Who Made YOU the Boss of Me?

On vacation and without CNN for over a week, I flipped on the hotel's TV late Monday evening and saw Muslims rioting and embassies burning.  DANISH embassies?  Over those insignificant cartoons The Brussels Journal discussed back in December or January?

It's like I've landed on some other planet or something.

If you've been following the story, you probably know much more about it than I do.  But here's a few of my reactions:

Saturday:  Danish protesters march with placards reading, "We're sorry."  And I'm thinking – what a buncha goddamn pussies.  By all means, apologize when you hurt someones feelings.  But when buildings are set alight, it isn't YOU who should be the ones offering apologies.

Sunday: TV says most Danes see this as a free speech issue.  And they're NOT apologizing for the crime of living in a country with freedom of speech.  Good for them.

But CNN International claims that the "world standing of Denmark has been damaged".  Huh?  How so?  No offense to Danes, but I've never previously given their country a second thought.  Now I'm seeing them as a tiny country being pushed around by a bullying mob numbering one billion.  A situation rather similar to Taiwan's, when you stop to think about it.  That's pretty heroic, in my book.

Wednesday: Sounds like the US State Department fumbled the ball a bit at the beginning.  Clinton kicked the Danes while they were down, too.  All of which is uncool.  But the Yanks and Brits seem to be giving Denmark support now.  The time for humoring vicious theocrats ends when they start breaking things, killing people and promising a new holocaust.

Thursday: Anderson Cooper today had a guest who made the bizarre claim that blasphemy restrictions would somehow demonstrate to Muslims that there really is religious freedom and equality in Europe.  1984 and Animal Farm all at once now.  Freedom is slavery.  All religions are equal, but some are more equal than others.

I'm sure you've all heard of the contest launched in Iran for cartoons mocking the Holocaust.  The Belmont Club informs its readers of another contest:

A contest to humiliate Mohammed has been launched not in Texas, not in Israel but in the [politically-correct] Netherlands. The Netherlands. Almost inconceivable.

The Dutch website can be found here.  Some of it's pretty offensive, but TS.  Right now the only thing that the Danes should apologize for is the fact that the original cartoons just weren't all that funny.  Leave it to the Dutch to rectify THAT:

Mohammed Flame Of Allah match ad from Netherlands Mohammed cartoon contest

This one wasn't bad:

Mohammed McDonald's ad from Netherlands Mohammed cartoon contest

As Sun Tzu wrote, "When your enemy is angry, annoy him":

Bob Ross paints Mohammed from Netherlands Mohammed cartoon contest

A little more risque', this one:

Mohammed Maybelline ad from Netherlands Mohammed cartoon contest

But it's pretty tame compared to:

Mohammed tampon ad from Netherlands Mohammed cartoon contest

Hardcore atheists will like:

Mohammed with Disney Koran from Netherlands Mohammed cartoon contest

 

But in my opinion, the final one is spot-on:

Mohammed the Leader: Ein Volk, Ein Ummah, Ein Muhammad from Netherlands Mohammed cartoon contest

 

I am free, and I am uncowed.

UPDATE (Mar 2/06):  Danes issue the kind of apology that the situation merits, giving  Islamofascists the middle finger salute.  Uitstekend!

(Hat tip to Sandmonkey.)

UPDATE (Dec 20/10):  The internal links to three of the images seem to have become broken.  Looks like these were BMP files, and the newer versions of TypePad have problems with that format.

After much searching, I found the original BMP copies, and converted them to TIFFs & JPGs.  The JPG files have now been linked where the old BMP files once were in this post.

i-7

Views Within the Chinese Leadership

Over at StrategyPage, there’s a short column regarding what the Chinese leadership really thinks.  Now, I’m no mind-reader, so I don’t claim any special insight into whether the Chinese communists view India as a future threat or not.  There’s probably many schools of thought in Beijing.  But this line struck me as being authentic:

…they don’t seem to think we’re “bogged down” in Iraq so much as that we’re gaining valuable combat experience (maybe a million “seasoned” troops by the time it’s over) as well as learning all sorts of new tricks in how to fight insurgencies, and how to use new military technologies*.

