I guess American righties aren’t Putin’s only not-so-secret admirers (via):
Putin now presents himself as the leader of the far right in Europe, and the leaders of Europe’s right-wing parties pledge their allegiance. There is an obvious contradiction here: Russian propaganda insists to Westerners that the problem with Ukraine is that its government is too far to the right, even as Russiabuilds a coalition with the European far right. Extremist, populist, and neo-Nazi party members went to Crimea and praised the electoral farce as a model for Europe. As Anton Shekhovtsov, a researcher of the European far right, has pointed out, the leader of the Bulgarian extreme right launched his party’s campaign for the European parliament in Moscow. The Italian Fronte Nazionale praises Putin for his “courageous position against the powerful gay lobby.” The neo-Nazis of the Greek Golden Dawn see Russia as Ukraine’s defender against “the ravens of international usury.” Heinz-Christian Strache of the Austrian FPÖ chimes in, surreally, that Putin is a “pure democrat.” Even Nigel Farage, the leader of the U.K. Independence Party, recently shared Putin’s propaganda on Ukraine with millions of British viewers in a televised debate, claiming absurdly that the European Union has “blood on its hands” in Ukraine.
I know how the mind of the American wingnut works: they crave a brutal dictator who will crush the blahs and gays and hippies and restore Our National Greatness. If our current American president isn’t up to snuff — i.e. isn’t a right-wing Republican — then they’re willing to worship some foreign leader, patriotism be damned. I guess it’s the same over there.
bago
Mongol General: What is best in life?
Conan: To crush your enemies, to see them driven before you, and to hear the lamentations of their women.
Anoniminous
Democrats are the real fascists.
(Channeling my inner BiP)
Ronnie Pudding
We can mock the right wingers all you want, but a lot of the Putin apologism comes from the left.
Morzer
@bago:
Nomad chieftain: “What is it that a man may call the greatest things in life?”
Cohen the Barbarian: “Hot water, good dentishtry and shoft lavatory paper.”
? Martin
We have always been at war with
Eurasiathe EU.Steeplejack
@DougJ:
Aw, why you got to raise the BiP signal on such a nice Sunday afternoon?
Davis X. Machina
Righties? Hell, Putin’s every lefty’s best friend on this one
Go over to Kevin Drum’s place, where there are scores of left-wing trolls who will tell you that Putin’s doing the Lord’s work here because he’s all that stands between the Ukraine and Obama, Citibank, NATO, the EU, the IMF, the National Endowment for Democracy, the CIA, the Frankfurt Börse, neo-Nazis, anti-Semites, Angela Merkel, Victoria Nuland,… and Methodists.
And that you can’t be picky about who your friends are, or their motives, when you’re up against evil like that. A rough rescue is still a rescue, and no price is too high for deliverance from capitalist hell — not even becoming Belarus with beaches.
Morzer
@Steeplejack:
That vicious attack upon a good and righteous conspiracy theorist makes you objectively despicable and part of the CIA-sponsored Nazi zombie horde with which Obama is seizing YouCraneIan Lebensraum for the citizens of Massachusetts, California and other coastal elite fifth column regions.
RepubAnon
Yeah, the Tea Partiers really love brutal dictatorships – if they get to be the brutal dictators.
Tea Partiers praising Mr. Putin won’t last, though, they’ll soon start characterizing Mr. Putin as a “liberal”… (the morph will occur as soon as a Republican gets elected President.)
Morzer
@Davis X. Machina:
So what does that make the rest of us? Centrists?
Baud
@Morzer:
Totebaggers.
Morzer
@Baud:
So I guess we are all going to join David Brooks in the FEMA-ACORN death camps any day now?
If only I had stood with my 30 million brothers in Operation American Spring!
MattF
This has quite a bit of historical resonance– the Czar of Russia was always the mainstay of reactionary politics in the 19th century. There’s the little difficulty with WWII, and the Red Army crushing the German Fascists– but Putin doesn’t seem to be seriously bothered by that inconsistency.
Baud
@Morzer:
Not too late to go to Nevada and defend that uber patriot Bundy.
Ash Can
@RepubAnon: I’m betting the change will occur as soon as Putin denies travel visas to some prominent American evangelical fundie(s) for non-Russian-Orthodox proselytizing.
