Wen Jiabao

Another way of looking at the week

The country’s citizens need only look around to see monuments to their leaders’ hubris

Jason Kenney, responding after QP to a reporter’s question about Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao’s comments.

Before anybody melts down completely about the stinging “rebuke” our Prime Minister received from the Chinese Premier, can I ask exactly how sure we are that the insult was intended as an insult? I am looking around for an assurance, from somebody actually in a position to know, that this was indeed the unprecedented savaging/borderline casus belli that everyone but the PM himself is making it out to be. This position would, at a minimum, seem to involve having heard and understood the Premier’s words in the original Mandarin.

In diplomatic circles this is apparently equivalent to mocking one’s mother.

British judge tells 27-year-old German student to watch his behaviour in the future