September 30, 2009
But it's a dry cold
If I claimed every attack on Stephen Harper was an attack on all uptight white guys who read too much I would sound pretty stupid. Hence I refrain from making such a claim.*
"Not only is it an attack on the president, but also on all men and people of African descent," King Salim Khalfani, president of the Virginia NAACP, said of what he called "the abomination that's on the wall" outside Club Velvet.
The banner, unfurled within the past few days, depicts Obama as Heath Ledger's grotesque Joker character from "The Dark Knight." The president is shown with smeared red lipstick, a white face and darkened eyes. The word "socialism" is spelled out below the caricature.
* Unless an HRC is ready to award me damages as a result of such a claim in which case, Game On.
When good is punished
And evil is rewarded.
The former IRA commander made clear that he had no remorse for the Grand Hotel bombing.
His visit came less than two weeks before the 25th anniversary of the bombing of the Tory conference in Brighton.
Five died and 34 were injured in what was one of the worst Provisional IRA outrages on mainland Britain.
Reality bites
Wesley Pruden observes the White Hous is a "risky place" for on-the-job training in a world abounding in nasty surprises. Or, I might add, nasty certainties.
Update: Not just weak, grossly egotistical.
Cooking With Christopher Walken
Via Steynian 385.
September 29, 2009
President Obama mistakenly calls daughter "Maya"
I don't blame the man. It can't be easy to keep your legend straight when you are so close to achieving your mission objectives.
He said after pregnant women receive the shot, "I think, you're looking at kids, and so, Maya and Sasha would fall into that category..."
Obama's daughter is named Malia. His half-sister's name is Maya.
What's wrong with trial by axe?
Thesis: Police tell mother attacked by yobs at home: 'We won't send anyone... it may escalate the problem'.
But an hour later she received a phone call from a woman police officer who told her it would be better if police did not attend because it might inflame the situation.
Antithesis: Thug who murdered father of three boasts about his 'cushy' life inside prison on Facebook.
Synthesis: Melanie Phillips: If the police won't tackle young thugs any more, then what ARE they for?
I suggested they should drop their obsession with 'diversity' and, rather than pursuing people under 'hate crime' laws for giving offence to others, should concentrate on tackling the yobbery on housing estates where besieged residents felt the police had abandoned them.
It is fair to say my remarks were not greeted with widespread acclaim. Officers seemed stunned that I could challenge the sacred cow of 'diversity'.
Absolutist hatred of the West
View from the Right considers reaction to Philip Hensher's discussion of Aztec art at the Daily Mail ("British Museum's Aztec artefacts 'as evil as Nazi lampshades made from human skin' "). In particular, a comment to the left left by Sarah, USA.
Sarah has an absolute--not a relative--position. Her absolute position is that our civilization is morally monstrous. It is so monstrous that the killing of seals and whales by some members of our society makes our civilization more disgusting than capturing thousands of innocent people every year, dragging them to the top of a temple, and cutting out their beating heart. Relativism--"you must not judge"--is merely the cloak in which this absolutist hatred of the West is dressed. It's not everyone who must not judge. It's only people who speak in the name of the West who must not judge. Non-Westerners and Western leftist haters of the West have the full right to judge.
September 28, 2009
Sobering reading
Leave aside all the bumpf about sea-faring traditions; what matters is a RAND Corporation assessment of a changed balance of power in the Taiwan Straight.
The piece, based on simulations of a Chinese invasion of Taiwan, assesses the relative balance of forces in the cross-strait standoff. And in a stark warning, the authors present a convincing argument that China’s large, modern missile and air forces are likely to pose a virtually insurmountable challenge to Taiwanese and American efforts to command the air over the Strait and the island.
Riverworld
I have a sneaking suspicion the headwaters are to be found in Vancouver.
RIVERWORLD
coming to Syfy in 2010
Matt, an American journalist, and his fiancée, Jessie, are killed in an explosion, but reawaken in a very unusual afterlife—a mysterious planet with an endless river terrain. Everyone who has ever lived on Earth has been resurrected simultaneously in this strange new world. Determined to find Jessie, Matt joins forces with an intrepid crew including a 13th century female warrior and Riverboat captain Mark Twain. Embarking upriver, their adventure begins, all the while tracked by the watchful eye of a mysterious alien force.
September 27, 2009
Here is Your Life: Oak Tree
I had to think about it for a second but, no, it's frackin' posted.
Deconstructing Pern
Rumours of a Philip K. Dick/Anne McCaffrey collaboration have been proven true with the discovery of the manuscript: Dragonvalis. Too good to be true, I suspect. But with McCaffrey's lawyers tooling up to prevent its publication by PKD's estate it may take a journey to some parallel universe if I want to read the thing.
But with some differences. Dragonriders criss-cross the sky, mostly working as aerial cabbies. And on the streets and in the weyrs, a new recreational drug is taking hold: Substance T, made from threads farmed on the Red Star.
I am killing myself here.
September 26, 2009
There can be no higher law in journalism than to tell the truth and to shame the devil
Michael Yon describes - at some length - his difficulties with British Media Ops in Helmand.
September 25, 2009
J.R.R. Tolkien: Anarchist
J.R.R. Tolkien. The Letters of J. R. R. Tolkien. ed. Humphrey Carpenter (Boston: Houghton Mifflin Company, 1981), 63-4.
Let's shoot Germans
All that is England melts into air (hat tip to Five Feet of Fury).
Moments later he found himself in front of the deputy head who accused him of racism because his 'victim' had been a Polish boy.
We have become insane.
Ann Coulter at CPAC 2009
Just magnificent (via Kathy Shaidle's Ann Coulter site).
Parts 2 and 3 are after the fold.
Big Country: Chance
September 24, 2009
Cynic, n: a blackguard whose faulty vision sees things as they are, not as they ought to be
Amie Buck is no personal trainer. Except in some extended metaphorical sense.
