January 31, 2010
S.P.E.W.
While I cannot say I will be rushing out to purchase People Tree products, I am delighted to learn Emma Watson has a better grasp of economics and development than the press corps of the entire Western world.
Surgical bombs
At what point does the civilized world give these people a time out on commercial flights instead of accommodating their need to play hide-and-seek with our lives?
But an operation by MI5 has uncovered evidence that Al Qaeda is planning a new stage in its terror campaign by inserting ‘surgical bombs’ inside people for the first time.
Such as, for example, exploding breast implants. It will seem like science fiction until the planes start falling from the sky.
Commercial espionage
MI5 accuses China of bugging and burgling to uncover British trade secrets. Honeytraps, bribery and blackmail are mentioned but the following strikes me as the simplest method by far.
The gifts — cameras and memory sticks — have been found to contain electronic Trojan bugs which provide the Chinese with remote access to users’ computers.
Maiden flight
Ria Novosti has video of the maiden flight of the fifth-generation Sukhoi T-50.
It is not terribly stealthy looking. But given Russian engineering, I expect it is just stealthy enough to do the job.
January 30, 2010
And another one gone, and another one gone
Hamas mouthpiece Reuters reports Israel assassinated a a top Hamas official in Dubai last week.
"I cannot reveal the circumstances. We are working with the authorities in the United Arab Emirates," said Izzat Al-Rishq, a member of Hamas' politburo, speaking in Damascus.
Fun fact: Hamas has a politburo.
The Thatcher Diet
The Iron Lady was composed primarily of eggs.
The eggs, along with cucumber, spinach, tomatoes, steak and the odd swig of whisky, went towards a strict meal regime that promised to help her shed 20lb in two weeks.
It seems appropriate to update here somehow: Italy follows France with a bid to ban the burqa.
Legislation to stop Muslim women wearing the hood and other full-face veils such as the niqab will be introduced, equal opportunities minister Mara Carfagna said.
January 29, 2010
Escape goat
The Independent's Zeeshan Haider propogates racist stereotypes of "Asians" as goat sacrificing primitives. If this story appeared on Fox the Left would have an embolism.
Actually, I just wanted an excuse to put "escape goat" in the tag line.*
Pakistanis arent' buying Zardari's "new-found religiosity", apparently.
* Someone tries to teach me English in 5... 4... 3...
Related: Sometimes a cigar is a giant penis. In case you were wondering: This is why they hate us.
An unclassified study from a military research unit in southern Afghanistan details how homosexual behavior is unusually common among men in the large ethnic group known as Pashtuns -- though they seem to be in complete denial about it.
Ethnographic detail/Too Much Information at the link. Leaving aside the recurrent anal gonorrhea (you might have thought I was exaggerating the TMI), the report illustrates something horrific about the enemy's worldview. If you can have sex with another man provided you do not love him (if you love him, you are gay) and if you avoid the company of women "who God has made unclean" then your worldview prevents you from loving anyone and rewards you for using everyone.
This is the opposite of Christ's message. Something to consider the next time the Fred Phelps clan is compared to the Taliban. For all he believes the thought of two men loving each other calls for pickets and protests at Marine Corps funerals, even Phelps' cramped, diabolically inflected faith - a perversion of Christianity - allows room for love of some kind.
Not so the Taliban, examplars of the Pashtun masculine ideal. Our enemy in Afghanistan is not an army, not even an ideology; it is a culture made demonic by design. It is the future of the world if we lose.
Prospective (Promising) Aircraft Complex (System) of Front line Aviation
Russia tests the Sukhoi T-50, a fifth-generation fighter developed in collaboration with India.
Russian officials have spent two decades trying to build the so-called fifth-generation fighter and hope the T-50 can challenge the U.S. F-22 Raptor, which first flew in 1997. The Russian project has been veiled in secrecy and no pictures of it had been released before the maiden flight.
If the prototype bearing a close resemblance to the Raptor goes into production, it will be the first major new aircraft design built in post-Soviet Russia. Officials have expressed hope that the T-50 will enter service in 2015.