Morzer
@Baud:
No true totebagger would soil those delicate hands with something so vulgar as “getting involved” and certainly not with a crude, peasant person like Bundy.
Roger Moore
@Anoniminous:
Just ask Jonah Goldberg. Fascism is liberal, so there’s no contradiction for anti-fascists to team up with the extreme right wing.
Baud
@RepubAnon:
@Ash Can:
The ideal for right wingers is to be in a constant state of war with other right wingers.
RepubAnon
@Davis X. Machina: Care to cite a few of these comments talking about how Mr. Putin is a “lefty’s best friend on this one”? All I’m seeing in Kevin Drum’s post Vladimir Putin Has Been Outplayed by Barack Obama are things like this:
I did figure that right wingers would start claiming Mr. Putin was really a liberal (Underlying flawed logic: Liberals are bad, Mr. Putin did something bad, therefore Mr. Putin is a liberal.) I didn’t think it would be quite so soon, though.
Please note the similarities of Vladimir Putin to Ronald Reagan: both rose to power in a time where their nation’s influence seemed to be waning. Both became popular by military adventurism, bellicose nationalistic speeches, and offering traditional religious groups the power to impose their dogma on others.
They didn’t invent these tactics – they’re as old as human history. It would be nice if people stopped falling for it, though.
Baud
@Morzer:
True. They’re more like “I don’t agree with his methods, but he raises an interesting point.”
Morzer
@Baud:
If you would only talk to your taxi driver on your way to the Porcellian Club, you would know these things.
Steeplejack
@Morzer:
I stand chastened and corrected.
Nice Pratchett reference, BTW.
Baud
@Morzer:
Maybe I’ll try that sometime in the next six months.
Roger Moore
Part of what’s going on here is that “fascist” has turned into a sort of generic epithet for extreme political disagreement. If you dislike somebody enough and they’re vaguely nationalist, you call them fascists regardless of the details of their political views.
Morzer
@Baud:
One hansom cab operative conversation per Friedman unit is regarded by many people as insufficient for the acquisition of really deep data.
RepubAnon
@Baud: That’s not the ideal of right wingers – each right winger wants to be the unquestioned leader whose slightest wish is law. To achieve this, each right winger seeks to become a brutal dictator.
The fighting starts when the problem arises of which individual right winger gets to be the brutal dictator. For example, remember the situation at the Bundy Ranch when the “Oath Keepers” and the other militia members had a disagreement about a course of action and who was in charge?
Morzer
@Steeplejack:
I must say, I can’t wait for the 100 acres of Ukrainian soil plus the free phone that Obama has promised me as part of reparations.
Baud
@RepubAnon:
I agree with this. But I think dictators typically obtain and retain this power by invoking the existential threat posed by other right wingers. Think of the constant clamor about the threat of Sharia law.
Davis X. Machina
@RepubAnon: Try anything by aprescoup or tpx
Morzer
@Davis X. Machina:
So now two commenters are “scores” and “every lefty”?
I don’t want to sound critical here, but is math one of your stronger areas?
Davis X. Machina
@Morzer:
Every true lefty. We are clearly not in this charmed circle. Probably due to false consciousness, or bankster gold.
They’re just the two most prolific ones — each with post totals easily rising into the hundreds.. There are a bunch more… grep on “Nuland” for the best ones.
Ronnie Pudding
@RepubAnon:
Davis X. is correct that Kevin Drum’s comments have been filled with Putin apologists from the left. One example thread, of many:
http://www.motherjones.com/kevin-drum/2014/04/invading-crimea-may-have-cost-russia-200-billion-so-far
The Guardian is the same way. Read their comments on Putin, Crimea and the Ukraine. Heck, read the articles:
http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2014/may/13/ukraine-us-war-russia-john-pilger
Morzer
@Davis X. Machina:
I just don’t see the claim that “every lefty” is so enamored of Putin as being justified. I read fairly widely among the left/liberal blogs and I have the overall impression that the left sees Putin as a nasty little piece of work at best. I am also not so convinced that the people you cite on Drum’s site are leftists as much as they are common-or-garden conspiracy theorists from the fringe with some areas of overlap with the left.
Chris
@Roger Moore:
This. Throw in the fact that World War Two is remembered as the “Great Patriotic War” in Russia and plenty of other places, and you end up with the odd situation where even modern fascist movements try to claim the mantle of anti-fascism.
