Non-Crisis and Non-Cause-for-Alarm Forces PR Jokers into High Gear

Plan Bee.. how City banks are trying to save the humble bee

There is an acute bee crisis in the UK so putting them on top of the Stock Exchange seemed to make sense,"

Stunningly bad alliterations aside, no more than anywhere else, but, like, whatever.

Origins: Stoking Anti-Globalization

Founded on the theory that those Mexicans didn't need jobs anyway, a typical "editorial" from the golden age of self-delusion.



A Radio Berlin International broadcast from 1972

A Cold War Radio Fragment

Radio Berlin International (DDR) - circa 1981

Mach Mit, and All That [erp]

September 1944: From the German magazine “Simplissimus”, we find the same argument employed by the French ‘radicals’ today. That American and British, nay ”Anglo-Saxon” hostility is poisoning their bucolic, egalitarian idyll.



We Recycle!

You've Gotta Look Busy

If I could rename all those “International” Geneva-based institutions anything, I would call them the “Fake-Crisis Emergency Management Center”

Achtung, Baby!

They’re coming for your vapid Hello Kitty memorabilia!

From the Wonderful World of Persuasion, DDR Style

Permit me to present an excerpt from a 1981 East German publication for agitators. It was meant to give small-time propagandists who were supposed to work the barracks, the factory floor, and the like, examples of successful preaching to the imprisoned.

One choise piece provides an example of the limits of truthiness:

Italy: What are the Causes of Terrorist Actions?

The new year began in Italy as the old one had ended: with terrorist actions. On 31 December, Police General Enrico Calvaligi was shot at the front door of his home. In January, the kidnapping of Judge Giovanni D’Urso occupied public attention until he was a released. These were only the latest in a long chain of events that began on 12 December 1969 with a bomb at the Agricultural Bank in Milan and reached its high point so far on Bologna on 2 August 1980 when 85 people were killed and more than 200 injured. What are the causes of these terrorist actions, which have affected Italy in particular, but also other capitalist countries?

Bourgeois and social reformist ideologists and politicians generally, reject the claim that the roots are in the capitalist system. Explaining the causes, however, requires considering the whole interrelated complex of objective and subjective of economic, social, political, and ideological factors, and they develop from the nature of the capitalist system!

In the socio-economic area, terrorism is bred complex of factors of new and old contradictions, in the backwardness of the south, and particularly the sharpness of the economic crisis and its results. The inflation rate in 1980 was above 20 percent throughout the year, at the top of the leading capitalist states, and unemployment according to official figures remained at about 1.7 million, about 50 percent of whom are young people. In a situation of general uncertainty, extremist and anarchist ideas spread among dissatisfied and politically immature young people who want revenge on the bourgeois state. In this milieu, adventurers find an audience for their calls for “direct action” and terrorist acts, which they claim are the quickest path to social change. The crisis is also hard on the middle class, and produces not only anti-monopolistic views, but also radical views to the right and the “left.” Demagogic appeals to national sentiments, or to economic and social difficulties and social problems, allow neo-fascist and “leftist” extremist groups to win supporters in various social levels — from the poorest farmers in the south to some tradesmen, businessmen, civil servants, and students.

The two were, of course, kidnapped by the Red Brigade, well known for their “right wing views” to the East German listener of this bromide, and who were trained, plosletyzed to, and funded by the intelligence agencies of the Warsaw pact,making the entire thing a “Daddy drinks because you cry” type of argument.

Government Sponsored Art. It’s THAT Good!

Building North Korea-style monuments for cash-strapped countries has become a cash lifeline for Kim Jong Il's regime.

"Juche, all the way!, right?" The philosophy of self-relaiance always seems to need to do business outside of the bubble with those horrible capitalist "creators of wealth"...

Much of the unit’s output is propaganda, he said. But they also produce inoffensive nature scenes or ceramics largely bought by Chinese or Japanese customers. “There is no post-modernism, no concept of the viewer deciding the meaning,” Cockerell said. “It’s a more naive style.”

Incapable of irony as they are, expect the usual sophistication too:

Senegal's colossal statue stirs big controversy

But the centerpiece statue — of a man, woman and baby ascending a mountain — is rendered in the signature Stalinist North Korean style. The couple is reminiscent of Soviet-depicted Bolshevik revolutionaries, only with African heads.

