Alas, my Muse(s)

I've established the precise moment when civilization reached a dead end:



CPO Sharkey meets the strangest person ever to be deported from a Communist country.

From the Bottom of…

European Culture Pretends itself to be a Delicate Flower about to be Sodomized by Mandingo

When freedom is called “freedom”, Markets are simply called in generalization to be called “capitalism”, and anti-campitalism is called “democracy”...

You see where this is going. While it’s cropped up many times before, the recipients of the message grew no more intelligent. The “leading lights” of the culture are using a fake global-warming crisis to rationalize individual will and democratic freedoms away.

It’s because without it, there would be no forum for anyone to disagree with them.

The debate about imposing authoritarian restrictions on basic human rights in order to safeguard the survival of the planet is fuelled by doubts about whether parliamentary democracies can provide answers to questions of ecological survival. The facts suggest they can’t: the US, the foremost proponent of democracy and the market economy, is among the world’s leading polluters. The cumbersome UN won’t be able to ward off the climate catastrophe. Even Germany, a self-appointed paragon of climate protection and environmental technology, is hardly making any headway.

No, authoritarianism is embraced by European elites whenever there is even the slightest possibility of them not getting away with shoving their egotistical, extremist notions on populations. Period. “Eco”-this and that is only this decades’ vain sales-tag.

The global community will be watching very closely to see who puts forth the best answer to the question of prosperity, stability and liberty: will it be unbridled capitalism made in the USA, the Chinese blend of state socialism and rampant capitalism, or an authoritarian raw materials-based regime à la russe? Europe, in contrast, could put forward a politico-economic export hit that might appeal to aspiring democracies like India, South Africa or Brazil.

Or not. Despite the writer’s notion that democracy is ‘just some sort of option’ worth expending when the going gets tough, it’s (basic notion of freedom of speech which some democracies still actually protect) in fact the tool by which such a foolish notion can be entertained. Advocating de facto smiley-face autocracy calling itself a free society for ANY purpose, as European “culture” has advocated persistently for the past century, has been a failure, and has always ended in tears and blood-bathes.

From Marburg in northern Hessen to the deluxe spa resort of Cancun, it’s about 8,600 km as the crow flies. The two places are a 12-hour flight and worlds apart. But they have one thing in common these days: they’re both grappling with the question how much freedom or constraint is needed to ensure our survival on the planet Earth. The question is whether we are heading towards an environmental autocracy.

No. Speak for yourself, asshole. You aren’t all of humanity, no matter how much the meeting look like the “It’s a Small World” ride at Disney World.

Knowing the moral turpitude and wrongness about calling for a suspension of people’s individual rights, they’re taking the passive-aggressive approach against by trying to redefine it as a desiccated form of its’ former self. It’s a clue: the ultimately don’t get it, or individual will, OR tolerance for others’ reasoning, OR what is genuinely regarded as diversity. They prefer the forced march, the one, the put-upon are told, is for the good of mankind, or in this case for the good of the planet because thinking people no longer buy the crypto-Troskyite rationalization for having things thrust upon them.

The question remains: is this issue even real, and why is there a class of intellectual ciphers pretending that man’s responsibility to a non-science – one whose “cure” could murder millions with privation – is “ours”.

Good-Bye, Friend

Geraldine Hoff Doyle was the real-life model for the World War II era We Can Do It posters, an embodiment of the iconic World War II character Rosie the Riveter.

Oooooooooh New Year! Thass th'Time I Wanna See

(thank yuh to Duncan…)

Voilà la Culture Gogo-gôchistes qui Rayonne sur le Monde

One of the underlying arguments commonly raised against commerce is the Marxist presumption that all wealth is derived from either exploiting natural resources or forcing humans into slavery.

Notes business guru-cum-evil-genius Michael Phillips.

When confronted with the Marxist view that all commercial productivity is inherently imperialistic, simply ask the question: ‘Could one salaried employee out produce five slaves?’ The answer is 'Yes'. Slaves are very unproductive, very difficult to manage and Marxists are hanging on to the slavery idea long after the commercial world has discarded it.

Nowhere is this rhetoric more commonly found (at every turn) than in the workers’ paradise of western Europe. The first clue is the misidentification of any and all non-governmental economic activity taking place in civil society as capitalism. It displays an identical ignorance of it that I came to know behind the iron curtain: founded on what little information about it that had been offered to people, and all of it was deliberately negative.