More on the Sukhoi PAK FA and Sukhoi/HAL FGFA.
My tribe
Welsh supermarket bans shopping in pajamas. Even if you wear your best pajamas.
January 28, 2010
Not British
I am reminded of an observation about dogs walking on their hind legs, the trick is remarkable not because they do it well but because they can do it at all.
It is not that the linked article is terribly informative but that it is the BBC asking the question: Should the UK ban the Muslim face veil?
But writing in the Independent, journalist Yasmin Alibhai-Brown, who chairs the group British Muslims for Secular Democracy, said she supported restrictions on wearing the face veil in key public spaces.
"This covering makes women invisible, invalidates their participatory rights and confirms them as evil temptresses.
Related: Why most Muslims are reluctant to speak out against the crazies.
... A group of 80 people, with their faces covered, stormed the mosque where some 200 worshippers were present, a council member of the Conference of Imams, chaired by Chalgoumi himself, told the France Presse agency, asking to remain anonymous. They forced their way in and grabbed the microphones after a scuffle. At this point, they directed threats and curses against Imam, treating him as an unbeliever and an apostate and stating: we will trash his case, this Imam of the Jews...
Cyber armies
Google is not alone in condemning China's cyberattacks and espionage.
January 27, 2010
Unprecedented
Flea-readers will be astonished to learn of a French surrender.
Despite President Nicolas Sarkozy's assertion that Islamic veils were 'not welcome', MPs are to recommend today that they are barred only from public transport and civic buildings such as schools and hospitals.
They would be permitted in private buildings or on the street.
"Legal challenges"? "From the EU"? Think what you like of the French, only the British are stupid enough to be cowed by the opinions of an unrepresentative foreign court. Actually, come to think of it, Canadians are stupid in much the same way. So I'll just shut the hell up.
Unmitigated: France balks at more troops for Afghanistan, decides to send "more mentors and civilian helpers" (someone get Olivia Chow on the phone, her intellectual property has been violated).
Ahh, the famous British sense of humour.
Not helping
Haiti's Scientological benefactor has been revealed. John Travolta thought it was so important to make a show of himself bring in a crack team of Scientology "touch assist" therapists he flew them to Haiti himself in his private Boeing 707.
To Haiti's only airport. Which can handle only as many as 130 flights a day. After a massive earthquake.
WWTDD? comments on the healing power of Scientology.
Travolta's publicist, and the Church of Scientology, had a good day at the expense of dying people. Think what you will of Scientology's claims or Scientology's motives, they are hurting the situation far less than the UN and something like 10,000 "aid" organizations.
January 26, 2010
Miss England
There are still tough women in England.
L/Cpl Katrina Hodge, 22, from Tunbridge Wells, Kent, was drafted in when Rachel Christie stepped down following her arrest over an alleged nightclub brawl.
Background: Brains, beauty and bovver boots.
Haitians of convenience
A Washington Times editorial points out American aid to Haiti demonstrates no good deed goes unpunished and offers a handy list of the usual suspects ingrates.
But for me the centre of the piece concerns Haitian dual-passport holders. If anyone knows how to find a list of Haitian-Canadian dual passport holders to whom the following might apply, please to let me know.
We used to describe this sort of thing as Satanic, these days it is called "critical thinking".
Liberal talk radio listeners lie
A new system of determining radio station ratings relies on an electronic monitor rather than the self-reporting of earnest, would be classical music left wing talk radio listeners. It turns out people were either trying to fool the ratings people or, worse yet, themselves; recording what they felt they should be listening to rather than what they were actually listening to.
I cannot imagine the resulting observations are limited to Portland.
Fall 2008 = 3.5
Fall 2009 = 0.9
This means that under the old diary system where a listener wrote down what they claimed to listen to and how long, KPOJ was thought to have 3.5% of the audience listening to them. But when the electronic gadget registered what was actually listened to and for how long, KPOJ’s rating plummeted.