But Amie Buck, who was comforted by Cheryl Cole on stage after nerves got the better of her, doesn't usually have a problem with confidence. She has been exposed as a £500-a-week lap dancer.
The 22-year-old hid her less than wholesome profession from the show's bosses, telling them she was a personal trainer.
Next they will tell me they staged the whole thing. Like the part where Amy Buck starts singing "Stand By You" by Girls Aloud and Cheryl Cole (coincindentally from Girls Aloud) stands by her to help her through it. But you know me. Doom and gloom. Conspiracies everywhere. Wheels within wheels.
Three things cannot be long hidden: the sun, the moon, and the truth
India discovers water on the moon, an accomplishment for which a less forgetful civilization might otherwise thank them.
In related news: Comment section discovers the UK is still sending aid to India.
It is, actually. Delete the word "again" and try that new sentence out for size.
Terrifying
The Present: Abdul Rahman Al-Rashed claims Iran is allied with Al Qaeda. The man clearly knows nothing about the Middle East; I have it on good authority that fire does not melt steel.
The Past: Most fashionable leftists will still call the Falklands "las Malvinas". Most fashionable leftists continue to ally themselves with the junta.
Another pilot who worked with Poch said "his behavior was outrageous, he defended throwing people off planes into the ocean," Telam said.
The Future: Canada's Chief Justice Beverley McLachlin says we shold not "go overboard" about 9/11. Such is the home front of the axis of jihadism/nihilism. The termites continue their work.
September 23, 2009
O frabjous day
I was about ten minutes into the pilot of the new Melrose Place when I wondered when they would have to bring back Heather Locklear to save the show. Again.
It turns out the answer is November 17.
"We're ecstatic to have the chance to bring Amanda Woodward back to 'Melrose Place,'" executive producers Todd Slavkin & Darren Swimmer said in a statement. "Heather's involvement in the show is something we've been working on for some time as we couldn't imagine creating and producing this show without the iconic character's inclusion."
For those whose memory of the early 90s is a bit sketchy.
Via WWTDD?
Giving money and power to government is like giving whiskey and car keys to teenage boys
Energy Secretary Steven Chu lets the mask slip on the emasculation infantilization of the Republic. These people subscribe to fantasy science but they think you are the ones acting like children.
“The American public…just like your teenage kids, aren’t acting in a way that they should act,” Dr. Chu said. “The American public has to really understand in their core how important this issue is.”
A bit rich considering America's teenage kids are the Obama administration's most ardent (living) supporters.
Update: Victor Davis Hanson responds to this and so much of the same from the president of the University of America.
They will feel the Force
On some objective level, Morda Hehol may be a fool. But who is more foolish? The guy wearing robes because he liked Star Wars when he was a kid or the guy wearing robes because an angel told some Dark Ages bedouin having a psychotic break to take slaves, rape children and conquer the world.
So not an academic question.
That said, our civilization could do with a great deal more sniggering and a great deal less feigned respect for nonsense expressions of nonsense religion.
Daniel Jones, head of the 500,000-strong International Church of Jediism, was asked to leave the Tesco supermarket in Bangor, North Wales as his attire was deemed to be in violation of Tesco's rules, which forbid the wearing of 'hoodies' while in the supermarket.
Mr Jones, who also goes by the Jedi name Morda Hehol, claimed he was 'victimised over his beliefs' and left 'emotionally humiliated' when staff deemed him a security risk and told him to leave.
He told The Daily Telegraph: 'I told them it was a requirement of my religion but they just sniggered and ordered me to leave.'
According to the rules of the Jedi church, members should wear a hood in public places. 'It states in our Jedi doctrination that I can wear headwear. It just covers the back of my head,' Mr Jones said. 'You have a choice of wearing headwear in your home or at work, but you have to wear a cover for your head when you are in public.'
Related: Never touch a door knob again.
Cullen family values
The fine print they leave out about the dark glamour of vampirism is what your get will resemble once you have inbred with blood kin since the dawn of civilization. This is pure speculation on my part but it doesn't make you talented like a sparkle fairy.
By contrast: Cheryl Cole stands by Amie Buck.
September 22, 2009
He who kills a policeman will go to paradise
My favourite thing about this Norwegian news report on Sweden's permanent carbecue season is not the murderous stone throwing children* but the way their murderous behaviour is framed. Either the violence is the result of Swedish racism which makes it difficult for these youths to integrate or the violence is a reaction to police violence which, naturally, makes the violence the fault of the police. The words "jihad" and "insurgency" do not figure.
Such is the all too recognizable transvaluation of values instigated by the Frankfurt School, perpetuated by almost every university in the Western world and disseminated by a legacy/palace guard media. We have rendered ourselves defenseless (via Gates of Vienna, more at Vlad Tepes channel).
* These are not "feral" children; their value system is "barbarian".
We may have to attack Iran by December
Israeli former deputy defense minister Ephraim Sneh points out the blindingly obvious that, for reasons which escape me, nevertheless desperately needs to be pointed out.
Sneh reportedly stressed that a military strike would be "the very, very last resort. But ironically it is our best friends and allies who are pushing us into a corner where we would have no option but to do it.
Dar dar ke marna
On the one hand: China says its military’s arsenal comparable with West, with further developments planned.
China’s second-generation, nuclear-powered Jin and Shang class submarines are considered just a notch below cutting-edge U.S. and Russian craft. The diesel-electric Yuan class boasts a Chinese-developed air-independent propulsion system that allows it to remain submerged for weeks, while Chinese Luyang destroyers and Jiangkai missile frigates incorporate stealth features and a mix of latest-generation Chinese and Russian weapon systems.
On the other hand: "Naked" India needs series of H-bomb tests to deal with China.