Even Jean-Marie Le Pen back in France indignantly denied that his movement had fascist roots… you know, in between bouts of “the Holocaust is a mere detail of history” and “President Chirac is controlled by an international cabal of Jewish bankers.”
Bob In Portland
The definition of fascism has changed since WWII. Notice the changes in the American Heritage Dictionary between 1975 and 1991.
From 1975: “A philosophy or system of government that advocates or exercises a dictatorship of the extreme right, typically through the merging of state and business leadership, together with an ideology of belligerent nationalism.”
From 1993: “A system of government marked by a totalitarian dictator, socioeconomic controls, suppression of the opposition, and usually a policy of belligerent nationalism and racism.”
When the Nazis had a big meeting on where to locate Auschwitz there were government leaders and business leaders and bankers, like Herman Ab, who managed to squeeze out of Nuremberg and was praised by David Rockefeller in his NY Times obit. It was important that a slave labor camp was located near where they could be put to work for the Reich, located near where rail lines could bring in labor and resources. Not unlike that Project For The American Century planning who got what oilfield.
This week Hunter Biden and a friend of the Heinz Family both were named to the board of Purisma, a gas company in Ukraine. Also, there was a billion-dollar loan backed by US taxpayers for Ukrainian development through an American agency (NED or USAID, I think).
Putin and Russia are no more fascist than the US and its cast of characters. Fascism is a two-tiered system. There are the fascist gangs you can find in Kiev, Moscow, Berlin, Madrid or across our dear country. Then there are the dirty deeds that occur in the boardrooms. How do you motivate people to invade countries or destabilize economies all over the world if it isn’t in the interests of your people? The Right Sektor bully boys are ready to kill ethnic Russians in eastern Ukraine because of the “Moscovite-Jewish” mafia. The American citizens have no problem backing a loan to Ukraine for “development” when most never hear about the loan. And so what if Joe’s boy makes some money, right?
Roger Moore
@Ronnie Pudding:
Are they actually coming from the left, or are they concern trolls? It seems like an important real-world distinction.
Mnemosyne
@Bob In Portland:
They have no boardrooms in Russia? Their oligarchs beg to differ.
shelley
It should be spelled ‘moran.’
MattF
@Bob In Portland: You do realize that you’re being trolled by DougJ, right? In the meantime, go ahead and defend that exemplary democrat in the Kremlin.
Roger Moore
@Morzer:
I’m not sure if you’re getting the meaning right. As I read that, Davis X. Machina was not making the “all real lefties support Putin” claim himself but pointing to other people who were making that claim. Whether the people making that claim are honestly lefties themselves or are pushing that view for some other reason is an open question.
Ronnie Pudding
@Roger Moore:
They appear to be coming from the Left. Read Firedoglake, for instance.
It’s certainly wrong to say “every leftist” supports Putin (I assume DXM was exaggerating for effect). But there are many of the Left who see the US/MATO/WMF as more the villain here than Putin.
Roger Moore
@Ronnie Pudding:
Do I have to?
Mnemosyne
@Ronnie Pudding:
In fact, DXM was repeating the claim that said trolls make — i.e. that in order to be a true leftist, you have to support Putin.
Morzer needs to take his/her snark detector in for service.
FlipYrWhig
@Roger Moore: As DXM properly observes, there’s a certain cohort of avowed lefties, fond of playing the leftier-than-thou card, who go in for this stuff over and over and over and over again. Apart from the names already mentioned, Booman also has a few regulars in this vein. Of course it’s much longer-standing than the blogosophere. Think back to the 1990s and Alexander Cockburn’s defenses of poor misunderstood Slobodan Milosevic. In all these cases, anti-interventionism meets anti-capitalism, both laudable ideals, then intersects with contrarianism and suspicion about What They Aren’t Telling You, and the result is a “left” that is both convinced of its utter righteousness and dedicated to defending some awful malefactors, and supremely uninterested in taking stock of how one might reconcile both of those things.
Morzer
@Ronnie Pudding:
FDL is only one site – and doesn’t seem to enjoy that much influence these days. I still don’t see what makes these relatively few people DXM is talking about leftists as opposed to conspiracy theorists who happen to glom onto the left.
Morzer
@Mnemosyne:
DXM seems to be defending part, at least, of his claims fairly seriously, Mnem. Not everything on the internet is snark, you know.
