Inside the Asylum

Pravda reports:

Obama comes to Moscow to prevent another Cold War.

Sounds good until you look over the rest of the page and see that they also report:

Weird hairy females seduce hot-blooded Caucasian men
Ancient nuclear blasts and levitating stones of Shivapur
Vampires are proved to exist

In other words, Pravda gives more accurate coverage of world events than the American MSM.

This is certainly a surprise. Sarah Palin has announced that she's resigning as governor of Alaska at the end of the month. I've no idea what it means.

Turkish television will soon have a new game show, Tovbekarlar Yarisiyor (Penitents Compete).

Atheist contestants will ponder whether to believe or not to believe when they pit their godless convictions against the possibilities of a new relationship with the almighty... Four spiritual guides from the different religions will seek to convert at least one of the 10 atheists in each program to their faith. Those persuaded will be rewarded with a pilgrimage to the spiritual home of their newly chosen creed - Mecca for Muslims, Jerusalem for Christians and Jews, and Tibet for Buddhists. The program makers say they want to promote religious belief while educating Turkey's overwhelmingly Muslim population about other faiths.

Well, I've been to Jerusalem, have no particular interest in Mecca, and I'm kind of curious to see Xizang (the Chinese name for Tibet). I guess it's Buddhism for me!

Converts will be monitored to ensure their religious transformation is genuine and not simply a ruse to gain a free foreign trip. "They can't see this trip as a getaway, but as a religious experience," Mr Ozdemir said.

Damn. Still, I reckon I could fake it. Ommm, sound of one hand clapping, Ommmm.

Isn't it great that we've got clever people in office now, not like those stoooopid Republicans. At last we have people who know how to engage with the world without be patronizing or condescending. There's been too much American arrogance in recent years. What a relief that's all behind us. Oh wait ...

BARACK OBAMA has accused Vladimir Putin of "living in the past" and indulging in Cold War thinking on the eve of his first trip to Russia since taking office. The US President described the Russian Prime Minister as someone who still has "one foot in the old ways of doing business and one foot in the new".

Putin's likely response? A raised middle finger, perhaps?

You can say one thing for Obama. He sure is persistent. I've tried Serbia and Lebanon, and dammit, Biden survived ... where next? Iraq after the US pullout. Brilliant!

U.S. Vice President Joe Biden on Thursday arrived in Baghdad on a surprise visit to Iraq, U.S. sources said to the media.

Unusually severe winter weather continues to hammer New Zealand, with snow warnings being issued left/right/and center, with various roads closed. (see earlier post here.)

A Queenstown police spokeswoman said it was the first time in years she had heard of snow forcing the closure of the Kawarau Gorge.

Heck, I've driven that road ... it's not that high altitude. Of course, only unusually hot weather is a sign of global climate change ... unusually cold weather is just "misleading and inaccurate information about climate change" and anyway "'Scientists' say that any apparent cooling is due to natural changes and does not alter the long-term warming trend." See?

A brain-washed journalist at the Telegraph in England is shocked, I tell you, shocked, at the evil of the evil oil companies. He breathlessly writes:

ExxonMobil, the world’s largest oil company, is continuing to fund researchers who cast doubt on global warming, despite public promises to cut support for climate-change sceptics.

How dare they! Science is not about debating opposing hypotheses or vigorous intellectual debate, it is about consensus! Didn't Exxon get the memo from Al Gore? Included in their list of shocking sins, is the fact that Exxon gave money to the Heritage Foundation. Let's take a look at the proof of just how evil they are. Here's what they dare to say, mocking the mantra, and frankly, the should all just be burned at the stake:

The Heritage Foundation published note last year that said: “Growing scientific evidence casts doubt on whether global warming constitutes a threat, including the fact that 2008 is about to go into the books as a cooler year than 2007”.

You see! They admit it! They're evil!
Even more laughable is the follow up piece I saw in the Sydney Morning Herald, where another journalist manages to get even more breathless.

According to Bob Ward, policy and communications director at the Grantham Research Institute on Climate Change and the Environment at the London School of Economics, the Heritage Foundation has published "misleading and inaccurate information about climate change".

Hmmm. The director at a climate change institute doesn't have any vested interest in this debate after all ... Oh yes, and that journalist posts a devastating rebuttal to the Heritage Foundation's fact that 2008 was cooler than 2007.