“We are totally naked vis-à-vis China which has an inventory of 200 nuclear bombs, the vast majority of which are giant H-bombs of power equal to 3 million tonnes of TNT,” a note circulated by K. Santhanam, former Chief Adviser (Technologies) of the Defence Research Development Organisation, at a press conference addressed by him said.
On the gripping hand: United Korea could overtake Japan, Germany.
Dr. Horrible and the end of the internet
Via the Emmy's (via the Sister of the Flea).
September 21, 2009
Alternatives
South Korea is set to buy Israel's Green Pine radar system. Yet another instance of former United States allies working toward bilateral defence arrangements independent of the new Caliph in the White House.
They used to call this sort of thing "realism".
The deal will be worth an estimated $200 million, one of Israel's largest weapons deals with South Korea.
September 20, 2009
He who refuses to learn deserves extinction
Voice of the People's Republic of North London, tribune for the values of champagne socialists everywhere (but mainly Canonbury), The Independent is to close by Christmas (via Jay Currie). This is not only another vindication of what many of us have been saying about the economic oblivion faced by "reality based" business models, it is a victory in our networked crusade against the enemies of civilization (citizen and barbarian alike).
"There's no point in us as a company subsidising a newspaper that really nobody wants to read in the United Kingdom," O'Brien told Bloomberg TV in an interview on the sidelines of the Global Irish Economic Forum.
"It's not a relevant newspaper anymore and this newspaper's going to be closed by Christmas,"said O'Brien, who has been at odds with the company's board over plans to refinance a 200-million-euro debt issue that was meant to be paid in May.
I confess a twinge of regret. The Independent was part of my life in Islington for the better part of four years. They had a good concise crossword and would publish my letters besides.
Occam's box cutter
Child rape is now sanctioned by the Canadian military in Afghanistan (and anywhere else the rape of children is an inconvenience, presumably). This is what happens when we complicate winning with sentiment. Worse yet, when "winning" becomes our only objective.
Only one of the following propositions is true:
i - Child rapists are not our allies, or;
ii - We are evil.
In addition, last year Brig.-Gen. J.C. Collin, commander of Land Force Central Area, passed on to the senior army leadership the concerns raised by military police who said they had been told by their commanders not to interfere in incidents in which Afghan forces were having sex with children.
To be clear: It is not necessary for the enemy to like us in order for us to win the war. Still less is it necessary for us to like him. On the contrary, in order to win the war, we must destroy the enemy's cult of rape and death, destroy the rapine and pillage that is his way of life and destroy most if not all of the underlying spirit disease that passes for his religion. It is, in fact, the destruction of his "religion" that must be at the heart of our endeavour.
This war aim is not a bug. This war aim is not even a feature. The destruction of the enemy's way of life and his system of belief is our just cause for making war. The moment we compromise this war aim in order to cultivate local "allies" we make ourselves complicit in the very evil we have sent our bravest to fight.
Complicity in child rape is not a PR problem for Stephen Harper's government nor merely a source of shame for those Canadians still capable of the emotion. Complicity in child rape is a war crime and should be treated as such.
Update: Manmountain Molehill comments via email (with my apologies for my sometimes over enthusiastic TypeKey comment system/moat):
Unlike Iraq, Saddam aside, which has a many-thousand year history of civilization Afghanistan has none. George W. Bush had an admirable, if ultimately futile goal in reorganizing Iraqi society in the wake of Saddam. A peaceful, democratically elected government in the heart of the Islamic world would have far-reaching consequences throughout the middle east.The ultimate result is yet to be seen, but the effort may well be justified. On the other hand, Afghanistan has never been civilized. The ability to live in a (somewhat) peaceful society has both genetic and cultural roots, and they run deep. Forcing such changes on the Pashtuns would be a multi-generation project involving occupation and a colonial government. For Afghanistan the game isn't worth the candle. It is time to time to send our troops elsewhere and send in the Hellfire missiles (or the Ghurkas, same result). Troops out, bombs in would also have been an effective response in Somalia, A few MOABs would have made our point most effectively: attack Americans and die. It will work against any form of barbarian. Unfortunately Western societies have lost the ruthlessness needed to impose such short, sharp shocks to our enemies. It mat yet be our undoing.
Petard sighted
Canada introduces bill supporting US deserters.
The bill, introduced by the Liberal Party's Gerard Kennedy, would allow other countries' military deserters to stay in Canada if their refusal to serve is based on sincere moral, political or religious objections.
Such as, for example, a sincere belief Barack Obama is an illegal usurper, an unlawful pretender and that he is not in fact President of the United States?
Propagandism
Evan Coyne Maloney enumerates the rules of multiculturalism and considers the case of Kanye West.
September 19, 2009
Old news to anyone paying attention
Obama associate implicated in murder plot.
Writer Peter Jamison, who is based in San Francisco, where the cop killing occurred, spent months working on the story and developed many different sources of information. Jamison, who can’t be dismissed as a right-winger pursuing a partisan agenda designed to make Obama look bad, examined the evidence in the 1970 Park Police Station bombing case. He finds that it goes straight to Dohrn and other members of the Weather Underground, including her husband, fellow terrorist Bill Ayers, now a professor of education at the University of Illinois.
It has fallen upon me, now and again in my sojourns through the world, to ease various evil men of their lives
The HQ trailer for Solomon Kane featuring that guy who played Mark Antony in Rome. Amazon has The Savage Tales of Solomon Kane
The place where God said his prayers
From The Meaning of the Crusade by G.K. Chesteron. The Crusade was the counter-attack; to say otherwise is to substitute modern stupidity for medieval simplicity.
More than that, it was but a return upon the Moslems who had already conquered Palestine.
Apocalyptica feat. Nina Hagen: Seemann (live)
With a grateful hat tip to SondraK.