Morzer
@FlipYrWhig:
If you bring Arthur Gilroy down on us to join Babble in Pooterland, I shall do absolutely unspeakable things to your virtual self.
Baud
@Roger Moore:
The real world couldn’t give a shit.
FlipYrWhig
@Morzer: They call themselves leftists and berate those who disagree with them as not radical, not critical, enough. It’s a staple of the rhetoric: to disagree with their stances is to reveal yourself to be a “liberal,” a sellout, a running dog, a capitalist, a fascist, and so forth.
Morzer
@Baud:
The real world doesn’t even know Balloon-Juice exists.
FlipYrWhig
@Morzer: Dear Lord.
Morzer
@FlipYrWhig:
Sure, but the fact they call themselves something doesn’t make it so, if you get my point. The right wing described ACORN as a cesspit of corruption, when, in fact, they were pretty scrupulously honest overall.
mai naem
OT- got this through the Wash Monthly –
http://www.csmonitor.com/Environment/Latest-News-Wires/2014/0517/Climate-change-lawsuits-filed-against-some-200-US-communities
Farmers Insurance is filing a class action lawsuit against 200 Illinois towns for not preparing for the consequences of global warming. Hope one of the front pagers picks this up. I’m just wondering what Super Marco Rubio, Ted Cruz and Jim Inhofe are going to say to insurance company lobbyists and their related donors.
Morzer
@FlipYrWhig:
Bet on it!
(As the chicken-headed creature would say, with multiple underlinings and frothing from every orifice.)
Mnemosyne
@Morzer:
You do know Davis X. Machina’s work, right?
Just to be clear, if he had said, Hell, Obama is every Republican’s best friend on ACA, would you have been able to recognize it as a sarcastic way to repeat what people he doesn’t agree with say, or would you have taken that at face value as well?
FlipYrWhig
@Chris: Furthermore, Ukraine is comprised of people who genuinely and understandably hate the Russians and their influence, and people who genuinely and understandably hate the Germans and their influence, so each side has ample cause to characterize the other as fascist, totalitarian, etc.
Ash Can
@mai naem: If they win, then places such as Texas, Oklahoma, and Kansas are going to be in a world of hurt.
Morzer
@Mnemosyne:
I know some of his online comments, although I haven’t followed him with any particular devotion. I would refer you to the second part of #31 for your mature consideration as to his defense of part, at least, of his claims.
Anoniminous
@FlipYrWhig:
Oh lordy, lord this.
Based on personal experience this goes back to 1966. Based on my book learning goes back to the spring and summer of 1919 where the entire Left – Socialist to Mildly Progressive – shattered over attitudes and responses to the Bolshevik Revolution.
FlipYrWhig
@Morzer: Well, there is certainly a longstanding tradition of leftist thought and writing that if systematically applied to the Ukraine situation would produce statements demonizing the “pro-Western” side in Ukraine (as capitalist, corporatist, fascist, and whatnot). Whether people who make similar statements are doing it through the influence of that tradition is a different question. Some of them might just be being conspiratorial or opportunistic, sure. But it smells authentic to me. There really are leftists who abhor liberals and liberalism and find them to be as much the enemy as conservatives are. Most of them snap out of it a few years into grad school. But every once in a while you can still find a handful in the wild.
Morzer
@FlipYrWhig:
“Let a hundred hothouse flowers bloom very briefly”.
ChaseBears
Sadly there are leftists who have been defending Putin and Russia on Ukraine, it’s not just trolls. Sure there’s some conspiracy theorists, but I’ve seen enough people commenting on forums and websites who have crossed the line from practical concerns into anti-Americanism or its EU variant. They’re more interested in minor details of the proposed IMF loan or what Obama is doing than in Putin’s invasion of Crimea or continuing support of the violent chaos in eastern Ukraine.
Mnemosyne
@Morzer:
And you ignore the obvious sarcasm of part 1 of that comment because … it doesn’t fit the claim you’re trying to make about a claim he clearly never made?
On this website alone, Bob in Portland and mclaren claim to be One True Leftists. Do they not exist?
ETA: I realize that you’re embarrassed that you mistook what DXM was saying but, really, you should probably stop digging.
