Lev Navrozov l
Thursday, July 2, 2009
Lev - Why is the West asleep?
This is what I was asked by Jonathan Smithson, an Australian (half English half Chinese), who sent me a piece from a speech delivered by Chi Haotian, the Minister of National Defense of China up to 2004 and a top military analyst today, and published by the dissident Chinese newspaper The Epoch Times, sold in English in the English-speaking countries. The space allocated by The Epoch Times to Chi was summarized as follows: "A leading Chinese Communist Party official argues for exterminating the population of the United States."
Read more
Contrary to expectations, or should we say hopes, of interested parties not least the world trading and financial community, the Chinese economy is foundering. The exaggerated hopes that high rates of growth would return there and become a motor for more rapid world economic recovery were always groundless. But when Beijing went on a “stimulus” rampage and speculatively bought up raw materials and oil in the spring, the fantasies took flight. The reality is that there is every evidence that Chinese Communist Party managers of what is still a largely government-owned economy are even more bemused than their colleagues in the Obama Administration and in Europe by the effects of the international credit crunch and worldwide recession.
South Carolina Gov. Mark Sanford's bizarre revelation that he had an extramarital affair with a longtime female friend in Argentina has dealt another blow to an already decrepit Republican Party. After losing control of Congress in 2006 and the White House in last year's election, the Republicans are not only in the minority; they also are adrift and leaderless. Mr. Sanford was highly touted as one who could advance new ideas, as a fresh face for Republican conservatives.
Read more
Good career move. The Hollywood assessment of the death of Elvis Presley 30 years ago eerily applies to Michael Jackson, too. Every great entertainer knows it's important to get off the stage before the hook.
The death of Michael Jackson, with its unanswered questions and the exposure of the smarmy troupe of freeloaders, hangers-on and cockroaches crawling out of the dark places of his life, make this the perfect Hollywood tale of sex, money and sudden death. The media, including even newspapers that once could be counted on to put events in proper context, are throwing one long, drunken, inky bacchanalia, endlessly indulging round after round of trivia and manufactured sensation. P.T. Barnum lies green (with envy) in his grave.
. . .
UNITED NATIONS — UNITED NATIONS — Remember Iraq? Indeed what was to have been the “defining issue” of last year’s presidential election and a potent political flashpoint, has largely faded from the headlines. To be sure the perilous economic situation and a spate of foreign policy crises from Iran to nuclear North Korea have grabbed attention.
Read more
Mario Lavandeira, the mean-spirited impresario behind the celebrity- obsessed mega-Web site PerezHilton.com, was left scratching his pink-tinged pompadour last week, wondering aloud in a campy cry-baby YouTube classic why, after being physically assaulted in public, he is now universally scorned and widely considered the villain of an incident that left him appropriately "black eyed."
Aside from the basic rules of karma, here's why: The calculus of political correctness is like roshambo, the "rock-paper-scissors" game. Different identity groups hold specific levels of power over others when their battles play out in the media. To wit: Black beats white. Gay beats white. Black beats gay.
What does a nuclear madman have to do to get America's attention? On Memorial Day, the North Koreans detonated "an underground atomic device many times more powerful than the bombs that destroyed Hiroshima and Nagasaki," as my old colleagues at the Irish Times put it. You'd think that would rate something higher than "World News in Brief, see foot of Page 37. " But instead, Washington was consumed by the Supreme Court nomination of Judge Sonia Sotomayor, who apparently has a "compelling personal story."
Doesn't Kim Jong-il have a compelling personal story? Like Judge Sotomayor, he grew up in a poor neighborhood (North Korea), yet he has managed to become a nuclear power, shattering the glass ceiling to take his seat at the old nuclear boys club.
Isn't that an inspiring narrative? Once upon a time, you had to be a great power, one of the Big Five permanent members of the United Nations Security Council, to sit at the nuclear table: America, Britain, France, Russia, China, the old sons of power and privilege. But now the mentally unstable scion of an impoverished no-account backwater with a gross domestic product lower than Zimbabwe's has joined their ranks: Celebrate diversity!