September 18, 2009
Genisto's "NES Arkanoid in 16:30"
Posting this counts as "passive aggressive".
Pat Condell: Apologists for evil
Testify.
That? That was just getting warmed up. He's right too; the word "racism" deserves an apology (via The Steynian).
September 17, 2009
Cura te ipsum
Canada's H1N1 vaccine priority groups released: people with chronic medical conditions under age 65, pregnant women, children six months to five years, people living in isolated communities, pandemic response and essential health care workers.
Up to 15 per cent of people infected with the H1N1 virus could get quite sick, and one per cent will be hospitalized — half the previous estimate of two per cent of clinical cases.
Vaccine may be too late for swine flu outbreak.
If accurate, the worst of the outbreak will occur before Canada plans to begin its vaccination program.
Swine flu changes greetings, hockey habits.
Body bags disrupt Canada's flu-readiness message.
"This says to me they've given up," the newspaper quoted Chief David Harper of Northern Manitoba's Garden Hill reserve, which received some of the body bags, as saying.
Dunch or Linner?
He says Linner. I think it's Dunch.
A dunch (the term is a portmanteu of lunch and dinner) can be served after an afternoon event or prior to an evening one in order to accomodate busy time schedules. It usually replaces both lunch and dinner and thus has a tendency to be the only meal of the day.
The term "dunch" has enjoyed a wider usage, especially among college students, than its equivalent "linner", which has died out.
September 16, 2009
Build it and they will come
The current wave of arrests adds to the eight other suspects detained immediately after the plot was revealed one and a half months ago. The detainees were apparently sent as agents of Iran.
Update, September 17: A UAE official denied reports claiming that the UAE intelligence services foiled attempts to bomb Burj Dubai, the world’s tallest building. He might even be telling the truth. To my mind, it is far more likely the tower will be brought down by hijacked civilian airliners or lighter private aircraft stocked with explosives.
Tyr: Hold the Heathen Hammer High
Here's a thought: Instead of being complete pussies we man up and fight back.
Further thought: You know what I am not worried about? Offending Christians. My Christian friends are perfectly capable of reading between the lines.
September 15, 2009
End of an era
Genius of Red Dawn and Escape from New York, Patrick Swayze has died.
And with him, I suspect, my decades long quest to avoid watching Dirty Dancing.
Metrics of success
An antidote to my usual doom-mongering, Terry Glavin lists accomplishments - and, I would argue, lowers expectations - in Afghanistan (via Blazing Cat Fur).
He is glorified not in one, but in countless suns; not in a single earth, a single world, but in a thousand thousand, I say in an infinity of worlds
GigaGalaxy Zoom has released the first of three images meant to allow internet users to observe the night sky as if from excellent viewing sites in Chile; an 800-million-pixel monster panorama including the entire sky.
...
“I wanted to show a sky that everyone can relate to — with its constellations, its thousands of stars, with names familiar since childhood, its myths shared by all civilizations since Homo became Sapiens,” Brunier said in a release. “The image was therefore made as man sees it, with a regular digital camera under the dark skies in the Atacama Desert and on La Palma.”
Each exposure was six minutes long, and the project extended over several months.
Te Hokioi
Researchers at Canterbury Museum in Christchurch and the University of New South Wales in Australia have identified the culprit behind Maori legends of a giant man-eating bird. Te Hokioki is now thought to have been Haast's eagle, extinct for 500 years.
Its main prey would have been moa, flightless birds which grew to as much as 250kg and 2.5 metres tall. "In some fossil sites, moa bones have been found with signs of eagle predation," Dr Scofield said.
September 14, 2009
Have you ever seen a bus full of the English blow up?
Many English-speaking Canadians, to the extent they are paying any attention at all, might think it is cute that threats of violence and an act of cowardice canceled re-enactment plans for the Battle of the Plains of Abraham. It is also true that a further lapse of moral discrimination allowed readings from the FLQ manifesto to take their place. Another victory for terrorism and another (tax payer funded) celebration of terrorism make for just another day in "Canada".
Many - perhaps most - English-speaking Canadians, to the extent they remain capable of moral discrimination, have become more afraid of being called racist than they are of the petty terrorism of French-speaking extremists; the English simply do not take this sort of thing seriously considering the source. This makes for bad gestures of goodwill made in bad faith; born of and breeding contempt rather than neighbourliness.
For all that Canada.com would whitewash the event as a picnic and a no-show for terrorists the fact remains the terrorists won the day.
Lest anyone imagine the trail of bombings and murders by the FLQ were limited by their conscience and not their capability.
THE FLQ WILL KILL
... In a little while the English, the federalists, the exploiters, the toadies of the occupiers, the lackeys of imperialism - all those who betray the workers and the Quebec nation - will fear for their lives and they will be right. For the FLQ will kill ... Our present cells will look like amateurs when our elite groups go into action.
Have you ever seen a bus full of the English blow up?
Have you ever seen an English library burning?
Have you ever seen the president of a Yankee corporation under fire?
Have you ever seen a pellet micro-bomb?
Have you ever seen a miniature incendiary bomb?
Have you ever seen a can explode on the shelf of a supermarket in the British quarter?
Have you ever seen a Protestant church burning?
Have you ever seen Westmount without telephones or electricity and with its water supply poisoned?
Have you ever seen sharp-shooters ambushed on roofs, shooting down traitors?
Be sure you soon will!!!"
More blood for oil
The British Foreign Office has been forced to lie and refute allegations that it agreed Britain would never attempt to try the murderer of police constable Yvonne Fletcher, murdered by a shot fired from inside the Libyan embassy in London 25 years ago.
400,000
Theodore Dalrymple on the correct response to the phenomenon of crime. It is pointless to excerpt the man properly but I enjoyed the following numbers.
