March 15, 2010
Community cohesion
Two weeks after Dispatches, a Channel 4 current affairs program, revealed entryism by the Islamic Forum of Europe as it attempts to take over, amongst other things, the Labour party in Tower Hamlets, the IFE rebuttals to the piece include one directed at Channel 4's undercover reporter, "Atif."
“We’ve tracked you down,” said the IFE’s community affairs co-ordinator, Azad Ali, in a webcast targeting the Channel 4 reporter “Atif”, who went undercover at the IFE’s headquarters, the East London Mosque, filming the group’s true views – and its boasts that it controlled the local Tower Hamlets council. “Yes, Atif, we’ve got a picture of you and a lot more than you thought we had. We’ve tracked you down to different places. And if people are gonna turn what I’ve just said into a threat, that’s their fault, innit?”
Mr Ali’s words sit strangely with his role as an official advisor to the Director of Public Prosecutions, Keir Starmer, and to the police, but perhaps his annoyance is understandable. The undercover reporters filmed him saying: “Democracy, if it means not implementing the sharia, no one’s going to agree with that.”
Attacks on churches, gay people, Jewish history tours and a Hindu association - not to mention race attacks on white people; this "community cohesion," I do not think it means what you think it means.
Against the Dry Bones paradigm
Belmont Club claims, entirely correctly, the Middle East "peace process" is really a process: a mime show of appearing to do something.
It’s not the settlements that are the problem, it’s the region.
Andrea: Nai-velik
Also: Bulgarian dancehall comin' at ya'.
March 14, 2010
Lady Gaga feat. Beyoncé: Telephone
Ladies and germs, the greatest pop music video not featuring Gwen Stefani since 1982 (hat tip to Agent Bedhead).
Illuminating Hadrians Wall
Illuminating Hadrians Wall, from Wallsend to Bowness-on-Solway.
The Guardian calls it a recreation. I call it foreshadowing.
Vroom
Luxist rounds up the 2010 Geneva Motor Show featuring the Italians (ace), the Germans (boring Porsches)*, the French (French) and the rest including the extraordinarily tasteless Bufori Geneva (Australian).
I particularly enjoy the Stile Bertone Alfa Romeo Pandion Concept (above).
* But I repeat myself.
More: 2010 Alfa Romeo Pandion. Images.
The most unique trait of the Pandion is its side windows which extend down to the front wheel arch. Like the Pandion bird, the doors open up in a gull-wing fashion.
Memories of Potemkin
Blazing Cat Fur reports from above a Hezbollah Potemkin Village on the border between Israel and Lebanon.
Notice the time
The BBC cites a former inmate on a Muslim takeover of British prisons and a former prison officer claiming the underworld gangsters who used to keep discipline and order were no longer in charge.
...
"Islam is a very sensitive matter. And the screws don't understand that. I respect what the screws do but they've got to understand our ways, where we're coming from," he added.
By a happy coincidence
We are tired of him too.
...
And according to London’s Sunday Telegraph, the president’s decision to not welcome British Prime Minister Gordon Brown last March with the customary press conference and State Dinner was not a result of a deliberate slight, rather POTUS was pooped. "People say he looks tired more often than they're used to," said an anonymous strategist.
Feeble. This is the man in whom the American public decided to entrust the defense of the Republic and, no small thing, the former Dominion to its north.
Paris Hilton meets Lady Gaga at the Nokia 5800 Launch
Lady Gaga is right: Stars Are Blind
March 13, 2010
The Frost Report: An Understanding of Class
And: The Frost Report on Class in full (Part 1).
The seed of the Church
John Hinderaker says it is "open season" on Christians and most Christians don't care.
The Eloi claim to be superior to the Morlocks because the Eloi abhor violence. They will not raise their voices in anger, still less lift a finger, at the news their fellow Eloi have yet again been slaughtered.
More or less what happened in the first round. And then the Crusades.
Justice for everyone
All ten Jewish communities ethnically cleansed from "Arab countries" following the rebirth of the state of Israel have at long last some hope their government will represent their interests.
These are (some of) the refugees the Left neither knows nor cares about.
Brilliant but not smart
Something I had meant to post this comment left to a post at Gates of Vienna some time ago. Does anyone else think we are living through the last days of Melnibone?