In fact, in the original mock ups, North Korean designers hadn’t bothered to change the statue’s features from Asian to African, Senegalese President Abdoulaye Wade told the Wall Street Journal. They were altered only after his complaints. The president was later criticized for paying the U.N.-sanctioned foreign regime $27.7 million for the statue while unemployment in his own country neared 50 percent.

These are the Bad Old Days

Between the Koreas, there is still a Radio War going down.

And you Thought You Just Needed More Fiber

Don’t expect a Kindle edition any time soon.

The Workers' Party of Korea Publishing House brought out Vol. 10 of "Selected Works of Kim Jong Il" (enlarged edition) which comprehensively deals with immortal classic works of leader Kim Jong Il.

The Near Distant Ago, Remembered

Those among us interested in radio will enjoy this one: one of those new fangled weblog thingies focusing on Radio Berlin International, the voice of the erstwhile German leftist dictatorship. For a collection of their QSL cards, as well as postcards from said erstwhile German leftist dictatorship, hier clicken, bitte.

News Digest from the Fake-Crisis Management Center, no. 2011\07B

Scary bee eugenics replaces bee crisis

Building A Super Bee To Save Us From A Food Crisis

Mite-resistant bees are probably not the panacea to our bee crisis. Because while mites and viruses certainly contribute to our bee problems.

And you though that THEY thought that Genetically Modified Organisms are BAAAAAD.

Dystopia Then, Dystopia Now

Just as now, the wasteland of popular culture promoted a sort of "unilateral disarmament" against the world's evils. Otherwise we were to still enjoy the misery we were deserving.

Post-Nuclear Germany, Beware

Beware of fooling yourself most of all:

However, without these subsidies not one of the "world famous" Danish wind farms would be profitable. But not even the government largesse, courtesy of the taxpayers/consumers seems to be enough to keep wind power profitable in Denmark; Scan Energy, one of the major wind and solar energy companies, with production also in Germany and France, has finally called it a day. Among the major shareholders are a number of the biggest Danish farming estates. Now there is, according to the Danish daily Jylland-Posten, a real risk that some of these family estates, built up during centuries, will have to be sold as a consequense of the Scan Energy bankruptcy.

Henpecking in the Near Distant Ago

Europa 1920, Europa 2010

Still Chasing the same straw men - that is, anything that reminds them of figures of authority as they think they understood them to be: military figures, business, and faith. A whole century of evidence, and they’re repeating the same infantile rants: make me free, feed me too, but give us authoritarian order, so long as it’s the type that suits my views.

SMICard Nation

Why I'm Depressed, a Chain E-mail

Over five thousand years ago, Moses said to the children of Israel, "Pick up your shovels, mount your asses and camels, and I will lead you to the Promised Land."

140 years ago,(when Welfare was introduced) Otto von Bismark said, "Lay down your shovels, sit on your asses, and light up a Camel, this is the Promised Land."

Today, the government has stolen your shovel, taxed your asses, raised the price of camels and mortgaged the Promised Land!

I was so depressed last night thinking about Health Insurance, the economy, lost jobs, savings, Retirement, retirement funds, etc . . . called a Suicide Hotline. I had to press 1 for English. I was connected to a call center in Pakistan. I told them I was suicidal.

They got excited and asked if I could drive a truck......

No, Seriously. You First.

News Digest from the Fake-Crisis Management Center, no. 2011\3-D

Minneapolis Star Tribune: What Are Bees Telling Us?

It tells me we have a pet issue that no-one understands but can advocate in the works.

The movie is a look at the global bee crisis examining the problems of monoculture and pesticides.

"Queen of the Sun," is said to offer a profound alternative look at the tragic global bee crisis. "Alternative" meaning, whatever one wants it to be, such as a "global" thing that goes undetected in south America and sub-saharan Africa.

News Digest from the Fake-Crisis Management Center, no. 2011\3-B

Now, it's an officially recognized fake crisis!

The UN on Thursday expressed alarm at a huge decline in bee colonies under a multiple onslaught of pests and pollution, urging an international effort to save the pollinators that are vital for food crops.

[... snip ...]

Honey bee colony declines in recent years have reached 10 to 30 percent in Europe, 30 percent in the United States, up to 85 percent in Middle East, said scientist Peter Neumann, one of the authors of the first ever UN report on the issue.

But in South America, Africa and Australia there were no reports of high losses.

In other words, it's a parasite as already established, not a platform to complain about pollution and human existence.