Furthermore, it has been estimated that if Britain now had the same sentencing policies as it had in Edwardian times, its prison population would be – well, about 400,000.
Read the whole thing.
September 13, 2009
The West against the East, and the East against the West
Arkhimandrite Tikhon Shevkunov, superior of the Sretensky Monastery in Moscow and close associate of Vladimir Putin, is not only considered to be a "peculiar spokesman" for Russia's elite but a film producer as well, viz of a reportedly influential bit of revisionim entitled The Fall of an Empire - the Lesson of Byzantium.*
The West is of hardly any help, though while the Muslim challenge is open, the Western danger is more subtle. An excerpt from the movie, "The West's vengeful hatred of Byzantium and her successors is entirely inexplicable to the West itself; it goes to some deep genetic level, and - as paradoxical as this may seem - continues even to the present day."
The message is that for Russia to survive, it should return to its primordial values: Orthodoxy and strong power. Surrounded on all sides, Russia should deal with its enemies in the same way as they once dealt with it: Russia should use the West against the East, and the East against the West.
Fair dues: If you had to rely on the British or French Establishments to keep their word - let alone lend a hand in a pinch - you might reach similar conclusions.
* Scanning the text, I wondered how long it would take for the Russians to blame the Jews. Answer: About half a page. I expect they will work the Masons in there somewhere.
The real lesson of Versailles
David Warren cites Rudyard Kipling, waxes war-mongerish.
So far so “war-mongering,” and I am perfectly aware that far fewer of my own contemporaries have the stomach for this kind of instruction, than had Kipling’s. Part of the reason is our taught memory of that First World War. It has been presented in our schoolbooks as a great waste of lives.
It was not, says Warren. RTWT for the real lesson of Versailles and precisely what made the Hitler phenomenon possible in Germany.
John Barry: Beyondness
From the comments:
September 12, 2009
Not angry enough
Via Atlas Shrugs.
Reminder: The producers of The Third Jihad have made the documentary available for free viewing on-line for one week (September 9 - 15). Watch it and ask yourself why it is not mandatory viewing in every high school across the land. If it isn't - and I do not care where you live, it isn't - ask yourself why not.
The answer to the question is obvious: We must defend ourselves against not one but two jihads.
El Paso: Oddly reminiscent of Afghanistan
My first thought was to link to this piece as it concerns Mohamad Kamal Elzahabi - a man with an extraordinary knack for claiming to be at the wrong place at the wrong time - but figured I would use it beat up on The Globe and Mail instead. As Canada's ersatz newspaper of record defends the honour of this 1990s Afghan training camp instructor, it does so only for the purpose of a hit piece against Canadian honour.
Again, hardly news, but I think this bit of contextualization speaks for itself.
Imagine that, an American administration preoccupied with finding al Qaeda sleeper agents in the United States. That was reality a few short long months ago; now it seems like science fiction.
The Man Who Walked Around The World
This exceptional Johnny Walker ad arrives AoSHQ.
September 11, 2009
A date that will live in niceness
Kevin O'Brien considers the very first "congressionally declared, presidentially blessed, federally administered" National Day of Service and Remembrance, September 11. RTWT.
Also: 9/13 Republican Evan Sayet on how "liberals" think (via Ace). Testify, my brother, for I had the same revelation.
So you're having dinner, and you look out the window and spot his wife, and she's being beaten up right outside the restaurant. You grab your friend and say, "Come on, let's help her. Let's help your wife," and he says, "Nah, I'm sure she deserves it." At that moment, it dawns on you: He really does hate his wife.
That's what 9/11 was to me. For years and years I'd hear my friends from the Left say how evil and horrible and racist and imperialistic and oppressive America is, and I'd chuckle to myself and think, "Oh, they always say that; they love America." Then on 9/11, we were beaten up, and when I grabbed them by the collar, and I said, "Come on, let's help her. Let's help America," and they said, "Nah, she deserves it."
At that moment, I realized: They really do hate America.
This one is a must read for anyone who has wondered why our reference to fact and reason has no effect on our opponents and why, if we want to win, we have to retake the education system and the entertainment industry. To my mind, it is also an indictment of those conservatives who would call for rhetorical restraint in the face of a great evil of our age elected to office last November. Such courtliness will go unregarded and unrewarded. Neither fact nor reason let alone courtesy will win the day against medievalism and nihilism.
Time's up
Armed Forces Chief of Staff Jean-Louis Georgelin, head of the "French military", claims there is no viable military option to prevent Iran from acquiring nuclear weapons; too risky.
On the contrary, as Caroline Glick explains, Iran is months - not years - away from having sufficent enriched uranium to start building its atomic arsenal. Any sane person can see that the greater risk is a nuclear armed Iran and not only to embattled democratic Israel.
For example.
Something pressing to remember when Barack Obama provides cover on "disarmament" for his allies at the United Nations.
Canaries currents
Connecting Lagrange points between plantary bodies produces a map of gravitational corridors in the solar system and, with them, a means of cutting the costs of space travel.
'These are freefall pathways in space around and between gravitational bodies. Instead of falling down, like you do on Earth, you fall along these tubes.
...
'I like to think of them as being similar to ocean currents, but they are gravitational currents. If you're in a parking orbit round the Earth, and one of them intersects your trajectory, you just need enough fuel to change your velocity and now you're on a new trajectory that is free.'
September 10, 2009
Dolly Rockers: Gold Digger
Lest anyone think I have lost my rhetorical focus.
Full effect here. Hat tip to Jeff!
The urge to save humanity
Burt Prelutsky asks a number of politically incorrect questions (but what questions aren't these days). While I am tempted to quote his summary of what American tax payers are getting for a half billion of their dollars from their United States consulate in Jerusalem (blood pressure warning for the linked revelations), I am instead going to cite his closing observations.