With mixed success we've been coasting on our religious heritage all these years... a tough glue, but the Enlightenment solvent has pretty much cleared it away. Now we're free - where perhaps a decent society shouldn't ought to be: family, life, morals, notions of sacred... and powerless on all the most important issues.
Against an incredìbly crafty and powerful force that has weathered 1400 of history (most of it fighting Christianity) we place our trust in an Islamic version of an "Enlightenment" which has reduced us to the state of our present Universities, birth crises, vulgarity, broken homes, wishy-washy convictions.
They're dumb but they're not stupid, we're brilliant but we're not smart.
March 12, 2010
Islam has failed Europe
Douglas Murray debates Tariq Ramadan on the motion "Europe is Failing its Muslims".
It is grotesque to argue that Europe has failed its Muslims. It has been made repeatedly obvious that it is Islam that has failed Europe, indeed that it is Islam that has failed Muslims.
Dispatches: Britain's Islamic Republic
An Islamist conspiracy to take over Tower Hamlets via the local Labour Party is only news to Channel 4. Even so, kudos for British Leftists belatedly taking notice of the problem. But then, having infiltrated and subverted the entire education system, all of public broadcasting and vast swathes of the civil service, British Leftists know entryism when they see it.
Take the time to watch this and by all means pass it on.
Related: ABC News belatedly discovers the Jawa Report and a years long hunt for Jihad Jane. Those pesky kids!
"I'm a blogger, but also an activist against violent Islamism. One of the things we do is try and pressure Webhosts to remove Websites that belong to terrorist organizations. An example of this would be the dozen or so times we've successfully had the Taliban's website removed. The websites sometimes pop back up, sometimes not," Shackleford said.
...
Shackleford and other contributors to JawaReport and sites like it noticed YouTube had become a hub for videos and comments in support of violent extremism and attacks against the West and its allies, leading to the creation of the YouTube Smackdown.
Shackleford said the groups identify videos in support of violent Islamism and pressure the Web site to take them down, "as they would child pornography or other obscene material."
Utterly noncontroversial in their social circles
Ann Coulter channels Kathy Shaidle, taking a poke at "leading conservative lawyers."
Defending terrorists gives status-conscious attorneys a chance to get standing ovations at the annual ABA convention -- much like promoting "global warming" makes climatologists feel like they're saving the world, rather than studying water vapor.
Defending terrorists, supporting Barack Obama as a "conservative." You get the drill.
No more exceptions
Conrad Black makes a number of corrections to Rich Lowry and Ramesh Ponnuru. There are a very few times when a view of American history makes more sense when seen from north of the border. This is one of those times.
That said, Black is concerned about America's heroic mythology largely insofar as it exacerbates America's current problems; read the whole thing.
Great moments in repartee
By way of taking a poke at the wets affecting deep horror at recent remarks by Nigel Farage in Brussels, Frederick Forsyth cites Parliamentary precendent (via Andrew Stuttaford).
Terribly rude but what a put-down. We should have more like that, not less.
Kinderwette Star Wars
Sophia Heesch identifies Star Wars figurines with her mouth.
March 11, 2010
Killer deals
An Israeli ad agency has re-enacted the assassination of a Hamas commander in Dubai in a new for Mahsanei Kimat Hinam supermarket commercial (hat tip to Lumpy, Grumpy and Frumpy, who points out such a commercial would never be made in Canada).
Words matter
Here is how Nico Hines, writing for The Times, describes the would be death of Rajib Karim.
Rajib Karim, 30, from Newcastle upon Tyne, faces three charges under counter terrorism legislation. He is accused of two counts of planning suicide bombings and his own martyrdom.
I am certain Karim thought of himself as a shaheed, or "witness", a jihadi concept frequently mis-translated as "martyr." But a real martyr? He is no such thing, of course. The shaheed does not sacrifice himself for others, he sacrifices himself as an offering to a demon who delights in direct proportion to the unwilling sacrifices the bomber would drag with him to the underworld. A witness to nothing but his own shabby grievances, Karim is no martyr.
The Times should know better. This may be the first time in history a civilization will stand or fall on the issue of misplaced courtesies.
Why, yes, I would like fries with that
Reading: Today's young workers, it appears, believe they deserve jobs with big salaries, status and plenty of leisure time - without having to put in the hours.
Generation Y are much more likely than previous generations to see work as simply a means of paying the bills.