Morzer
@Mnemosyne:
Actually, I am politely ignoring your attempts to start a pointless fight after your over-hasty reaction. Enjoy your Sunday.
Anoniminous
@FlipYrWhig:
Goes back to Communist International party line from 1926 – 1934. In Germany the SDP was called the “Red Fascists” and the NSDAP were the “Black Fascists.” Other countries ipso ditto.
“The Purity of Our Vanguard of the Revolution” folks are wearisomely familiar and, like raw broccoli or malaria, reoccur in short time cycles.
Mnemosyne
@Morzer:
Yes. My over-hasty reaction. Uh-huh.
Frankensteinbeck
To the OP:
Assholes exist everywhere, even without America’s racist convulsions.
To the ongoing topic of leftists who support Putin:
I’m going to take BJ as the example. We have one commenter who supports Putin, but Jesus fuck, he comments a hundred times on every post, trolling shamelessly. It’s taken forever to get people to not respond to him so he’ll shut up. If our model is correct, a ridiculously tiny fringe of liberals support Putin, but each is as loud and obsessive as a hundred sane people.
Liquid
Fuck Putin. Bring back Uncle Joe Steel.
Gin & Tonic
@Bob In Portland: the merging of state and business leadership, together with an ideology of belligerent nationalism.
You realize, of course, that this describes the Russian Federation of the 2010’s to a T.
danielx
Well, I can certainly understand the attraction. I mean, I want something to happen when I say “bring me my midgets”.
danielx
@Gin & Tonic:
Pretty much describes the U.S. of A. during the 2000s, too, from what I can recall.
JohnR
Could the pattern of Right joining Left worldwide possibly alert American liberals to the Rightwing think-tank-led error of calling themselves ‘leftists.’ ?
Liberalism isn’t part of the left-right political power spectrum. Maybe today’s Progressives identify with the Left (I don’t know, not sure they even know), but liberal is not another word for Left. Leftist power-seekers source power from the lower classes, yes … but just because liberalism seeks to lift up the lower classes does NOT mean liberals are ‘leftist.’
I haven’t commented before, but I’ve decided to say something because I don’t like communists OR fascists … I don’t want association with either the Right or Left that brought these cruelly insane political structures into being. Both Right and Left ideologies have killed millions of people, but liberalism has not.
Liberalism doesn’t deserve to be tarnished as ‘Leftist” just because the corporate Right needs a side to win against. Liberals don’t have to play their game.
Villago Delenda Est
@RepubAnon:
This is a very old American tradition. Puritans loved theocratic oppression, as long as they got to be the oppressors. They fled England (via The Netherlands) because they couldn’t be the oppressors. The Dutch (serious Calvinists, mind you) had enough of their asses and told them to get out, which is why they ended up in Mass.
Villago Delenda Est
@Bob In Portland: Hodor!
Anoniminous
@JohnR:
The single line Left/Right is essentially meaningless. Better is the four quadrant Political Compass.
debbie
@mai naem:
i think it was 1993 when there was bad flooding in Iowa. The Army Corps of Engineers wanted to construct a flood wall, but the mayor refused it, saying that it would hurt tourism. Hope he’s a defendant.
Bob In Portland
@Mnemosyne: Sure do. I don’t get to vote in Russia.
Bob In Portland
@Gin & Tonic: You realize it also fits Ukraine to a tee. In Ukraine the President appoints oligarchs to be governors of the different regions. In the US the oligarchs have to buy their candidates, and then they have to be elected. Slightly more complicated.
Maybe that’s your problem. You presume that Russia is your get-out-jail-free card. No matter, you can point your finger at Russia and say “They’re bad. They’re worse.” Maybe that’s why you can’t grasp my point.
You see, I live in the US. Maybe you live in Ukraine, or the Ukraine of your mind.
Mnemosyne
@Bob In Portland:
There’s also the fact that Russia is meddling in Ukraine. Right now. As we speak. So you can’t try to claim that Russia is irrelevant since what we’re discussing is Russia’s ongoing actions.
And this qualifies you to speak as an expert about Russia’s government and policies how, again?
J R in WV
The Four Quadrant political compass link is not a link, and doesn’t lead anywhere.
O! Pwerhaps this is intentional and politically cowrect.?!
Omnes Omnibus
@J R in WV: Here is a link. FWIW, I grade out at (-6.5, -5.6) .