Scientists say that any apparent cooling is due to natural changes and does not alter the long-term warming trend.

Well, that really cut them down now didn't it! "Scientists" say it. Oh mortal blow! How will the Heritage Foundation ever recover from such dagger-like wit? That will really silence them from their evil ways.
I mean really ... when the only way Global Warming fanatics can bolster their case is through political lobbying to cut funding to anyone who dares question their creed, and through hopeless displays of lack of logic, how can anyone take their faith seriously?

Really. It improves sperm quality, and is especially recommended for couples trying to conceive (which you think would be a no brainer, but apparently some expert-morons had recommend against it!).

A study by David Greening, a specialist in reproductive endocrinology and infertility at Sydney IVF, has found that ejaculat ing daily substantially improves the genetic quality of sperm.

Well, this really deserves to be on the front page of every newspaper. Two words would suffice to make it the biggest headline of the century: FRENCH APOLOGIZE. Has such a thing ever been seen before? French Prime Minister Francois Fillon has written to New Zealand's leader to publicly apologize. What for? Committing an act of terrorism against a friendly power, including murder and sabotage, perhaps? Blackmailing New Zealand with the EU quota system, perhaps? Keeping New Zealand lamb out of France because French farmers can't sell lamb of equal quality and price in their own fricking country, perhaps? No ...

French rugby player Mathieu Bastareaud, 20, lied that he was set on from behind by up to five men following the second rugby test between France at the All Blacks, leaving him with a serious eye injury. Police investigated the incident for several days, before Bastareaud admitted his fabrication. He subsequently said he had drunk too much after France's loss and had hit his head on a table back at the hotel.

French PM Fillon also said,

Our two countries share the same rugby culture.

The history of French rugby is really pretty interesting, going back to the 1800s (in my limited understanding) but it was General De Gaulle who really kicked it into high gear with a huge injection of cash.

Further to my story about how British troops should use wallabies to fight the opium crop in Afghanistan, it turns out that they've actually been targeting a different menace to western civilization. That's right, the mung bean crop must be eliminated at all costs!

Soldiers engaged in Operation Panther's Claw, the huge assault against insurgent strongholds last week, had discovered a record-breaking haul of more than 1.18 tonnes of poppy seeds... Major Rupert Whitelegge, commander of the company in charge of the area, tugged at one of the heavy sacks. "They are definitely poppy seeds," he said. Except they weren't... the soldiers had captured nothing more than a giant pile of mung beans.

Obama dithered as long as he could before publicly supporting the people of Iran, but his reaction was near instantaneous when the Honduran military acted to defend the Honduran constitution by booting a president who was angling to be president-for-life. Which has some people, or at least Roger Simon, wondering if Obama is objectively pro-fascist.

If you like you can go read Eugene Volokh and George Orwell explaining what's wrong with claims that "X is objectively Y". During WWII Orwell claimed that pacifists were objectively pro-fascist because their actions tended to hamper the Allied war effort and so helped the Axis war effort. After the war Orwell concisely explained why this rhetorical move was suspect. But I have an entirely different problem with the claim that Obama is objectively pro-fascist.

We never know for sure what the motives of other people are, and at best we have only a sketchy idea as to what our own motives are. But if we are trying to figure out the motives of other people we have two guides: what they do, and what they say. Sometimes these two sources of evidence match up pretty well, and sometimes they don't. When they don't match up we may justly wonder whether the people in question are being honest about their motives.

That is usually what is going on when people trot out the "X is objectively Y" line. The pacifists said they were opposed to fascism, but their actions tended to promote fascism more than peace, and that caused some to wonder what their true motives were. The situation with Obama is different. He hasn't done anything much to affect the outcomes in Iran or Honduras. The problem is with what he has said, but then even his statements can't be called pro-fascist because he certainly hasn't endorsed either the Mullahs or Zelaya.

If there is a criticism to be made of Obama it is just that, in these two cases, he is keeping bad company.

I've reported earlier about Japan's and USA's imperialist aggression against Lunar. Now it turns out that they have ambitions far beyond stealing our neighbor's precious water resources (if any can be located), they're also after their uranium. They even openly boast about how this will open the way for nuclear powered colonies on the moon. They're going to pollute their precious environment too with the evils of nuclear power. Soon we'll be seeing lunar babies born with two heads (if indeed that isn't normally for them already ... how many heads does a Lunie have?) Indeed a new age of imperialism is at hand. Where is Marxist dialectic when you need it? Certainly not in China, that's for sure.