The idea that the idea... the rhetorical grenade to be precise, is something the syndicalist / lynch-mob fantasy left is hanging on to with all of its’ will is precise. Precisely because it is such a fake argument, and is simple enough to thrust onto children who have no life experience to differentiate it. It’s done in the hope that it will produce in them an adherent, knowing full well that ideas that contrived can only be inculcated where there are opportunities to program the target at a vulnerable developmental stage.

The reason is simple. The level of management (and government support) required to use slaves is great and their productivity is nil.

Which, rather ironically, is exactly how the Comecon Marxist-Leninist economies operated: they were filthy with regulatory carpriciousness and ineffectual middle-management, and treated the worker for what he and she was: a captive of the state. Every instiution you were tied to was its’ own plantation, and leaving the society or dropping out was rarely an option.

How a modern leftist can observe those truths, and process the difference between what they want to call slavery with what was an objectively real, living, slavery is most telling.

The counter-argument was that these states didn’t practice “real” socialism. How would they know? The practices of these states were as philosophically consistent as Marx and Engels’ teachings had proscribed. Is what was really there – slavery – not real enough for them?

Whiffs of Tom Lehrer: It's in the Koran

(Shookhran to Damian)

A Classic case of Being Irrelevant

Justice commissioner Viviane Reding on Monday criticised the US for lacking interest and not having yet appointed a proper negotiator on an over-arching data protection agreement with the EU. Her words came as the bloc's own data protection supervisor slammed the EU internal security strategy for being unclear about privacy.

Yadda, yadda, yadda...

"From the outset, we have noted an apparent lack of interest on the US side to talk seriously about data protection," Ms Reding said in a statement, two weeks after holding talks with US attorney general Eric Holder and interior minister Janet Napolitano.
She said that the US is interested in negotiations on specific data-sharing deals with Europe, but that there was less movement on the over-arching data protection agreement [than] she had the mandate to negotiate.

The officially irate Reichsminister Reding continued to expect someone to show up anyway, I suppose for the pointless Kabuki theater that they need to look relevant:

"They have not even appointed a negotiator," Ms Reding pointed out, adding she "expects" the telephone number of the negotiator before the end of the year.

The possibility that others don’t agree with the efficacy of negotiating domestic laws with a foreign entity may not have fallen upon the infallable Empirial Adjutant Reding.

As in: there’s nothing of any note to discuss until the EUvians get a policy, and Congress empowers a mandate. Elsewhere from by bulging “sign it and forget it” pile:

"The EDPS regrets that although the communication refers to privacy and data protection as fundamental rights, the EU commission does not explain how this will be ensured in practice," it noted.

That's alreight. It looks like the world is unwilling to take you seriously anyway.

Is France Pioneering the Sale by NATO Countries of High-Technology Military Equipment to the Kremlin?

Since a low-key Christmas Eve announcement of a French sale of assault ships to Russia,

reports Doreen Carvajal regarding the Mistral from Paris,

high-level government deal makers have boasted about the multimillion-euro deal like it was a soccer game triumph. “France wins,” declares the Web site for the Élysée Palace.

But critics — particularly among Russia’s neighbors including Georgia, Estonia and Lithuania — are raising alarms that France may have pioneered the way for other Western countries to sell Russia whatever they have to offer, from high-technology military equipment to rights for oil pipelines.

“It’s a scandal,” said André Glucksmann, a French philosopher and critic of the deal. He said in an interview on Tuesday that the announcement was timed for the busy Christmas season to bury the “dirty details.”

The boxy, 600-foot-long Mistral vessel is an advanced helicopter carrier equipped with a command center and hospital for military landing operations. It is the first major arms purchase by Russia abroad and the first sale by a NATO country, illustrating the shifting role of an alliance once conceived to counter Soviet military power.

One of the sticking points in negotiations was whether the deal would include advanced naval weapons and defense systems. In the months leading to the deal, a series of French officials softened their stand, saying that France was willing to supply the technology without restrictions.

Naval Industry: France Wins!
Russia chooses Saint-Nazaire to build its new boats
Besides using an infantile term (boats instead of ships, or navires), the Elysee website completely ignores the military aspect of the deal…

…The Baltic states have long raised concerns, keenly aware of the comments of Russia’s naval chief, Adm. Vladimir S. Vysotsky, who last year bluntly evaluated the potential benefits the equipment could have offered during the five-day Georgian war in 2008: “Everything that we did in the space of 26 hours at the time, this ship will do within 40 minutes.”

