Meet the teen mastermind of Hong Kong's "umbrella revolution"

That's quite the hagiography the CBC has on view for young Joshua Wong.

I personally am profoundly sceptical of masterminds of all stripes, but especially teen masterminds. What vague memories I can still summon about my own teenage years recall an age more consumed with zits, onanism, and existential angst, not social justice and democracy activism.

But perhaps young Wong is an early bloomer. He got all that stuff out of the way in his pre-teens, and was therefore primed to embark on his activist calling at the age of 14. Not surprisingly, he grew up in a relatively privileged environment, and coincidentally, his parents were democracy activists too! That's something he has in common with other early-blooming activists like Malala and the Kielburgers.

We are told that Joshua was raised a Christian, which is a happy thing. Overall, there are far too few Christians taking an activist role in the world around them, and when they do it's more likely to take the form of lobbying against gays in Uganda than promoting freedom. So kudos to Josh for taking his faith into the real world.

The fact of his Christian faith also makes him the perfect David in his Quixotic tilt against the atheistic behemoth in Beijing. Who could not root for Josh in this confrontation?

Then again, when you look at what's at issue here, it seems that all this youthful idealism may be a tad misplaced. As I understand it, the umbrella revolutionaries are distraught that the atheists in Beijing are reserving the right to veto what are essentially mayoral candidates in the up-coming Hong Kong elections.

Here are three reasons why that may not be a bad idea: Marion Barry, Kwame Kilpatrick, Rob Ford. A little bit of sober oversight of local goings-on can't hurt.

And as for actual freedoms, Hong Kong remains number one in the world when it comes to the freedom to accumulate wealth. The commies in Beijing have taken a liking to that aspect of Hong Kong culture. Indeed, in the almost twenty years since the dreaded "hand-over," which at the time begat oodles of breathless end-of-the-world journalistic nonsense, China has become much more like Hong Kong than Hong Kong has like China.

So good on you Josh, but lighten up a bit!

Besides, over-exposure in mainstream Western media can really blow your cred in the long term... look what's happened to Pussy Riot.

Malala takes on Boko Haram

Here's a story destined for major traction in Western media; Malala has showed up in Nigeria to advocate for the "bring back our girls" campaign.

Malala was always a theatrical prop used by her Western oriented parents to further their anti-Islamist agenda. When she survived a Taliban assassination attempt it was a dream come true.

Those parents were utterly shameless about using her to further their own agenda, which is what made her a Taliban target to begin with. This is a kid who was exploited by her parents to write anti-Taliban propaganda from the time she was ten years old.

Do ten year olds typically write their own thoughts?

But she eventually, thanks to her parents, caught that Taliban bullet, and the miracle that followed ensured her a place in the pantheon of anti-Taliban activists, which brought about a Nobel nomination and A-list brand recognition in the West.

She is now bringing her celebrity show to Nigeria.

She will succeed where Goodluck has failed.

Or not.

Malala obviously knows nothing about the legacy of institutional incompetence and corruption that has created Boko Haram. Yet she is trotted into Nigeria by her management team to advise the locals on what they should be doing to resolve the Chibok girls crisis.

If Goodluck can't figure out Nigeria, there's no way a 16 year old girl from Afghanistan will.

The clash of civilizations

Malala Yousafzai is big news these days.

She is the 14 year old "child activist" who survived a Taliban assassination attempt in Pakistan. Her crime? Speaking out for the right of girls to get an education.

That is a story guaranteed to evoke revulsion across the Western world.

Which is why I wonder about the story. I am reminded of that equally revolting story about the Iraqi troops dumping babies out of incubators in Kuwait. That was another story designed to whip the West into a righteous frenzy of vengeance.

And it worked. The American public was overwhelmingly behind the first Gulf war.

More than twenty years later, the war parties need to ramp up support for a wider war on the Taliban. Who better to raise that support than a "child activist" brought low by a Taliban bullet?

There is utterly no evidence that the Nations of Virtue or our allies in the Towelistans have the slightest compunction about snuffing the life a child, be they a teen, pre-teen, or toddler, boy or girl. In fact, there is a vast archive of evidence to prove that we are absolutely indifferent to the children at the receiving end of our projectiles of democracy and missiles of peace.

They've never been anything other than collateral damage.

But let the Taliban execute a "child activist" and suddenly the lives of children become sacrosanct. There is a medivac jet idling on a runway in Islamabad to take the victim for advanced medical care in Dubai. Headlines around the world scream about the barbarity of our Taliban adversary.

It's all a little too convenient.

I'm betting that before long Malala will have made a full recovery, thanks to the miraculous interventions of Western medicine. She will be spirited out of Pakistan and make the rounds of the talk show circuit. She will be on Good Morning America and Ellen and Oprah and Piers Morgan before she becomes a regular on the dog-and-pony show of those internationally famous child activists, the Kielburger brothers.

And by God, we'll have to do something about those primitives over there in the Pakistani tribal lands before they try to kill another 14 year old.