Inside the Asylum

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.