…Much of the geopolitical wrangling about the deal emerged in secret American diplomatic cables released by WikiLeaks. In February 2010, Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates raised the issue with President Nicolas Sarkozy and France’s defense minister at the time, Hervé Morin.

According to the ambassador’s report of the meeting, Mr. Gates noted that Russia failed to honor an armistice in Georgia brokered by Mr. Sarkozy. Mr. Gates also was scornful of the top deal makers: “Russian democracy has disappeared, and the government is an oligarchy run by the security services.”

Update: Autonomous Mind has more on "France’s traditionally self serving actions":

Russia was delighted that the Élysée was on board, on message and sowing disunity around western Europe. … The obvious conclusion to draw was that French had identified in Russia an opportunity for an advantage and vested self interest was at play

Moral Repugnance at a Glance, even by the Standards of a Death Cult

Two European quasi-thinkers write a tome about the world that they would like to shove down humanity’s throat, and then interview one another.

Smugness and the pretense that we will “all be shocked”, it seems has become a virtue.

Taz: Herr Leggewie, Herr Welzer, the economy is showing signs of recovery. Isn't the global financial meltdown going rather well?

CL: It depends how you look at it. At least greenhouse gasses emissions are dropping. I haven't seen any bankers dangling from the street lamps but the stock exchange tickers are up and running again, and trade in those idiotic derivatives is booming.

HW: It's business as usual, it's as if it'd never happened. Except that the bill for crisis management will have to be footed by the generations to come.

As if there will be no “price for generations to come” for what they want:

HW: Quite the opposite. We are calling for cultural change, which would be worthwhile even without a crisis. It still makes sense to reject the hegemonic culture of waste and the civil religion of growth even without climate change and economic crisis – and it's fun too.

CL: We've had a lot of very positive feedback from people who've had it up to here with the world as we knew it and who believe that now is the time to build a better world by pooling our resources. The political class has no idea that all around them, a new type of extra-parliamentary movement is forming?

What form is it taking?

CL: The Pirate Party, for example, or the climate alliances and new protest movements.

The morons actually think they’re funny too.

You obviously enjoy making apocalyptic jokes. Or how else should we interpret your romance with crisis?

HW: Why do people always have to talk about the apocalypse and loving crisis whenever you tell it like it is?

Why indeed?

HW: Look, I'll put it very simply: what they sell us as realpolitik these days is a complete illusion, because it doesn't address any the problems of the future – climate change, dwindling resources, mounting water and food deficits, the escalating global conflict potential, the exploitation of our children's future. If you look at it this way, it's the realpoliticians who seem who have a fondness for crises. Crises also provide an excellent opportunity to score points for tireless crisis management. This is good for distracting from the fact that there is nothing on the political agenda.

None of which is real. So, by all means, start up that entirely pointless and fake “zero population growth” movement again. Advocate mass suicide, genocide. Bring back that authoritarianism for the sake of man crap if you think it germaine. Bring it back even if you think it’s Jackie, Tito, Marlon and/or Michael if you think you should... Just impose it on yourselves, you noisy parasites.

Nor is getting caught up in every detached, uninvolved whiner’s complaints become an actually theory of anything, which is why you end up resorting to the only theme that DOES fit, which is that the Apocalypse is nigh, so hand over your dope and underaged girls or something.

Look, it’s very simple: humanity has heard this argument, and it hasn’t just been debunked by reason, it’s disproved itself. Interestingly enough, it managed all of this without the promulgators of the theory being “in charge” of it, or to their apparent disappointment, others.

But for the crown that falls for this routine, it seems that any kind of “sciency” sounding credentials will do.

Harald Welzer is a professor of social psychology. His lastest book is called “Climate Wars.”

Claus Leggewie is director of the German Advisory Council on Climate Change. Leggewie is also a member of the the scientific advisory council of Attac

Modern Social Graces in the Age of Politcal Correctness

Leftism is Now Little More than an Adolescent Lynch-mob Fantasy

Proven to us every day by those that promote it. Even adherents to the (more or less) decayed ideas of envy-laden, class-warfare promoting Marxist-Leninism find that to be true. Don’t be surprised:

Then almost immediately, [the blogger] History is Made… told me, he turned to Indymedia to find it full of claims that Wikileaks is a Mossad/CIA false flag operation to deflect us away from the real conspiracies…

It’s a natural fit for “troofing” in it’s many forms, repeated over and over, over time with no actual examination of the events, outcome, origins, or anything else. For these buffoons, it all comes out the same way:

“Sadly, Indymedia offers a platform to invent caricatures of the Israeli state and of its policies. Instead of recognising the political context, it helps to perpetuate an image of Israel, and of Jews, as sinister conspirators with a secret plan to turn the world into one massive settlement.”

