Super Happy Fun Apres-Christmas Day Post

Too... much... food...

Now that you have five pounds of chocolate to eat...


A university in northwestern China has forbidden Christmas for its students:

A university in northwestern China has banned Christmas, calling it a "kitsch" foreign celebration unbefitting of the country's own traditions and making its students watch propaganda films instead, media said on Thursday.

The state-run Beijing News said that the Modern College of Northwest University, located in Xian, had strung up banners around the campus reading "Strive to be outstanding sons and daughters of China, oppose kitsch Western holidays" and "Resist the expansion of Western culture".

A student told the newspaper that they would be punished if they did not attend a mandatory three-hour screening of propaganda films, which other students said included one about Confucius, with teachers standing guard to stop people leaving.

"There's nothing we can do about it, we can't escape," the student was quoted as saying.

An official microblog belonging to one of the university's Communist Party's committees posted comments calling for students not to "fawn on foreigners" and pay more attention to China's holidays, like Spring Festival.

"In recent years, more and more Chinese have started to attach importance to Western festivals," it wrote.

"In their eyes, the West is more developed than China, and they think that their holidays are more elegant than ours, even that Western festivals are very fashionable and China's traditional festivals are old fashioned."

Christmas is not a traditional festival in officially atheist China but is growing in popularity, especially in more metropolitan areas where young people go out to celebrate, give gifts and decorate their homes.

Yes, if there is anything that will bring red unity, it's banning fun in lieu of stupid propaganda films that will be largely forgotten after the first round of Christmas drinks in someone's dorm room.

You fail, communism!


Speaking of communism and films....

Of course it does:

Russia on Thursday offered sympathy to North Korea amid the Sony hacking scandal, saying the movie that sparked the dispute was so scandalous that Pyongyang's anger was "quite understandable."

Pariah dictators have to stick together.

Russia backed and still backs North Korea. It has, however, very little regard for non-Russians as history shows:

A North Korean who tried to bring a drunk Soviet lieutenant to justice said, “I cannot forgive the Soviet soldier who raped my wife. Many such perpetrators went unpunished. Though another lieutenant colonel urged the Soviet military police to punish the perpetrators to maintain military discipline several times, his words went unheeded, the report said.
The 25th Primorsky Krai unit commander of the Soviet Far East Army arrived at Pyongyang Airport on Aug. 26, 1945, and described the Soviet army as liberators. “Remember fellow Koreans! Your happiness is up to you. You have achieved freedom and independence. Everything is up to you now,” he said. The report, however, quoted the commander as threatening to “hang half of the Koreans” if they rise up against the Soviet army in protest of their abuses.
The commander held a party with his subordinates for 22 hours in a row in downtown Haeju on Nov. 16, 1945. A fire broke out and burned houses, but he said the fire was an act of arson committed by dissidents and received 300,000 yen as compensation.
The report quoted another Soviet colonel as saying privately, “The Korean people were enslaved for the past 35 years. It’s okay for them be enslaved a little longer.
- See more at: http://freekorea.us/2010/03/10/newly-released-soviet-report-details-atrocities-in-north-korea/#sthash.XhxlhEyv.dpuf

A North Korean who tried to bring a drunk Soviet lieutenant to justice said, “I cannot forgive the Soviet soldier who raped my wife. Many such perpetrators went unpunished. Though another lieutenant colonel urged the Soviet military police to punish the perpetrators to maintain military discipline several times, his words went unheeded, the report said.

The 25th Primorsky Krai unit commander of the Soviet Far East Army arrived at Pyongyang Airport on Aug. 26, 1945, and described the Soviet army as liberators. “Remember fellow Koreans! Your happiness is up to you. You have achieved freedom and independence. Everything is up to you now,” he said. The report, however, quoted the commander as threatening to “hang half of the Koreans” if they rise up against the Soviet army in protest of their abuses.

The commander held a party with his subordinates for 22 hours in a row in downtown Haeju on Nov. 16, 1945. A fire broke out and burned houses, but he said the fire was an act of arson committed by dissidents and received 300,000 yen as compensation.

The report quoted another Soviet colonel as saying privately, “The Korean people were enslaved for the past 35 years. It’s okay for them be enslaved a little longer.

 

Just like China:

China also favors the remote-control censorship of American speech. The editors of The Global Times, for example, believe they have standing to define the acceptable limits of free speech here:

    “No matter how U.S. society looks at North Korea and Kim Jong-un, Kim is still the leader of the country. The vicious mocking of Kim is only a result of senseless cultural arrogance,” the Chinese state-run paper said in an editorial.

