Inside the Asylum

The ultra-left ideologues are falling thick and fast. This time one in New Zealand jumps ship, resigning from parliament. Sue Bradford, architect of the incredibly unpopular anti-smacking law (which made it illegal for parents to lightly smack their kids) and Marxist, is leaving. Good riddance.

The incredible thing is, unlike in USA where they ultra-leftists have been caught out in all sorts of nastiness, Bradford seems to be going in a fit of pique simply because she lost a leadership battle within the Green Party. Oh well, never mind, who cares, as long as she's gone.

The North Koreans are always posting stories like this:

U.S. Anti-DPRK Policy Rebuked
Pyongyang, July 21 (KCNA) -- Personages of New Zealand and Guinea issued statements in denunciation of the U.S. hostile policy towards the DPRK on the occasion of the June 25-July 27 month of anti-U.S. joint struggle. Don Borrie, chairman of the New Zealand-DPRK Society, in his statement on July 9 said that peace has not yet come to the Korean Peninsula although the war was over there. The main obstacle to ensuring peace in the peninsula is the U.S. troops stationed in south Korea, he pointed out.

I'd always kind of worried/wondered if these "personages" really exist. Is there really a DPRK (North Korean) friendship society in Nigeria, or in Ireland, or wherever. This time I decided to check it out. It turns out, Don Borrie and the NZ-DPRK Society really does exist. He's a despicable leftist and communist shill from way back. Uck.

The Chinese are losing in Xinjiang. They're not losing the armed war, because they have a massive advantage in numbers and equipment, but they're rapidly losing any hope of winning the hearts and minds of the Uighur people. The Chinese have generally been pretty smart with this kind of thing, with their "go west" economic development campaign etc ... realizing that their best way to consolidate their hold on these far-flung and only semi-Chinese provinces is to provide a better life for the people. As events recently in Tibet and now Xinjiang have shown, they haven't succeeded. Local Communist Party chief Li Zhi demonstrates exactly why they've been losing. Despite lots of rhetoric about how Chinese is a multi-ethnic country with 56 nationalities (see here for a list), the latest events show that there's a stark contrast between Han Chinese and other ethnic minorities such as the Uighurs. I've mentioned Li in a previous post, showing another example of how he's taking a bad situation and making it worse. He continues in a similar vein. He told:

a televised news conference that many people had been arrested, including students. "To those who committed crimes with cruel means, we will execute them," he said, adding government forces would crack down on any security risk.

As I predicted, the Chinese could be relied upon to respond with a heavy hand, which is only going to make things worse in Xinjiang.

The ROM (Royal Ontario Museum) is going through a bit of a modernization to be completed by 2010. They took a very traditionally built museum and turned it into something hideous. It looks to me as if some architect simply got a giant lump of tin-foil and threw it into a model of the museum in frustration when he couldn't think of any good ideas, and then submitted that as his concept piece. When I visited the museum I wrote in their comments book next to a model of the yet-to-be-completed reconstruction, "this reveals that the age of great architecture is dead."
Image by Daniel Libeskind.
Have you ever seen anything so awful?

A UNITED NATIONS report into the war in Gaza has concluded unequivocally that Hamas deliberately fired at civilian institutions and has accused Hamas of excessive use of force... The newspaper said the explosive report landed on the UN Secretary-General's desk late last week, but Ban Ki-moon was reportedly set to reject it. The move is sure to spark a wave of protests from international human rights organizations that have accused Hamas of committing war crimes... Conducted by a UN special investigator, Ian Martin, the investigation stops short of accusing Hamas of war crimes but did charge Hamas fighters with targeting Israeli civilians. Palestinian sources yesterday said that Hamas was putting heavy pressure on Mr Ban to delay the publication of Mr Martin's report, which Hamas says totally ignores the attacks faced by the Palestinians... According to a US official who has seen the report, "the authors completely ignored the information that Hamas passed on to the UN". Meanwhile, Hamas leader Khaled Meshaal said that he is willing to begin negotiations with the Israelis without delay. In a taped speech Khaled Meshall refused to use the words "State of Israel" but suggested that he was ready to conduct negotiations surrounding diplomatic, economic and security issues.