Once the lying starts, expect it to continue. The question really isn’t one of the promoters of these idea thinking that people are after them, (given their importance, and all that divine illumination that they offer,) but why people really AREN’T after them.

Chalking it up to yeaning for a hip edge, those that want to remain respectable are in on the act too.

Obama's Failure to Close Guantanamo? It's the Fault of Bush and of the Trap Laid by His Evil Henchmen

It's all Bush's fault! Bush Derangement Syndrome is back in force in France (but did it ever leave Europe's shores?), as Le Monde — which obviously has no idea of the contents of the Geneva Convention — describes the Guantánamo situation as a "judicial trap" (and "a pure illegality" concerning "that camp of shame") laid by lying, conniving, treacherous officials of the Bush administration. With most Le Monde readers adding their habitual hooey, this of course means in turn that Barack Obama is but a poor defenseless victim of the evil Bush — as you can see in the piece's title (Barack Obama Caught in the Guantanamo Trap) and in very first sentence.

Le piège juridique installé par l'administration Bush, ancrée dans l'idéologie de la "guerre au terrorisme", se referme sur l'administration Obama. En janvier 2011, le président américain devrait signer un décret présidentiel autorisant l'internement sans jugement et pour une durée illimitée de certains des détenus de la base militaire de Guantanamo, à Cuba.

…Ce piège, mis en place après les attentats d'Al-Qaida du 11 septembre 2001, a d'abord consisté à inventer une catégorie juridique, nommée "combattant ennemi illégal", dans le seul objectif de déroger au droit américain et international, en particulier au droit de la guerre codifié par les Conventions de Genève.

Dès lors que lesdits terroristes n'entraient pas dans les catégories usuelles du droit, on pouvait aussi bien créer la prison de Guantanamo que pratiquer sur eux la torture, pour peu que des "avis juridiques" les décrètent conformes au droit.

…Selon le principe de la prophétie autoréalisatrice, en légalisant de facto un "trou noir" juridique, l'administration Bush a créé des prisonniers non justiciables.

Le 21 mai 2009, M. Obama reconnaissait que ceux-ci constituent "l'enjeu spécifique le plus difficile qu'affronte" son administration. Aujourd'hui, par décret, il se retrouve empêtré dans cette situation exorbitante et en passe de confirmer, à son tour, une pure illégalité : la privation de liberté sans fin imposée sans jugement à des êtres humains.

"You broke it, you fix it", dit un dicton américain : celui qui casse doit réparer. Washington, sous George Bush, a "cassé" le respect que devait son administration au droit international. Barack Obama entendait le rétablir. Face à un Congrès où les républicains (massivement) et les démocrates (majoritairement) privilégient les impératifs de sécurité sur toute autre préoccupation, il assure toujours vouloir y parvenir. Et, à terme, fermer ce camp de la honte.

Mais, en attendant, il en vient, lui aussi, à déroger au droit international. La facilité consisterait à suivre le point de vue d'un Jack Goldsmith, ex-rédacteur des "avis juridiques" de George Bush ; il conseillait récemment à M. Obama de s'en tenir à une norme simple : "Ne jugez pas les terroristes, enfermez-les." Le réalisme est de se souvenir que l'abandon du droit finit toujours par se retourner contre celui qui s'y laisse entraîner, même s'il croit ne le faire qu'à titre conjoncturel.

related: What should enrage every decent citizen is that the real torturers — from Zimbabwe to China, from Syria to North Korea — get a pass from the political left ("The demands to shut down our Guantanamo lock-up for terrorists have nothing to do with human rights. They're about punishing America for our power and success.")

Gogo-Gôchistes Pédophiles

John Rosenthal follows the money on the state sponsored hate speech behind Roman Polanski’s film The Ghost Writer. It won “best picture” in the European Film Academy awards, and like virtually all European films shows in the credits a gaggle of state funded sponsors, and other barriers between the product and its unviability.

The entire effort is to advance the “lapdog” argument, as if the tunnel of mirrors, the same one that convinces people to ignore or even defend Polanski’s pederasty, isn’t one big lap of operant conditioning and servility.