When I look at Obama, I see a lot of Saroyan there. Although he's made millions of dollars off his books and CDs, it's common knowledge that he has one relative, apparently an illegal immigrant, living in public housing and another in an African village, surviving on pennies a day. But Obama keeps telling us that he's heart-sick about the unemployed and the uninsured. Well, as H.L. Mencken once observed: "The urge to save humanity is always a false front for the urge to rule it."
I suppose I should add I have, uhh, nothing to add to last night's farcical health care address. Better by far, it seems to me, to target the next czar. As a Canadian citizen, I realize it is a bit forward of me to suggest one to my American cousins; particularly so given the windfall his policies would provide for Canadian beef producers.
But, seriously, look carefully at Regulatory Czar Cass Sunstein.
To be clear, the price of your steak goes up and the price of your cheeseburger goes up. Making steak and burgers from imported Canadian beef is another story.
Related: Victor Davis Hanson deconstructs the whup ass.
Jack, Oliver, Mohammed
Mohammed is now the third most popular British boys' name. For some reason (racism!), the British government does not want you to know.
There is just one small problem: the list is deceitful. In reality, the third most popular choice for boy children born last year in England and Wales was not Thomas, but Mohammed. The ONS explains blithely that it had no intent to deceive. Its normal practice is to catalogue different spellings separately, as in Mohammed, Muhammed and so on.
Because British parents are eager to name their sons after Jack the Ripper, apparently. So that's a woman hating serial killer, a theocratic tyrant and a couple guys named Jack and Oliver for the top three.
Just beyond the Line of Actual Control
NDTV (New Delhi Television Limited) claims to have exclusive information that Red China is "actively training and arming insurgent groups in Manipur and Nagaland."
Related: Difficulties for Red China's special forces as they make their first appearance on parade.
"A special forces soldier's body is usually in the shape of a bow," Liang said. "That's why, in formation drills, we always have problems with our heads, feet and upper bodies."
The Beatles: Revolution
That is some insanely awesome pre-recorded guitar tone. And more power to them, live music always sux.
September 09, 2009
The curse of Apollo
Spengler discusses decline as a guest on Shire Network News, "very popular with those of us with a fairly gloomy view of where the West is going at the moment" (via Five Feet of Fury).
I think my IQ shot up by ten points just by being in the same room.
Revealed: The reason David Goldman chose to publish as Spengler.
Also featured: The Decline of the East. So it's not all bad news then.
Irtidād
A suggestion for Canada's Prime Minister, Stephen Harper:
Dear Mr. Harper,
As a "Canadian", I am committed to freedom of religion as I am committed to freedom of conscience and freedom of expression. I am certain you will agree any genuine freedom of religion includes the right to be free from religion (as some secular activists put it) and freedom to choose the religion to which you subscribe. Individuals should have no fear their choice of religious belief should lead to discrimination in employment or housing let alone in - just pulling an example out of the air here, you understand - their being brutally murdered by former friends and relatives and left to rot in an unmarked grave.
Therefore, I urgently suggest* it should be made a criminal offense to advocate death for apostasy.
Best wishes,
The Flea
* Split infinitives, by contrast, should remain a form of protected speech.
All we are saying
Is give war a chance.
The Gods of the Copybook Headings takes issue with Michael Coren's "myths" about the Second World War, stopping along the way to cite a salient lesson lost on our enemy and lost to ourselves (via Binky).
—Letter, Sherman to Henry W. Halleck, December 24, 1864.
Today's enemy has a demonic appetite for torture and slaughter, his war materiel is provided for by every trip we make to the gas station and he fights in the knowledge of an unholy promise of sex slaves for booty in this world and as eternal reward in the next. He is no more likely to call it a day than an SS officer would be were he also threatened with internment at a Caribbean beach resort.
September 08, 2009
Cut and paste
Decca Aitkenhead's interview with novelist Douglas Coupland - in London to promote Generation A: A Novel
Welcome to the world of socialized health care.
Lest we forget
Christopher Hitchens misses the mark as he urges us to remember why we are in Iraq and Afghanistan. This is, he reminds us, a long war against "Islamic terrorism". His argument, however, is primarily (supposedly) focused on the case of the long war in Afghanistan.
Fair dues. Except once you read the piece you will discover his examples for each of these four requisites are drawn from neighbouring Pakistan. If his argument were that to win in Afghanistan we need to defeat the Taliban in Pakistan - and, perhaps more important, defeat the central government of Pakistan - I would say he had made his case.
Magical thinking
And yet we are meant to negotiate as if with rational people. The "Palestinians" do not have grievances; they have witchcraft accusations.
September 07, 2009
New Army Model
Attentive Flea-readers may recall when Lance corporal Katrina Hodge decided to stand for Miss England 2008. While she did not become Miss England (she placed second), I am nevertheless delighted to pass on the news of Corporal Katrina Hodge's return as a lingerie model for La Senza (pictured at the link).
The part-time model was awarded a medal of bravery for disarming an insurgent while on a tour of Iraq at the age of 18 and was recently promoted to the level of Corporal.
All in a good cause too; La Senza's Armed Forces campaign offers a 15% to British servicemen and women.
A modern master of declinology
Steven Poole's brief, insubstantial review of Theodore Dalrymple's Not With a Bang But a Whimper: The Politics and Culture of Decline
And it takes a Guardian writer not to have noticed.
Civil Rights Commission does its job
I know, I know, but bear with me. The United States Commission on Civil Rights has made a "stinging rebuke" to Obama's Department of Justice as it dismissed its own case for voter intimidation - over-ruling its own career attorneys - against two black national socialist paramilitary members*, one armed and one of whom was a Democratic Party poll watcher.