    “The biggest motive for Sony Pictures may be the box office, by putting out a sensational story. However, if the movie really was shown on a large scale, it would further upset the already troubled U.S.-North Korea ties,” it said. [Yonhap]

The editors of The Global Times can go fuck themselves. They’re the first ones to whine about “interference” in China’s “internal affairs” when civilized nations protest that China’s tyrants gun down students, jail dissidents, persecute Tibetans, or send North Korean kids to death camps. It takes some chutzpah for a gang of toadies for stultifying, culture-strangling despots to lecture a free society with a legitimate government about what kinds of speech it should allow.

The blinkered thinking of states with self-important tyrants is a thing to behold.

Also:

If we turn the debate around, and look at some evidence that the North Koreans might NOT be behind the Sony hack, the picture looks significantly clearer.

1. First of all, there is the fact that the attackers only brought up the anti-North Korean bias of “The Interview” after the media did—the film was never mentioned by the hackers right at the start of their campaign. In fact, it was only after a few people started speculating in the media that this and the communication from North Korea “might be linked” that suddenly it did get linked. My view is that the attackers saw this as an opportunity for “lulz”, and a way to misdirect everyone. (And wouldn’t you know it? The hackers are now saying it’s okay for Sony to release the movie, after all.) If everyone believes it’s a nation state, then the criminal investigation will likely die. It’s the perfect smokescreen.

2. The hackers dumped the data. Would a state with a keen understanding of the power of propaganda be so willing to just throw away such a trove of information? The mass dump suggests that whoever did this, their primary motivation was to embarrass Sony Pictures. They wanted to humiliate the company, pure and simple.

There goes that story.


The plight of Christians in the seed-ground of Christianity:

This year, there would be no big holiday parties at Our Lady of Salvation, a local landmark topped by a towering cross that's visible for miles. Christians are leaving Iraq, the population down from more than 1 million a decade ago to about 350,000, many of them displaced.

In the north, Islamic State fighters have forced thousands to flee. In Baghdad, where the security situation is still so tenuous that priests worried that celebrations could provoke an attack. Last Christmas, three bombings targeted Christians, including a Roman Catholic church, and killed 38 people.

Shortly before the 6 p.m. Christmas Eve service, the children and their families filed out of the school past concrete barriers topped with barbed wire and into the packed church for several hours of singing and prayer, the highlight of their day, hoping the strangers they met meant them no harm.
"The guards and blocks can't do anything if something is about to happen," the Rev. Nabil Yako said.

**

Millions of Christians around the world began Christmas celebrations Wednesday, with worshippers in the Middle East marking the occasion after a violence-plagued year that brought suffering to many. ...

Even in the Palestinian territories, Christmas will be a deliberately low-key affair after a July-August war with Israel which left nearly 2,200 Gazans dead and the tiny enclave in ruins in the third such conflict in six years. ...

In Baghdad, Chaldean Patriarch Louis Sako said about 150,000 Christians had been displaced by an offensive spearheaded by the Islamic State group, which has targeted Christians and other minorities, with dozens leaving Iraq each day.

Iraq's displaced Christians "still live in a tragic situation and there are no quick solutions for them," Sako told AFP, saying that particularly this Christmas, they needed reassurances that they "are not left alone and not forgotten".

In Syria, Christians in the war-torn city of Homs were enjoying their first Christmas in three years in the Hamidiyeh neighbourhood, with a brightly coloured tree and a manger made from rubble set up in the middle of the ruins.

"Our joy is indescribable," said Taghrid Naanaa while picking out tree decorations at a shop in the district, which the Syrian army recaptured from rebel fighters this year.

Iranian President Hassan Rouhani, in a Christmas message to the Pope published on his official website, called for cooperation to "spread peace, security and well-being in the world".

(sigh)

This happens every year:

In October, Jeffrey Tayler wrote in Salon that the Qur’an “backs up jihad, suicide attacks (“martyrdom”), beheadings, even taking captive women as sex slaves.” This was singular for Salon, which usually whitewashes the truth about Islam and jihad and excoriates those who expose it as “racists” and “bigots,” but now it is clear why Tayler was able to get away with it: he is supremely hostile to Christianity. Here, he gives a characteristic Salon Christmas greeting: Jesus likely never existed, but Muhammad’s existence is well established.

So, even the Talmud, Tacitus and Josephus were lying?

It fries some people that a Jewish carpenter existed, hence the ridiculous denial that He did.

Get over it, people.



(Kamsahamnida to all and to all a good night.)