Chris
@Omnes Omnibus:
I discovered it my freshman year of high school, nine years ago. I take the test every now and again, and I’ve been drifting steadily further and further into the left/libertarian quadrant since then. Make of that what you will.
Omnes Omnibus
@Chris: I first found it a while ago as well. I always end up in about the same place.
lawguy
@Mnemosyne: Yes, Russia is meddling in the Ukraine, but so is the EU and so are we.
This doesn’t make us right, nor for that matter does it favor Russia. It is unfortunate that the government of the Ukraine was elected and then forced out of office within a couple of years by a revolution backed by the US and the EU. It does kind of make us look a little hypocritical though when we stand back and demand democracy in a country that had been practicing it until a month ago.
Mnemosyne
@lawguy:
Links, please. I know Bob in Portland loves to claim that the US giving money to Ukraine for the past 25 years totally proves the US was behind Maidan, but I have not seen any reliable sources that show Maidan was anything other than a home-grown movement against Yanukovych’s corruption.
Mo MacArbie
I test out to around Neutral Good.
Steeplejack
@Omnes Omnibus:
I scored –6.75, –7.38. Strongly DFH.
Omnes Omnibus
@Steeplejack: My guess is that our answers were broadly similar but you hit a few more “stronglies” than I did.
Gin & Tonic
@lawguy: the government of the Ukraine was elected and then forced out of office within a couple of years
This statement is false on its face, unless you redefine “the government.” The legislative branch is, with a few exceptions who abandoned their posts, the legislative branch that was elected in 2012. The judiciary is unchanged. About 80% of executive branch department heads are unchanged. Yes, the president, some of his close advisers and the leader of the legislature fled the country, but most of “the government” did not, and is still fulfilling its duties. One could argue (although you do not seem to have done so) that the president fled the country in fear of his life, but I find that argument unconvincing in the face of evidence that he spent days packing his things and evacuating his compound.
Amir Khalid
@Steeplejack:
For me: economic -8.25, social -7.44. I think that means I’m a dirtier hippy than you.
Omnes Omnibus
@Amir Khalid: Let’s face it, we could all use a shower.
Steeplejack
@Omnes Omnibus:
Yeah, before the last screen (or two?) I felt like I was strongly disagreeing with everything.
Steeplejack
@Amir Khalid:
You’re a dirtier hippie, you semi-literate maftoon!
Steeplejack
@Omnes Omnibus:
True dat.
Omnes Omnibus
@Steeplejack: I had a number of simply agrees and disagrees, without the stronglies.
Steeplejack
@Amir Khalid:
I apologize for my earlier comment. I meant it as a good-natured joke, but upon rereading it I fear it sounds mean.
Pope Bandar bin Turtle
@Morzer: Derp data, otoh …
Matt
@RepubAnon:
Y’know who *else*… #godwin’d
Chris
@Omnes Omnibus:
I think it’s a matter of degree more than changing my answers. There’s an increasing number of questions where I answer “STRONGLY agree/disagree” rather than “somewhat.”
Visceral
@MattF: The 19th Century Czar was the last pre-Enlightenment ruler in Europe. All the others had embraced – or been forced into – some kind of constitutional monarchy or had fallen outright to republicanism. Russia alone retained autocracy guided by “throne and altar” conservatism: an essentially medieval arrangement that held that the Czar was anointed by God, infallible and unchallengeable, and church and state are the two arms of Hobbes’ ‘Leviathan’. This is because Ivan Grozny had broken the power of the Russian nobility centuries before Louis XIV pioneered absolute monarchy in the West and Russia had comparatively few wealthy, educated commoners in the cities or the countryside pressing for rights and power outside the feudal order.
Visceral
@Anoniminous: The European Left had cracked earlier over the question of World War I. At the end of the day, most working people came down on the side of “false consciousness” and supported the war. Ironically it was the so-called “champagne socialists” or “bourgeois bohemians” who toed the Marxist line … while those pillars of the establishment the churches preached peace and the oneness of humanity before God.
lawgy
@Gin & Tonic: Isn’t it interesting how one can nit pick when one wants some specific outcome. You really shouldn’t make fun of Scalia you know since you are exhibiting the same type of reasoning he uses. Congratulations. Facts being pesky things it is probably best to ignore them.
lawgy
@Mnemosyne: Oh come on.