Writing: They can't read, can't write and think the world owes them a living.
Many also struggle with basic maths and English as exams become easier and schools fail to properly enforce discipline.
Rithmetic: Teenagers who complete two weeks' work experience at a McDonald's restaurant will be awarded a qualification worth up to a B grade at GCSE.
Subterranean operations
As the world's superweapons projects move underground, DARPA has pondered a means of navigating through huge enemy underground bases in the absence of GPS: Sferics-Based Underground Geolocation (S-BUG).
But the right kind of signals are generated naturally by lightning strikes, which cause the emission of "atmospheric" ("sferic" or "spheric") radio pulses. An underground receiver could perhaps be built capable of detecting sferics from lightning bolts hitting the surface hundreds of miles away. It could be informed of the positions of the strikes over LF comms by a single specialised surface base station, similarly far off, and thus calculate its own position from sferic data coming in from several directions.
The Jersey Shore Presents: Inglourious Basterds - The Line Up
Via Agent Bedhead.
March 10, 2010
A Victorian rave
It is difficult to convery the precise degree of annoyance I feel at missing out on the Thames Tunnel Tour and Fancy Fair at London's Brunel Museum.
Due to unprecedented demand, tickets for the Tunnel tours have now sold out however there are still places left for the Fancy Fair, a recreation of the original 1852 party hosted to celebrate the opening of the tunnel. Audiences are promised strange and wonderful Victorian characters, cosmoranic views, aerialists, jugglers, historic food and drink and music powered by steam. As Robert Hulse, the Director of the Brunel Museum has stated, “This is not just the birthplace of the tube system, it is the site of a Victorian rave!”
Wikipedia: Thames Tunnel.
The Telegraph: Top 10: Isambard Kingdom Brunel's great surviving structures.
Swan song
Alexander McQueen's last collection.
More.
Etc: Chanel autumn/winter 2010/11 collection celebrates global colding.
More hot Wookie action.
Also: London Fashion Week's top looks for Autumn/Winter 2010.
Cretinism on this historic level is comparatively rare
Christopher Hitchens considers one of the most astoundingly stupid and nasty documents ever to have landed on his desk.
Not so longer ago, this sort of language would have been cause for ridicule, and the threats a cause for war. At some point, vigilantism is going to take the place where the law used to be. At the moment, it is a war of every one against every one and Danish newspapermen have been comprehensively disarmed.
Armed Occupation Act
The Florida Armed Occupation Act of 1842 (5 U.S. Statutes 502) was passed as an incentive to populate Florida. The main terms of the Act read like public policy via Robert Heinlein.
* be a resident of Florida and not having 160 acres (0.6 km²) of land in Florida when asking for the permit;
* get a permit from the Lands Office;
* he or his heirs reside for five consecutive years on the grant ;
* clear, enclose and cultivate 5 acres (20,000 m2) of land during the first year;
* build a house on the lot during the first year;
* the land should be two or more miles away from a garrisoned military post.
The last statement implied that the person should bear arms for his own protection.
Actually, the last statement implied the new homestead is the functional equivalent of a garrisoned military outpost; a redoubt of civilization held by force against Nature and against the barbarians.
A lot has changed in the world in 170 years. There has been a bigger change in our souls.
Lynching Republicans
Otherwise known as the forgotten supressed history of the Democrat party: following the Civil War, 1300 white Republicans and 3500 black Republicans were lynched by the Ku Klux Klan (via Mitchieville).
March 09, 2010
Ka-ka
In a whirl of limbs and with eyes bulging, the woman is helped to a squat in the ramshackle shed and starts cackling maniacally like a terrified chicken.
In related news: Tears, joy greet Michaëlle Jean in Haiti.
Je me souviens: Les felquistes.
Among the many misdeeds of the British rule in India, history will look upon the Act of depriving a whole nation of arms, as the blackest
Captain Devindra Sethi discusses India's growing maritime defense capabilities, including the Shaurya missile, Akula-II class submarines, INS Arihant and a dedicated naval satellite for the Indian Navy.
One little fact about their new MiG-29K fighters struck me in particular. Until the carrier INS Vikramaditya is ready for them, the MiGs will be on post off the west coast of India.
Gramophonedzie: Why Don' t You
Hat tip to Jeff.