It all sounds very reasonable ... except for the fact that such a report has never been written, and nor would anything similar be written by the UN. Nor would there ever be waves of protest about the suppression of such a report, because "international human rights organizations" don't consider Israeli civilians to be "humans" deserving of "rights" that need to be protected. I didn't completely make this up ... there is a very similar report, but of course you need to change "Hamas", "Palestinians" and "Khaled Meshaal" to "Israel", "Israelis" and "Benjamin Netanyahu". Aside from that, I just edited the report for grammar to make sure the changes fit.
[Update]. Here is the real Khaled Meshaal:

Meshaal reiterated that Hamas would not recognize Israel, calling it an enemy, and he did not offer to revoke Hamas’ charter, which calls for Israel’s destruction and cites “The Protocols of the Elders of Zion” as fact. However, Meshaal urged outsiders to ignore the charter, noting that it is 20 years old. The Hamas leader... called President Obama’s language on the Middle East “different and positive.” Rocket fire from Gaza into Israel was significantly down in April compared with the previous three months. “Not firing the rockets currently is part of an evaluation from the movement which serves the Palestinians’ interest,” Meshaal told the Times. “After all, the firing is a method, not a goal.”

He still wants to destroy Israel, but he'd really prefer you don't think about that. After all, that announcement was made 20 years ago. In line with my previous post about Iran's view of Obama's thinking, how should we interpret this message from Hamas? Hamas refuses to recognize Israel and wants the state destroyed, and considers Obama's ideas "different and positive." I also like the way he describes a slow-down of rocket attacks against Israel. I guess military responses really are a good way to reduce violence, despite everything we've been told.

I've never been to a protest before. I usually have nothing by contempt for the useless bums to stand on street corners with stupid signs telling me to honk if I support turnip liberation or some-such. I could barely restrain myself from giving the finger to some Prop 8 demonstrators not long ago ... and on that particular intersection there were roughly equal numbers of "for" and "against" protesters with silly signs. So, it is with a mixture of guilt and excitement that I find myself contemplating my first demonstration on April 15th when there are nation-wide Tea Party gatherings. I don't think I'm quite up to making a sign just yet. I'll just go, and stand around trying not to get my face photographed by any journalists. On that count I know I'm pretty safe, as there probably won't be any news coverage. It doesn't fit the narrative! Still, the unbelievable mixture of hypocrisy and stupidity being demonstrated by both Washington and Sacramento have me ready to take to the streets.

Inside Higher Ed has a story on recruiting problems at an all male college, and efforts to understand and deal with those problems. To paraphrase Jonah Goldberg, I find their puzzlement puzzling.

For many colleges, dwindling male enrollment has become a source of some concern. But at Saint John’s University, recruiting men is a matter of survival.

Saint John’s, an all-male Roman Catholic university in Collegeville, Minn., has been in the business of recruiting men since it was founded by Benedictines in the mid 1800s. So as some colleges across the country report declines in male enrollment, it is perhaps of little surprise that Saint John’s faculty members and administrators have stepped up to grapple with what some view as growing problem in higher education.

...

To address these concerns, Saint John’s has created a task force to look at male enrollment issues, and has been collecting data among the university’s students to find out what makes men tick. The university also helps organize annual conferences for men’s colleges, placing the onus on all-male institutions to confront issues like enrollment decline.

To draw more men the college is paints a picture of itself as an ideal location for all sorts of manly activities like skiing, fishing, and such. But then we get this...

It may seem a bit perplexing that Saint John’s lures male students to campus by appealing to their perceived machismo and love of football, only to challenge those stereotypes during the course of students’ academic careers. The Center for Men’s Leadership and Service, which reaches about 2,000 students each year through activities, is designed in part to break down students’ traditional notions of masculinity.

Imagine that! It's hard to find men who want to spend several years being turned into women.

This is not to criticize the the methods or goals of the Center for Men’s Leadership and Service. Students who choose to participate probably get a lot out of it. But should it really be surprising that most men find this sort of thing off-putting?

...but shorter and worth watching.

Eugene Volokh and John Hinderaker both argue that it is not wrong to jump straight into the political debate over tragic events, when those events have political significance. Which sounds about right to me. I have more of a problem when legislators use the public desire for action to rush through ill-considered legislation that not enough people liked the day before, and not enough people will like in a few months time.

The long expected genocide in Zimbabwe is now getting into full swing. I think it is a safe bet that nothing will be done to stop it and nothing will ever be done to punnish those responsible. In fact, I'll go way out on a limb and predict that, when Mugabe is done killing all the people that he wants to kill, he will be rewarded by the international community with more money and more power in the form of "aid".