It’s interesting to note that 2 of the 3 conservative talk stations actually increased their ratings under the new system. Apparently, conservative news talk listeners didn’t lie under the old system of writing down what stations they listened to and for how long.
A legend in her own lunchtime
Mardi Tindal drives Michael Coren over the brink. Michael Coren channels Fenris Badwulf (via Five Feet of Fury).
“And I said, ‘Doug, I’m weeping for the millions of lives that have been lost as a result of what did and did not happen in Copenhagen,’” she said. “My experience was that I had a place to go with my tears and my lament.” Yes Doug, yes! You are man Doug, you are patriarchy, you are suffering natives, oppressed transgendered people and the cries of the kittens and puppies as the very soil screams for peace, harmony and government funding.
The article is a masterpiece of sarcasm, do click through. Come to think of it, has anyone ever seen Michael Coren and Fenris Badwulf at the same time? No. You have not.
Non sola fide
IDF field hospital begins transferring patients to USNS Comfort and other local hospitals.
Statement by Lt. Col. Danny Moshayev:
"Today we are starting a process of evacuating patients to the USNS 'Comfort'. We have fully briefed all commanders of the medical divisions in the hospital. We have picked the patients that can be treated in the American ship. We are operating appropriate tools for the evacuation of the patients. In addition to this mission, we are transferring two premature babies. They are being transferred to the regional Italian hospital, which is capable of effectively treating children, and especially premature babies, and we are sending out a medical team to accompany them, bring them to the hospital and make sure that they are getting the best treatment possible".
Joel Goldsmith: Air Part 3 (Stargate Universe soundtrack)
Certainly the most beautiful SF soundtrack since Blade Runner - there is a debt to Vangelis in the synthesized brass - and perhaps the most beautiful SF beautiful soundtrack I have ever heard. Unfortunately, this uploaded MP3 audio does not do the music justice (though kudos to the uploader for a valiant attempt to duck the dialogue).
Stargate Universe is brilliantly well done also; faithful to the camp source material but for the first time taking the source material seriously. I am going to buy a Blu-ray player to see and hear it properly.
After the jump: Better audio. Shorter clip.
January 25, 2010
Everything is the product of one universal creative effort
An organic approach to urban transport planning (hat tip to Agent Bedhead).
Little Hope for Haiti
Janet Street Porter rescues me from my growing concern I was the only one sickened by the spectacle of helping in Haiti. It is not that I blame celebrities for using their treasure to attract attention, it is the certainty none of it will have changed a thing the next time Haiti is rocked by an earthquake or some other natural disaster. The real disaster is man made and most of the help is not helping.
Exactly what I am talking about: How many people died for Hillary Clinton's photo-op? Remind me of this when she challenges Obama for the Democratic presidential nomination. (Hillary flied... people died.)
But there have been plenty more. Co-ordinating the relief effort was the next problem. The United Nations should have been put in charge, whatever the damage to ego, national identity and the ambitions of aid agencies who like their 15 minutes of air time. Why the wasteful visits from foreign dignitaries, so ill timed and ill conceived? Hillary Clinton, predictably, brought traffic at the already gridlocked international airport to a standstill for several hours. This is not the time for public relations demonstrations.
Less hope for Canada
A generation ago Korea was devasted by war and decades of brutal occupation by the Japanese empire. Canada, by contrast, had the third largest fleet in the world.
I do not believe I need to elaborate on the problem.
The Navy will build six 5,600-ton "mini Aegis" destroyers. Navy headquarters announced the plan in a parliamentary audit at the Gyeryongdae military headquarters on Tuesday, pledging to use the destroyers as part of the main naval combat fleet.
George Lucas continues to rape his creation
Fresh from seeing James Cameron's Avatar, director George Lucas is set to makeover both the Star Wars trilogy and its heretical "prequels" in 3D.
Lucas said: 'We've been looking for years to do this but the technology hasn't been there. I think this will be a new impetus to make that happen.'
January 24, 2010
The black tide of radicalism
President of a French parliamentary commission on the subject, André Gerin says there will be a total ban on wearing the full veil in public areas. Note Gerin's party affiliation; at long last a man of the left has pulled his head out of his ass.