The complaint said NBP Chairman Malik Zulu Shabazz confirmed that the placement of Mr. Shabazz and Mr. Jackson was part of a nationwide effort to deploy members at polling locations. The Justice Department initially sought an injunction to prevent any similar future actions.
None of the defendants responded to the lawsuit. However, instead of immediately filing for a routine default judgment, the DOJ voluntarily dismissed the lawsuit for two of the defendants – including Mr. Jackson, who was a Democratic Party poll watcher.
* Even the Southern Poverty Law Center identifies the New Black Panthers as a "hate group".
The Toronto Declaration
Another handy list arrives in the form of signatories to the anti-Semetic Toronto Declaration, a condemnation of the Toronto International Film Festival for this year's celebrity spotlight on Tel Aviv.
Producer, writer and director David Zucker ("Scary Movie," "Naked Gun," "Airplane!" ) denounced as "left-wing crazies" the individuals who signed a letter called " The Toronto Declaration" to protest Israeli government policies.
Mr. Zucker said he is "outraged" that actors such as Danny Glover and Jane Fonda, along with about 50 other activists, would sign a declaration that condemns Israel as an "apartheid regime" and dismisses the work of Tel Aviv filmmakers as "Israeli propaganda."
A small loss, admittedly, given the second raters, no hopers and academics making up most of the list. Still, I am disappointed to see Slavoj Zizek has signed on to this fatuous, evil protest against the only democracy in the Middle East. But then democracy and representative government, the right to freedom of expression, the right to freedom of religion and the rights of women are a small thing to these people when set against their radical pose.
September 06, 2009
Rock the Reception
These last days of empire provide ever fewer economic incentives for men to consider marriage (the carrot) and ever less social stigma toward unmarried couples (the stick).
Memo to women: This may not be the best time to raise the bar.
Just watch me
You know your country is in trouble when your "conservative" Prime Minister lacks the moral clarity of Pierre Trudeau.
Ralfe: At any cost? How far would you go with that? How far would you extend that?
Trudeau: Well, just watch me.
Arctic Sea ghost ship
European Union piracy watch head, Admiral Tarmo Kouts believes Israel is most likely to have carried out the hijacking of the Arctic Sea. Israelis have yet to be convinced.
The Telegraph offers further speculation.
“I’ve spoken to people close to the investigation and they’ve pretty much confirmed Mossad’s involvement. It’s laughable to believe all this fuss was over a load of timber. I’m not alone in believing that it was carrying weapons to Iran.”
We can have mammoth burgers
Mankind is perhaps 20 years from being able to clone a hybrid woolly mammoth so we had better start talking about whether or not mammoth ribs are halal. Also, about condiments. Cucumber mint sauce?
Marsupial wolf is a different story most probably calling for something hotter. Toronto foodies are best advised to try Mados' pumpkin and pawpaw pepper sauce.
September 05, 2009
Stargate Universe babes reveal sexy Wookie mating call
In case I had not already linked the trailer for Stargate Universe. About which I have mixed feelings. Robert Carlyle is a bit creepy, for one thing.
And now for the title of this post.
Ocean Look
The United States is set to deploy the Reaper on an anti-piracy mission based in the Seychelles. And, one hopes, a skull and crossbones stencil.
Make The Girl Dance: Baby Baby Baby
I have no clue what this is in aid of. Best get it over with now, ladies; in ten years Paris will have whip wielding religious police on the look out for this sort of thing. Though I suspect there are more than enough rock throwing youths already resident in Paris to make this a dangerous performance off the Rue Montorgueil (via Blazing Cat Fur).
September 04, 2009
Think Romany Matrix and you'd be halfway there
For Autumn/Winter 2009, Gareth Pugh decided to show a video rather than send models down the runway.
...
For those who feel this has all got too haute luxe for the master of high concept, a series of simple separates studded with Hellraiser-style nails were a perfect example of the short, sharp shock treatments Pugh so loves.
More whimsy: Erin Fetherston Fall 2009: Gothic Alice in Wonderland, Rick Owens Fall 2009: A Goth Take on Swan Lake, Tory Burch Fall 2009: Ladylike Goth and Fall '09 makeup trends: Vamp chic meets 80s glam.
What the hell: Another look at Alexander McQueen Fall Winter 2009/2010.
Neil Gaiman's bookshelves
I believe I have already mentioned my envy of Neil Gaiman's library (pictured at the link, via Boing Boing).
Carolyn Jones: Morticia & More
With a tip of a gold spray painted hat to Ben.
September 03, 2009
The Battle of Toronto
Found guilty as a participant in a bomb plot targeting the Toronto Stock Exchange, the downtown offices of CSIS (what passes for a Canadian CIA) and a military base near Highway 401, a bomb plot that would have "dwarfed London's 2005 subway bombings", Saad Khalid could serve as little as five and a half years behind bars and be out on parole in 28 months.
And that, ladies and gentlemen, is the problem in a nutshell. Small wonder they have such contempt for Canada, Canadians, democracy and Canadian values; we set such little store by them ourselves.
Who is the hottest girl in gaming?
Once again, her name is Lara, not Laura.
Hard liberals
In addition to a fair summary of British conservatism (to be found at the link), Peter Hitchens offers a few concise - and cutting - observations about a bit of the political spectrum I recognize. This by way of a rejoinder to a conversation with Mehdi Hasan about institutional bias at the BBC; Hasan labours under the impression the BBC is a right wing outfit. Bless.
I am excerpting a long quote for the benefit of Canadian Flea-readers. We too know peope who confuse conservatism with the Conservative party or, worse yet, confuse loyalty to party with loyalty to civilization (I would say "loyalty to country" but this is Canada I am talking about).