Interestingly, further to my repeated comments about how China may well beat USA in the space race, Instapundit adds a typically laconic comment to this story:

Of course, at current rates of progress they’ll be Chinese lunar colonies.

Obama seems to be pretty consistent in how he treats America's friends and enemies:

There is something strange about the Obama administration's diplomacy. We speak softly to our enemies, but use a big stick against our friends.

(via Instapundit)

In which case, I think we could regard the following statement from the folks at North Korean News (KCNA), in a story entitled "Korean People Vow Vengeance on U.S. Imperialists", as a desperate plea to be loved:

Looking round the place where the ghouls machine-gunned and threw hand-grenades at people and burnt their bodies to ashes right before their fleeing, the torture room, the slaughter-site and others at the House of Class Education in Susan-ri, Kangso County, the visitors expressed their resolution to wipe out to the last one the pernicious murderers, wolves in human shape, if they pounce upon the Korean people again.

Yes, you ghoulish, torturing, slaughtering, pernicious murdering wolves, please love us. Hug?

This would certainly explain a lot of rather odd news stories from the folks at KCNA. I never bothered to post on them here, because they weren't particularly funny (and that's generally the only reason I post on North Korea), but there's been a steady stream of news stories about how the folks at this or that embassy have done something to help Korean farmers.

The U.N. World Food Program said Wednesday that a drying up of international food aid has given rise to a ''dramatic'' food shortage in North Korea... Only slightly more than 2 million of a planned 6.2 million people are now receiving food aid under its humanitarian food program.

I'll see if I can locate some examples and post them as updates to this story.
[Update]

June 3rd: Staff Members of Vietnamese Embassy Help Korean Farmers
June 4th: Staff Members of Syrian Embassy Help Korean Farmers
June 5th: Chinese Embassy Officials Help Korean Farmers
June 8th: Cambodian Embassy Officials Help Farmers
June 9th: Pine Needles and Pollens Good for Health (not quite the same, but certainly hints at a dire situation!)
June 10th: Indonesian Embassy Officials Help Korean Farmers
June 11th: Mongolian Embassy Staff Help Korean Farmers

There are bound to be more, but the KCNA website isn't set up for searches, and you have to go through news stories day by day.

This is kind of interesting. My guess is that the Palestinians are starting to wake up to the fact that the attempt to ban Muslim pilgrimage to Jerusalem is a classic case of "cutting off your nose to spite your face."

The chief Palestinian Muslim cleric [Shaikh Tayseer Al Timimi] is urging Muslims to visit Occupied Jerusalem, breaking a decades-long taboo against visiting the holy city because it would be considered support for Israel. "I withdraw my fatwa (edict) and now ask all Muslims and [Arab] Christians to creep into [Occupied] Jerusalem for a visit, satisfaction and shopping," Al Timimi said at a press conference in Cairo. "Come to the Palestinian hotels and come to the Palestinian markets," he said. Al Timimi had previously banned Muslims from visiting the city, arguing that would be considered normalizing relations with Israel.

If the Palestinians can't come up with a better source of income than foreign aid, then they're screwed. Of course, shooting rockets at people and constantly begging for retaliation is a great way to encourage foreign investment and tourism.

Today (June 30th) is the 101st anniversary of the Tunguska Siberian explosion. Lots of theories, no answers. I love that kind of thing.

It seems like quite a crime wave for the month of June:

1) A Sony Amplifier was stolen from a motor vehicle
2) Police were called to a report of Damage
3) One person is under investigation for playing loud music on the Pierhead in the early hours of the morning
4) A bracelet and a ring have been found

Don't you wish you lived in a place like that?

The election results are in, and Argentine hopeful Alfonso Prat-Gay slipped from his expected 2nd position to come in third at the end.

Unión-PRO centre-right party Gabriela Michetti wins the congressional elections in Buenos Aires City with 31.08 percent of the votes. Fernando "Pino" Solanas of the leftist Proyecto Sur party comes in second place with 24.25 percent of the votes, while Alfonso Prat-Gay of the opposition-centre Social and Civic Accord comes in third place with 18.88 percent.

Just thought you'd like to know...