Hallelujah. Or whatever it is communists say to one another.
Helping is futile
Some might scoff at Scientologists using "touch assists" to heal Haitian earthquake victims. I can think of many more expensive wastes of time applied to the same problem; at least Scientologists are preventing genuine Haitian recovery on their own dime.
A wealthy private donor provided his airplane to fly in 80 volunteers from Los Angeles, along with 50 Haitian-American-doctors, in a gesture worth 400,000 dollars, said a Parisian volunteer who gave her name as Sylvie.
You are a religious man and you know this is not acceptable behaviour
Your daily logic conundrum.
Miah, a devout Muslim, had just left his local mosque when he became enraged and grabbed victim Mohammed Furcan before punching him, the court heard.
January 23, 2010
Operational sex ratio
Richard Whitmire - who has no testicles - considers the plight of educated women looking for Mr. Right.
Substitute any minority except men (not all men, obviously) for the following and salt to taste. So much for "positive discrimination".
Statistic: As many as 80% of the jobs lost in the recession were held by men.
Problem as construed by the Left: More and more well-educated women have to ask themselves: Am I willing to "marry down"?
Statistic: Boys are falling behind in school resulting in gender-unbalanced colleges admissions made up of 60% to 65% females.
Problem as construed by the Left: A lot of unhappy women have to share overcrowded dorm-room bathrooms.
Statistic: Colleges attempt to avoid 60/40 gender imbalance threshold by accepting male applicants who are less academically qualified than their female counterparts.
Problem as construed by the Left: The U.S. Commission on Civil Rights probes admissions discrimination against women.
Remember: All this crap is not and never has been about "human rights". It is about power.
Or: On the other hand, these statistics may reflect a decision on the part of (white?) men that post-secondary qualifications are increasingly valueless, in no small part due to the ideological turn of post-secondary education since the 1960s. An MA used to be a teaching qualification; these days it is an IngSoc finishing school certificate. Employers have already noticed and will, in due course, demand a new system of qualification - a system based on merit and accomplishment - they can actually use to assess prospective employees.
False consciousness
Charles Krauthammer: "You would think lefties could discern a proletarian vanguard when they see one."
Democrats must so rationalize, otherwise they must take democracy seriously, and ask themselves: If the people really don’t want it, could they possibly have a point?
Airborne Laser (ABL) Engages MARTI Target
DrewM: "Seriously, if you only watch one airborne laser test video this year, this is it. It's like the Enterprise firing its phasers."
Also: Army betting big on laser weapons.
Set your phasers to kill.
I am all in favour of laser weapons, don't get me wrong. But the money would be better spent educating American children in the ideals of the Founders including and especially their martial virtues. The armories of the West are not the problem. There are no weapons to save your families without the will to use them, only booty for the treasure-stores of the colonists.
January 22, 2010
Seven figures
What Would Tyler Durden Do? offers pictures of half-naked celebrities and analysis better informed by reason than anything in the Establishment media.
Take George Clooney's million dollar donation toward Haitian disaster relief, for example.
Fleet in being
StrategyPage reports the U.S. Navy accidentally (?) posted their classified estimate on the size and composition of the Chinese Navy. Some bright spark noticed the mistake (?) and removed the data, but not before it was made immortal on the interwebs.
To that end.
Submarines- 62 (53 diesel Attack Submarines, six nuclear Attack Submarines, three nuclear Ballistic Missile Submarines). The U.S. has 72 submarines, all nuclear (53 attack and 18 ballistic missile.)
Destroyers-26. The U.S. has 52.
Frigates-48. The U.S. has 32, including two of the new LCS vessels.
Amphibious Ships 58. The U.S. has 30, all much larger and equipped with flight decks and helicopters, plus landing craft.
Coastal Patrol (Missile)- at least 80. The U.S. had a few of these, but got rid of them. China uses these for coastal patrol and defense, a concept they inherited from the Russians.
