great contemporary murderers like Hitler.

In relation to the wet-dreams of the Swedish (and other) left of their great achievement in stopping the Vietnam War, the table shows a mid-range estimate of 1.7 million Vietnamese dead under the communist Vietnamese government. Yeah, that was well worth the effort of protesting, you wankers.

As they say, read the whole thing.

Nevermind those murderers, look out for the asylum seekers.

The erstwhile leader of the New Zealand First Party, well known for media grandstanding prior to elections and getting out the blue-rinse brigade to secure his parliamentary seat, has managed to turn up something useful...

The Government tonight froze the offshore processing of "high-risk" visa applications after two former high-ranking Iraqi officials entered New Zealand on visitor visas issued at the New Zealand Embassy in Bangkok.

Immigration Minister Paul Swain tonight confirmed Amer Mahdi Alkhashali is in New Zealand following claims by New Zealand First leader Winston Peters in Parliament today he is a former Iraq Minister for Agriculture and Agrarian Reform under the Saddam Hussein regime.

The second man, a former Iraqi ambassador to Cuba and Bangladesh, yesterday had his visitor's visa revoked following a search of records by the Immigration Service.

"I am extremely unhappy with this situation," Mr Swain told reporters.

"I was informed yesterday that a proper search was done on all people fitting the profile of this kind of person. Clearly this search was not completed."

Ah hah. "Search not completed", not "search stuffed up". Right.

A Thai immigration official at the New Zealand Embassy in Bangkok, Twich Kanchananaga, was investigated in February 2003 following allegations he was running a cash-for-visa ring in which Cambodian nationals were charged up to $US4000 (NZ$7215) to ensure approval of their student visas.

Department of Labour deputy secretary Mary Anne Thompson said tonight the immigration office at the embassy, which employed about 40 staff, had been strengthened since the 2003 investigation.

"I don't believe this is an issue of kick-backs," she told reporters.

"What we're saying is we don't like the decision-making coming out of that branch."

We have had problems with kickbacks in this embassy before. Clearly this incident is not an issue of kickbacks because it just isn't. It is a problem with "decision-making". Right.

Mr Alkhashali - also known as Amer Mahdi Saleh Khashaly - arrived in New Zealand on a visitors visa and was visiting family, Mr Swain said.

He travelled to New Zealand on an Iraqi passport but also presented a United Nations passport to the Bangkok embassy. It is believed Mr Alkhashali is also a former delegate to the UN Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organisation (Unesco) and the Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO).

"We have yet to confirm his status as a minister in Saddam Hussein's government but expect to be able to do that in due course.

"I have instructed the department to begin the process of revoking this man's visa."

The incomplete Immigration Service search failed to detect Mr Alkhashali because it was searching in categories and had focused on asylum-seekers first, he said.

We were looking for asylum seekers rather than members of a criminal government or possible terrorist kingpins. Our searches are so crap that they cannot do more than one category at once (do you know how long it takes to look someone up in the Iraqi phonebook?) Christ, the man had an Iraqi passport, an UN passport and has been a delegate to multiple UN organisations. How bloody hard is it to figure out who he is?

It was "possible" a complete search would turn up more inappropriate people in New Zealand.

Mr Swain said Mr Aklhashali was not a security risk to New Zealand.

And we are hoping like hell that we haven't let in any Islamofascist "insurgents" while trying to find asylum seekers.

Refugee Council president Munjid Umara said today Mr Alkhashali and his family were active members of Saddam's Baath party.

Mr Alkhashali, who would be in his 70s now, played a big role in the 1963 killings when the party came to power, Mr Umara told Newstalk ZB.

Mr Peters today accused the Government of "going after a wolf and producing a rabbit".

"The Government has no idea who is coming into the country and this case proves it."

Hmm, not a very nice man, even if he is old now.

It seems to be the easiest way for thugs to get into the country is to be straight up about who they are, so long as they don't claim asylum.

KKK meets MTV

What do globalisation, the Ku Klux Klan, Greenies, Marxists and Hollywood airheads have in common? Find out in the article Reactionaries, fundamentalists and the culture wars: One hundred years ago and now at the Institute for Liberal Values New Zealand.

Pär says "Vietnam awoke me".

Pär Nuder, now and then tipped to follow Göran Persson as Prime Minister in Sweden (apparently here they are appointed in succession, not voted on) is quoted in an article titled "Klasskampens tid är förbi" or "The class-struggle's time has passed". The very final quote is

Han var också personlig och berättade om hur han för exakt 30 år sedan firade Vietnamkrigets slut.
- Själv minns jag hur några amerikanska soldater sparkade på en vietnames som låg ned. Då stängde mamma av TV:n. I samma ögonblick väcktes mitt politiska engagemang.

He was also personal and told of how he, exactly 30 years ago, celebrated the end of the Vietnam war. "Myself, I remember how some American soldiers kicked a Vietnamese who lay on the ground. Then my mother turned off the TV. At that moment my political engagement was awakened".

Of course it did, seeing near propaganda scale coverage of a war that was used for political convenience by the vacuous left of Europe awoke your political feelings. Of course they never showed on TV tens of thousands of boat people fleeing and dying, or thousands incarcerated in re-education camps or day-to-day executions, so THAT can't really have happened. Likewise, old film of East German troops shooting people attempting to flee to the West never awoke the same feelings. Nope, just a few soldiers kicking someone. Tens of thousands of people starving in the Great Leap Forward? Mother didn't let me see anything else that might make me think that socialism was a load of total arse and that maybe a communist defeat in Vietnam might have been a better "victory" for the common man. But then South Korea is a basket-case compared to the industrious North isn't it? Pull the other one Pär.

Nuremberg, Sweden

The first-of-May "celebrations" have been and gone. There is a small photo journal on the Göteborgs Posten website. Is it just me, or does Göteborg look more like Nuremberg circa 1939 in some of these pictures? I guess it would be too conspiratorial to note the central square is Gustav Adolf's Square. And really, does that petty thug Guevara have to be trotted out at every gathering of the local communist-spotters club? You can see the glitterati of the Communist Party, sorry, the Left Party in these photos as well. Exciting!

Somehow I missed the whole thing. It was a hot sunny day and work outside beckoned. Oh dear, there I go working... not something one is supposed to do when one is a "worker". But I think I live in a somewhat bourgeois neighborhood, which is one where apparently no one on the street owns a drum.