* I was talking to a Taiwanese aquaintance way back when, and he casually stated his belief that the real reason that America attacked Afghanistan was to test out its new weapons systems.  9-11?  That was merely the excuse!

Now, normally I would dismiss this as the conjecturing of some kind of moonbat.  Except that the individual in question was an otherwise bright young man who was in fact an ROC officer (or officer-in-training).  So it doesn’t surprise me to hear that similar opinions hold sway among the political class on the other side of the Taiwan Strait.

China & Rare Earths

If I recall correctly, one of the fears during the Cold War was due to the possible interruption of rare earth supplies to the West should an ANC government take over South Africa.  The ANC was on friendly terms with the Soviet Union, and both the Soviets and South Africa were the world’s largest suppliers of these strategic elements.

The entire subject was dropped after the Soviet Union fell, and the subsequent ANC government was not as hostile towards the West as earlier feared.

It is therefore with some surprise that I read today that China now supplies 95% of the world’s rare earths.  Read the story here.

Super-Vision

Winds of Change had a post about the US military granting money for the development of adaptive lenses that can flex by themselves, granting the wearer better than 20/20 vision at near, mid and long ranges.  I’d heard of something like this for future camera cellphones, but not for glasses.

Geordi La Forge of Star Trek: The Next Generation wearing his high-tech glasses

Sure wish I had super-vision.

(While searching for the photo, I ran into If Dr. Seuss wrote for Star Trek: The Next Generation.  It’s pretty good.)

i-1

Native Speakers Wanted…

…to teach Mandarin to preschoolers in America.  The BBC had this to say about the phenomenon:

‘Parents always want to give their children a good head start in life to prepare them for the future.

It seems that families in the United States with a lot of disposable income believe that helping their children master the intricacies of Mandarin at an early age is one way to do that.

Companies who place nannies or au pairs with families in New York have experienced a rush of requests for native Chinese-speakers.

That is the trend right now, according to JaNiece Rush of Lifestyle Resources.

"Just in the last couple of years, we’ve received an influx of calls where families are hoping that we can find them Chinese-speaking – especially Mandarin-speaking – nannies and housekeepers, so that their children will pick up Chinese," she says….JaNiece Rush explains that they are in such high demand they can command a salary of around $20,000 more than the average nanny would earn.

One Chinese woman even managed to secure a salary of $70,000-a-year after two families tried to outbid each other to get her.’

Could bushibans* be far away for the U.S. of A.?

* Taiwanese-style cram schools which students attend on weekends or after school.

Cartoon Mascots for China’s Internet Thought Police

Shanghaiist has a post featuring a picture of "Cha-Cha", China’s latest effort to put a happy face on political repression.

(Y’know, give her a baton and a pair of handcuffs, and Cha-Cha’d kinda have a little S&M thing goin’ on there.  Just saying, is all.)

Shanghaiist doesn’t show us Jing-Jing, Cha-Cha’s male partner, but does manage to ask us:

"what’cha gonna do, what’cha gonna do when they come for you?"

Hat tip to AsiaPundit for pointing this one out.  And in case you missed it, check out my post on China’s Olympic Mascots.  It’s got links to a few pretty good satirical cartoons.

UPDATE (Feb 19/06):  The Financial Times had a good piece on the topic.  One of the veterans of the Chinese Cybercop Corps said that:

Only one in 50 internet users wants to break the law, and they are the only ones to complain about a lack of liberty…the [Chinese] web is “completely free” for those who stay within the “legal framework”.

That’s absolutely true.  The Chinese web is completely free – so long as you don’t actually try to MENTION freedom.

Or liberty…or democracy…or…

One thing I didn’t know, though.  If you click on the Jing-Jing or Cha-Cha icons, your computer’ll play the smash hit, "Song of the People’s Police."

Oh, oh, I think I know that one!  It sounds a little bit like that Horst Wessel tune, doesn’t it?

UPDATE (Feb 25/06): The China Digital Times has pictures of both Jing Jing & Cha Cha.  Meanwhile, AsiaPundit has the story of a Chinese web surfer who nearly sh*t his pants when the Digital Brownshirts came a-callin’.