In addition, the U.S. has eleven aircraft carriers (ten of them nuclear powered) and 22 cruisers.
Elder Sign
January 21, 2010
Tube map of the Milky Way, 2010
Samuel Arbesman. Mind the gap.
If it starts to swing, run
Unlike recent military interventions in Iraq and Afghanistan, this week's military occupation of Haiti has been conducted without an United Nations mandate. And, naturellement, this means the French are on hand to help. An uncharitable urge suggests we have gone hunting with the accordian guy.
The Americans weren't happy that a French naval vessel, the Francis Garnier, had docked. They weren't being competitive. They were being cautious. The French ship and its cargo could have tipped the pier over like an empty paper cup.
An ounce of preparation: Glenn Reynolds points to a lesson on preparedness in the wake of the disaster in Haiti.
Or you could choose the Reality Based approach to the problem, I mean, it's all relative right?: Chavez: US weapon test caused Haiti earthquake.
Blast at Iran military base leaves 3 injured
It must have been a big blast. I was nowhere near it and yet I read the news and am left with a warm feeling deep inside.
The incident took place at around 9 a.m. local time on Wednesday (0530 GMT) as an explosive charge went off in Naiband district of Bandar Abbas — Hormozagan Province's capital.
John & Edward (Feat. Vanilla Ice): Under Pressure/Ice Ice Baby
Now is the time at the Flea when we dance.
January 20, 2010
Uniform portrait of Lieutenant Junior Grade (LtJg) John F. Kennedy, May 1942
* If anyone can find a better biographical source than that N.Y.I. Photo-Training endorsement, please let me know.
Discriminating
Edward Luttwak makes an excellent point about passenger screening and discrimination by way of pointing out the futility of resorting to full body scanners.
...
With such a system that would discriminate only positively—only in favor of groups and categories of passengers, and never against them—we could have real security at a drastically lower cost in money and inconvenience.
Here the point is not to "discriminate" against anyone but to discriminate in favour of groups that do not regularly attempt mass murder. Discrimination used to suggest a refined capacity for discernment. Let's start using the word properly once again.
The IDF in Haiti
A Flea-reader sends news of Israel's good works in Haiti (my thanks). My reply.
Because the Enemy is evil and celebrates evil. Because there is no good deed the Enemy will not spin as self-serving or a cover for "imperialism". Because the Enemy does not see the dead of Haiti as human beings trapped by a wicked, disfunctional society but as so many counters in a game to control the world (in the name of Marx or Mohammed, the consequence for freedom - for human dignity - is much the same).
Related: "Haiti Earthquake: After hours of work, an L.A. County urban search and rescue team pulls a woman from the rubble as crowds begin to chant "USA, USA"."
January 19, 2010
George Washington (the Athenaeum portrait), 1796
Gilbert Stuart, 1755-1828.
Beware of The Leopard
Plans to build a giant mosque near London's 2012 Olympic stadium have collapsed. Tablighi Jamaat - whose name sounds made up - obviously never made it to the display area of the local council planning department.
But the group missed a deadline this month to formally outline its plans to the local London authority, and it has now been issued with a warning that it must close a temporary mosque it is operating on the site by Thursday.
Which is just as well as all those parking spaces can instead go to my proposed Temple of Elemental Evil. The idea will be to oppose the equality of women and advocate the murder of religious minorities, members of the British armed forces, gay men and, of course, proponents of the schismatic Temple of Elemental Evil (Reformed). We will blare evil sounding music at all hours as a call to prayer, bully non-Temple members off the street during our Holy Supersize Me Feasting Month and, naturally, will send the bill for all of the above to the British taxpayer. I expect Prince Charles can cut the ribbon on the project in his rôle as Defender of the Faith.
Related: If you don't like my plan you are obviously RACIST.
Pre-occupied
Two days ago, I wondered at the over/under on the Left describing American humitarian assistance in Haiti as an occupation.
Betting is now closed: US accused of 'occupying' Haiti as troops flood in.
Not to be out done: Chavez says US occupying Haiti in name of aid.
