In a move that has stunned analysts, beleaguered Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak today appointed Kristina Keneally as his new Prime Minister.
Mubarak cited Keneally’s extensive experience in being a sock-puppet to shady Mediterranean types (Eddie Obeid and Joe Tripodi) as his primary reason for appointing her.
As y’all know, my brother Qusay is currently reading Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn’s landmark book on political repression, “The Gulag Archipelago”, and drew my attention to this quote:
At the conclusion of the conference, a tribute to Comrade Stalin was called for. Of course, everyone stood up (just as everyone had leaped to his feet during the conference at every mention of his name). … For three minutes, four minutes, five minutes, the stormy applause, rising to an ovation, continued. But palms were getting sore and raised arms were already aching. And the older people were panting from exhaustion. It was becoming insufferably silly even to those who really adored Stalin.
However, who would dare to be the first to stop? … After all, NKVD men were standing in the hall applauding and watching to see who would quit first! And in the obscure, small hall, unknown to the leader, the applause went on – six, seven, eight minutes! They were done for! Their goose was cooked! They couldn’t stop now till they collapsed with heart attacks! At the rear of the hall, which was crowded, they could of course cheat a bit, clap less frequently, less vigorously, not so eagerly – but up there with the presidium where everyone could see them?
The director of the local paper factory, an independent and strong-minded man, stood with the presidium. Aware of all the falsity and all the impossibility of the situation, he still kept on applauding! Nine minutes! Ten! In anguish he watched the secretary of the District Party Committee, but the latter dared not stop. Insanity! To the last man! With make-believe enthusiasm on their faces, looking at each other with faint hope, the district leaders were just going to go on and on applauding till they fell where they stood, till they were carried out of the hall on stretchers! And even then those who were left would not falter…
Then, after eleven minutes, the director of the paper factory assumed a businesslike expression and sat down in his seat. And, oh, a miracle took place! Where had the universal, uninhibited, indescribable enthusiasm gone? To a man, everyone else stopped dead and sat down. They had been saved!
The squirrel had been smart enough to jump off his revolving wheel. That, however, was how they discovered who the independent people were. And that was how they went about eliminating them. That same night the factory director was arrested. They easily pasted ten years on him on the pretext of something quite different. But after he had signed Form 206, the final document of the interrogation, his interrogator reminded him:
“Don’t ever be the first to stop applauding.”
Sadly, such repression is not confined to the pages of history…
I came across this excellent article in the Sydney Morning Herald yesterday. It comes as no surprise that the political left thinks of Christians as the scum of the earth. I mean common criminals have mitigating circumstances for committing their crimes, Christians on the other hand have no excuses – their religious texts have been exposed as fairy tales and science has definitively proven that there is no God!
But I digress, as Paul Sheehan points out how the left has remained silent while Christians are persecuted overseas. If it were some other minority being persecuted, like a minority with a cool ‘new age spiritual belief system’, like the Falun Gong or some such, Bob Brown would be on it like a dog with a whiff of arse.
Lebanon is in the news again.
Do you remember the last good news story about Lebanon? Sadly, me neither. It’s always about someone either (A) being killed or (B) about to be killed. As the fragile Lebanese government collapses, I think this is a type (B) story.
With his nicely padded face the Well-Fed Leader must look like an alien to the average North Korean.
Please note there will be delays on the Well-Fed Leader Line between North Gulag and West Gulag Stations. Apologies for the inconvenience.
So I have gone from reading the very real “Gulag Archipelago” by Alexander Solzhenitsyn to the surreal “Shock Doctrine” by Naomi Klein. I’m only a few chapters into comrade Klein’s book but I’ve already got the gist of it and have been introduced to a raft of new terms and phrases such as ‘developmentalism’ and, wait for it, ‘non authoritarian communism’! The book is clearly well researched and includes lots of quotes and facts, but ultimately the arguments and conspiracies being weaved are only evident to the author herself and to the likeminded armchair pseudo-intellectuals and university arts students.
At this point I’d like to stress that the book was a Christmas gift and Klein didn’t get a cent from me. What troubles me is that this verbal diarrhoea has become an international best seller. You should see the glowing reviews on Amazon! The thing that struck me most (in the few initial chapters that I have read) was the non authoritarian communist Klein’s angry tone. Anger directed at the CIA (and by extension the US) and those ‘in the dungeons of University of Chicago economics faculty, constantly inventing new ways to torture the proletariat and peasants of the world’. Ok, I exaggerated the last part, but Klein does constantly refer to the ‘labs’, ‘dungeons’ and ‘shock treatments’ developed at the UC Economics Department. Frankly, I think some ‘shock treatment’ for Klein would not go amiss…
 | Kim Il-Me on Don’t stop applauding… |
 | uday on Notice to passengers on Pyongy… |
 | qusay on Notice to passengers on Pyongy… |
| qusay on Somewhere in Helmand Prov… |
popularaffront 