The film is a kind of amalgam of “good European” pieties (e.g., the righteousness of the International Criminal Court) and delirious anti-American phantasms. It follows the trials and tribulations of a ghostwriter working on the memoirs of a former British prime minister. In the midst of his assignment, the ghostwriter gradually uncovers the “appalling truth” — as the official synopsis puts it — that his employer had been under the control of the CIA while residing at 10 Downing Street.

Never mind that the population is so cheap and lethargic that “Culture Ministries” are needed to buoy the arts, films, and the like, even those that pander to the obvious which one would think not need state support, get it.

Full of delusions and excuses, dependant on enablement and ignoring the norms of right and wrong, we might as well call it the politics of pedophilia. A fitting end to a society that largely believes that children aren’t worth having, were it not for one’s need to see others as creatures only worth keeping around to exploit for your ego and pleasure.

Selective WikiLeaks and its handpicked print media: the 5 papers that do most to propagate the dismal view of American power and U.S. foreign policy

A more glaring violation of WikiLeaks’s supposed commitment to “radical transparency” could hardly be imagined

notes John Rosenthal as he examines what turns out to be 'the farce that is WikiLeaks’s self-styled “Cablegate”,' pointing out that

whereas WikiLeaks has withheld the documents from the public [not even 1 percent of the reported total have thus far been published on its website], five handpicked media organizations have enjoyed exclusive access to the complete stash. … the selection of the five newspapers enjoying privileged access has clearly not been arbitrary.

Germany’s Der Spiegel, Britain’s Guardian, Spain’s El País, France’s Le Monde, and America’s own New York Times. Not only are these five of the hoariest dinosaurs still roaming across the international old media landscape. Taken together, they are probably the five print media of reference that have done the most over the last decade to propagate the dismal view of American power and American foreign policy that passes for “leftism” nowadays in both Europe and the United States itself. (Italy’s La Repubblica could be added to the list.) Why were precisely these media and not others given privileged access?

The exclusive access provided the five old media dinosaurs has given them an unfair competitive advantage vis-à-vis their competitors and thereby an obvious economic boost. … But the exclusive access has also given the fabulous five old media organizations the opportunity to pick and choose among the cables and to spin their content in accordance with the precepts of the anti-American Weltanschauung.

And spin they have. Der Spiegel and its treatment of the story of the Egyptian imam Abu Omar provides a revealing case in point.

Read the whole thing, notably the (numerous) times that the papers' "editors appear to have not deemed the revelations regarding [subjects such as Khaled Al-Masri] as newsworthy" ('Whether out of ignorance or deceit, news organizations like Der Spiegel and WikiLeaks’s other privileged “media partners” have as a rule neglected to divulge its contents [those of an Italian arrest warrant published years ago] or even its [the warrant's] mere existence to their readers')…

The Pause that Refreshes

Crazy Mixed Up Pup, 1956



An animated fillum directed by the criminally insane Tex Avery, inventor of characters like Screwy Squirrel, Chilly Willy, Daffy Duck, and Porky Pig. Find me JUST ONE of those characters that isn’t struggling with their inner demons, why dontcha?

Don't Ask Don't Tell Repeal Makes Super Marine Come True

(A big nice thaaank youuuu to sweet Duncan)

Trees are Farmed, You Snapperheads

As in, they are no different than any other agricultural product. A trained chimpanzee could figure than out. Then again, we have confirmed to us the fact that Greenies aren’t quite as intelligent as trained chimpanzees.

Via Tim Bleeeah, we find something I’ve run into elsewhere, (with the evil LEED mafia,) wherein they do not want you to print their document in order to “save the trees”. They do this by locking the PDF file that it’s formatted in.

These people are inept:

The WWF format is a PDF that cannot be printed out. It’s a simple way to avoid unnecessary printing. So here’s your chance to save trees and help the environment. Decide for yourself which documents don’t need printing out – then simply save them as WWF.

To illustrate the enfeeblement of these louts, think of it this way. Not printing a document that you will use, as if the tree it came from wasn’t already replanted, is like not eating corn because you're worried that the world will run out of corn cobs. After all, what with all of those corn-type farmers committing suicide in India, and all... even if you won’t buy the fact that it’s old growth corn, that there won’t be anyone left to plant it.

Green Eggs and Epistemological Certitude

Be who you are and say what you feel, because those who mind don't matter and those who matter don't mind.

