"The end of white man civilization"

American leaders have long been subjects of grandiloquent insult from various adversarial parts of the world, for instance the Middle East and Eastern Europe. From the latter, it is a tradition that extends far back into the Cold War. More recently, there was this infamous line describing Condaleeza Rice in the Pravda editorial, Bush, Cheney and Rice; Hitler, Himmler and Goebbels :

She is a cheap, dimwitted guttersnipe, an apology for a lady and a human being and wholly unfit to hold the office and serve her country, both of which her very presence insults.

But now we have elected officials in Poland bringing the sport to new levels of outrage...

Barack Obama’s grandfather ate Polish missionary, ministers in Poland joke

A political scandal is gathering pace in Poland. Officials of the Polish administration are accused of releasing racist statements against US President-elect Barack Obama. Poland’s large opposition party Right and Justice said that the remarks had been voiced by the Polish Foreign Affairs Minister Radoslaw Sikorski, the Dziennik newspaper wrote.

“Why does Barack Obama have Polish roots? Because his grandfather ate a Polish missionary.” This is the joke that Sikorski supposedly distributed in his ministry. The minister, the newspaper wrote, explained afterwards that he had heard the joke from someone else. However, Witold Waszczykowski a spokesman for the National Security Bureau, confirmed that he had heard the joke from Sikorski and added that he would be ready to testify at court.

The head of another opposition party of Poland, The Union of Leftist Democrats, Wojciech Olejniczak, said that he had heard Jaroslaw Kaczynski, the chairman of Right and Justice, telling the same joke, Newsru.us says.

In addition, Artur Gurski, a spokesman for Right and Justice, stated last week at the Polish parliament that the election of Barack Obama would “mark the end of the white man civilization.” Spokespeople for the Social and Democratic Party of Poland filed a legal complaint in connection with Gurski’s racist remarks, which, as they said, dishonored the Polish administration. If convicted, the deputy can be sentenced to up to three years in prison.

It is worthy of note that Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi was also involved in a racist scandal connected with Obama. He described the former Illinois Senator as a handsome and tanned young man. Berlusconi was harshly criticized for those remarks, but he said that it was only a cute compliment that he made for Obama.

"Why are they taking it as something negative? If they have no sense of humour, worse for them," he said. Later, he told Sky TV-24 Ore that his comments were meant to be "cute" and bashed those who disagreed, saying they are "imbeciles, of which there are too many."

Lifting the Veil, First Blood

The most significant change, thus far...

The Freedom of Information Act should be administered with a clear presumption: In the face of doubt, openness prevails.

But some things stay the same...

Afghan president: US forces killed 16 civilians

Sarkozy, in his continuing efforts to spearhead the remaking of global capitalism, hosted what was originally to be an international summit, but which ended up being a mere conference, with the title:

New World: Values, Development and Regulation

In AP's report from the conference:

Sarkozy blamed financial speculators for encouraging a system fueled on debt. He called financial capitalism based on speculation "an immoral system" that has "perverted the logic of capitalism."

"It's a system where wealth goes to the wealthy, where work is devalued, where production is devalued, where entrepreneurial spirit is devalued," he said.

But no more: "In capitalism of the 21st century, there is room for the state," he said.

The Pope's newly adopted poodle, Tony Blair, chimed in...

Blair called for a new financial order based on "values other than the maximum short-term profit."

"The greatest entrepreneur I had the chance to meet was passionate about what he had created, not what he had accumulated," he said.

However, Andrea Merkel, critical of the the neo-Keynesian measures of the US & UK, said (as reported in The Hindu) “We would be making an error if we were content to look solely at financial markets,” while suggesting that factors of trade and budgetary deficits play a larger role in the financial crisis.

As The Hindu story notes, the conference had been downgraded from a summit, and so produced no binding resolutions "after the Czech Republic, which took over the EU’s six-month rotating presidency on January 1, expressed some irritation at continued French grandstanding."

To remind, Czech president Klaus has a curious history with Russian interests.

Meanwhile, Russia has been toying with Europe's energy spigot.

Clean Coal

As seen from satellite...

Coal Ash Spill, Tennessee

But this accident is only a drop in the bucket, in comparison to the deliberate devastation wrought across hundreds of square miles from NE Tennessee through central West Virginia. One can survey the damage for oneself, beginning in Eastern Kentucky...

Unbridled Destruction

Entertainer of the Year

The title goes to Alex Jones, which is not to downplay the seriousness of his subject matter, this Michel Foucault for the masses... If Foucault were alive today, one imagines he would be sounding the alarm bells upon these same subjects... the militarization of police, surveillance swarming amuck, the psychotropic administration of children, the technocratic economization of nutrition, the transhumanist appetite to cull population, and so on. The "power/knowledge" nexus which he traced in the 1960 & '70s has now only amplified all the more; so that what Foucault called the "carceral society," Jones can now call the "prison planet."

At times he gets a bit clausterphobic and loses it...

Alex Jones Tv:2009 Police State "RANT" of the New Year!!!