He is also, I think, confused by the fact that the BBC, which was generally sympathetic to the Blair government because of its cultural leftism, could never really cope with that government's globalist decision to go to war in Iraq. Sentimental Leftists, whose politics are really a series of displaced religious opinions, often misunderstand, and lag behind, the vanguard of their cause. Only the sharper and smarter ones, the 'hard liberals', recognise that their aims may be served by bombing a few cities. The Tory Party had a parallel problem. Having sold Britain to the EU and being secretly ashamed of it, it now strives to look ultra-patriotic on every possible occasion by banging the drum for war and supporting 'our boys', though it overcame this when we surrendered to the IRA in Northern Ireland, the last actual national conflict in which our armed forces were deployed in British, rather than globalist interests. The neo-conservative liberals, whose reasons for backing these wars are entirely different, thus have an easier time with their backbenchers than do Labour. Sentimental Tory MPs back wars they should oppose. Sentimental Labour MPs oppose wars they ought to support.
Not just bombing cities, either. We have a profound appreciation for marketing. Fair dues about the ex-Marxism, btw; though as part of a Lacanian psychoanalytic tendency I was too hip to have ever been considered reliable.
And we do have a new revolutionary Utopia. It is called the United States of America.
Rockstar Propaganda
Having watched the debut trailer for Grand Theft Auto: Episodes from Liberty City featuring The Ballad of Gay Tony, and given an end of October release, I am forced to conclude two months is not much time for me to start and finish The Lost and the Damned before the arrival of the next installment...
September 02, 2009
In less depressing news
The Beatles Abbey Road cover recreated.
Enthusiastic Kate Moss for Yves Saint Laurent.
American, Iraq and the Future of the Middle East
Christopher Hitchens 2007-2008 Teatro Speaker Series (October, 2007). Part II, Part III, Part IV.
Jai Maa Durga
I have decided Hinduism kicks an higher* ass percentage than my current belief system (begging your pardon for the swastika, jarring for all it is a symbol of auspiciousness in this context).
* See how I did that?
September 01, 2009
Cheryl Cole named new covergirl for L'Oreal
Excellent news for Cheryl Cole and a welcome relief to Flea-readers who have mentioned (purely as an observation, you understand) an absence of totty for all the pissing and moaning about the end of the world. I might even manage to throw some archaeology at you this week.
Also good news, a bump in traffic for August; unexpected as my traffic normally trends down over the summer.
Update: Kathy Shaidle has published her latest traffic statistics. Note to advertisers... between the two of us we should have upwards of 2 million unique readers this year. Not bad for a couple of Canadian blogs written in Canada. I should confess an oblique happiness Townhall.com only gets twenty times my traffic (but I suspect with a far superior business model).
A golden age of civilisational anxiety
It behooves those of us convinced the sky has come unhinged to entertain those of a Pollyanna-ish perspective; if only because they are always in the majority. Matthew Price reviews Richard Overy's The Morbid Age - Britain Between the Wars
Knowing the Western world - if such is synonymous with the fortune of the United States of America* - woud emerge stronger from the Second World War, Price believes he can rely on his readers to share his amusement at a society convinced it was on a course "headlong, blindly and almost eagerly towards a gigantic carnival of self-extermination."
For all that Price finds this sort of thing "unintentionally funny", as rhetoric goes, his sneering at doomsayers of the '20s and '30s is neither funny nor clever. Tens of millions were about to be slaughtered, many millions of whom were to lose their lives in a mechanical and administrative process without parallel or precedent in human history. Hindsight is with the Cassandras. It seems to me the overwrought rhetoric of calamity was, if anything, markedly underwrought.
I expect Pollyannas can be vexed by Cassandra's such as myself. For what it is worth, I am an optimist when it comes to one aspect of the declinism of the left; their eco-catastrophe is not happening. Not to worry I have gone soft, mind you. Their false declinism is itself a symptom of real decline. Much as Overy would attribute eugenics to the declinism of the day, I see eugenics - and today's pseudo-science equivalents - as symptomatic of the real problem: Superstitious, utterly amoral, authority driven and, in today's Luddite variant, bent on the destruction of the very machines that stand between us and the rising tide, an existential threat for all it is metaphorical. But then you can hardly expect the cheering section for the decline and fall of the West to have any patience for those of us who bother to point out the problem.
* It is. But.
Suicide of the West
Thomas Sowell, at least, shares my mood. I have excerpted a large quote so please do click through and read the whole thing. In fairness to Sowell's critics, there was and remains a great deal of hand-wringing over the abrupt fate of Nazis engaged in war crimes; Nazis and Nazi sympathizers can't stop complaining about it to this day.
There was a time when everybody understood this. German soldiers who put on American military uniforms, in order to infiltrate American lines during the Battle of the Bulge were simply lined up against a wall and shot-- and nobody wrung their hands over it. Nor did the U.S. Army try to conceal what they had done. The executions were filmed and the film has been shown on the History Channel.
So many "rights" have been conjured up out of thin air that many people seem unaware that rights and obligations derive from explicit laws, not from politically correct pieties. If you don't meet the terms of the Geneva Convention, then the Geneva Convention doesn't protect you. If you are not an American citizen, then the rights guaranteed to American citizens do not apply to you.
That should be especially obvious if you are part of an international network bent on killing Americans. But bending over backward to be nice to our enemies is one of the many self-indulgences of those who engage in moral preening.
So much of the battle now is to recapture the blindingly obvious. Expect to be called names for trying; the moral preeners are too busy praying for death by means of an hypothetical 1% average increase in global temperature (one hundred years from now) to be distracted by today's death cultists no matter how inventively said cultists persevere in their labours.
Severe power shortages within a year
Whenever I consider returning to England.
The Government is forecasting that by 2017 there will be power cuts of around 3,000 megawatt hours per year - the equivalent of the whole of Nottingham being without electricity for a day.
Herb Alpert & the Tijuana Brass: A Taste of Honey
With a tip of the hat to Taylor Empire Airways.