- Dr. Seuss (1904 - 1991)

Nicolas Sarkozy: a common French-Chinese front against the United States?

Europe is so besieged by problems that on some days it looks as if its common currency and hopes for unity are disintegrating

writes John Vinocur as Barack Obama, according to Nicolas Sarkozy’s annotators, is preparing to receive the French president on Jan. 9.

All the same, Nicolas Sarkozy will head to Washington early in January for a conversation about reorganizing the world monetary system in a way that might just mark the United States as the real global force in decline.

For the last two years, the French president has been arguing that the dollar’s role as the single global reserve currency doesn’t reflect what he insists is a multipolar world with no further reason to kowtow to the greenback.

Now, as president and agenda setter in 2011 of the Group of 20 consultative body of leading economic nations, Mr. Sarkozy is leaving his bully pulpit’s specific aims and tactics on the dollar fluid — an imprecision difficult to avoid against a background of the euro’s daily ducks and dives.

Still, in the words of Le Monde last month, he is “counting on making the G-20 his magnum opus and finding a solution to the world’s monetary imbalances with, if necessary, a common French-Chinese front against the United States.”

…In his own pre-election year circumstances, Mr. Obama seemingly could not let pass an argument that tacitly centers on nudging or shoving the dollar aside or to a diminished role among the world’s currencies, and is based on a premise (or creed) of American decline.

Troublingly to some, Mr. Obama said this year, in reference to Afghanistan, he does not hold classical views of what constitutes America winning or losing a war. But he has never gotten into the business of reinforcing widespread assumptions of an American acceptance of multipolarity — a notional world of “equal” and competing powers in which the United States concedes loss of its primacy, whatever its many qualifications.

The dollar is not just a symbol of that primacy. The surrender of its prerogatives would damage the United States’ position in the financial and monetary worlds, and very possibly impair America’s military commitment to its allies in Europe and Asia.

Mr. Sarkozy embraces multipolarity, a decades-old Gaullist notion, as if it were a kind of divine commandment.

Where are the Left’s Professional Complainers on THIS One?

Hardly a day goes by when there isn’t some verbal drive-by shooting of Vatican: the actual closure of the Galileo trial issues, or statements about the use of condoms notwithstanding, the play only makes reference to they “having taken so long”, not that they actually took place. It all arises from the Leftist commentariat’s culture of complaint. Perspective is never sought, and events are only cited as examples of their dissatisfaction at something “the others” are insulting their sensibilities with.

As with the bizarre, unrecanted and unrevised defense of the likes of Pol Pot and Mao, it’s not real. It’s only a show. It only bears mention when it is so far outside of common sensibility that it is morally indefensible. So where are they on this subject? A whole movement was silent about the Cultural Revolution, even as it was trying to convince us that the riot s were for “free speech”, despite the fact that all sundry knew that it was just another one of history’s Communist totalitarian roundups.

After 40+ years, the occasional former “students” in China who played out a much more vast Salem Witch Hunt in the Cultural Revolution are admitting some fault and express regret for the personal and social harm that they caused.

The reconciliation and apologies took place among a group of old people: Cheng Bi, retired teacher from the Beijing Foreign Language School, 86 years old; Guan Qiulan, retired teacher from the Peking University Auxiliary Middle School, 81 years old; Li Huangguo, retired teacher from the Beijing Mineral Industry Auxiliary Middle School, 79 years old. Across them are their former students: Shen Xiaoke, Hu Bin and Guo Canhui, all over 60 years old.

Which age, too much age if you ask me, they are seeking redemption and forgiveness to salve their souls.

Now, the Red Guards want to apologize to those teachers whom they and their "comrades" slapped and spit upon many years ago.

I say don’t give it to them, if they waited until the age in which one needs it to do it.

In recent years, Li was clearly suffering from dementia. She could not eat, she could not talk and she was clearly confused. It was hard to say if she was aware that someone was making an apology to her. When people visit her at night, she can occasionally name one or two of them. Her husband Dan Zhongjian told her, "Your students came in the afternoon to apologize to you." Li Huangguo nodded her head.

Which I suppose makes it an awful lot easier if a response isn’t expected due to dementia, emotional exhaustions, and the like.

It’s the kind of face saving that these “Talibs”, former “students,” simply do not deserve. They’re only doing it so that they could stop feeling bad, as if it was about their hurt feelings to begin with.