Unrelated but too good to pass unremarked: "U.S. Military weapons inscribed with secret 'Jesus' Bible Codes." You know, re-reading that last sentence, it is almost as if the editor who wrote it had never seen a passage of Scripture cited before. It is not as though you need a decoder ring...
...
U.S. military rules specifically prohibit the proselytizing of any religion in Iraq or Afghanistan and were drawn up in order to prevent criticism that the U.S. was embarked on a religious "Crusade" in its war against al Qaeda and Iraqi insurgents.
One of the citations on the gun sights, 2COR4:6, is an apparent reference to Second Corinthians 4:6 of the New Testament, which reads: "For God, who commanded the light to shine out of darkness, hath shined in our hearts, to give the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ."
Streets Full of Bodies in Haiti
The horror.
Related: The black hole of Haiti.
January 18, 2010
O'Neill Cylinder, 1976
Don Davis, 1952-.
For NASA. The High Frontier. Larger.
This right here is the problem
Once a reputable publication, The Economist casually notes Muslim Americans under 30 are twice as likely as their elders to believe that suicide-attacks on civilians in defence of Islam are sometimes justified (15% versus 6%, according to Pew) but takes time to relate the closest thing to an anti-Muslim hate crime they could find in the wake of 9/11.
When a few thousand people were roasted to death on television, as you may recall.
Not to worry. Our clearly reliable narrator survived her encounter with RACISM.
When all else fails
Just why is Haiti in such a dire situation, so much worse than any other country in the Americas? Some blame God. Some blame the Devil. Some blame the Americans. Some blame globalization. Some even blame the Goddess of Warmening. Many blame some combination of the above. And here was I blaming, oh, let's see, Haitians when I of all people should have known better.
Blame the French! But of course.
For Haiti, this debt did not signify the beginning of freedom, but the end of hope. Even after it was reduced to 60m francs in the 1830s, it was still far more than the war-ravaged country could afford. Haiti was the only country in which the ex-slaves themselves were expected to pay a foreign government for their liberty. By 1900, it was spending 80% of its national budget on repayments. In order to manage the original reparations, further loans were taken out — mostly from the United States, Germany and France. Instead of developing its potential, this deformed state produced a parade of nefarious leaders, most of whom gave up the insurmountable task of trying to fix the country and looted it instead. In 1947, Haiti finally paid off the original reparations, plus interest. Doing so left it destitute, corrupt, disastrously lacking in investment and politically volatile. Haiti was trapped in a downward spiral, from which it is still impossible to escape. It remains hopelessly in debt to this day.
Not that I am entirely sympathetic to the argument; the article goes on to point out half of Haiti's current debt is down to the Duvalier's. But the case is clearly made with all the best intentions.
The Trial
Dutch MP Geert Wilders is to go on trial for telling the truth. Canadians already know, where injured feelings are concerned, truth is no defense.
Also no defense, the police. But then Canadians are noticing that as well.
“It is irrelevant whether Wilder’s witnesses might prove Wilders’ observations to be correct”, the ‘Openbaar Ministerie’ stated, “what’s relevant is that his observations are illegal”. Unexpected and breaching court procedures the detailed indictment of 21 pages, which Wilders received on the 4th of December and sums up in verbatim all of his Islam and Koran critique in interviews and Fitna, was amended with new accusations of racism against muslims and Moroccans. On top of this, Paul Vellerman, the public prosecutor of the Amsterdam Court decided that the Wilders trial had to be regarded as “an ordinary trial open for public and with a normal procedure, which doesn’t deserve the Department of Justice’s highly secured bunker. His is a normal case and we’ll treat it as such”.
It’s sad to note that Mohammed Bouyeri, the murderer of Theo van Gogh, and Volkert van der Gaag, the assassin of Pim Fortuyn, were tried in this specially designed bunker, but that Wilders has to rely on his personal bodyguards and full metal jacket to ward of terrorists. No safe room for him, which recently secured Kurt Westergaard and his granddaughter, but for months on end the vulnerability of a sitting duck.
The Dutch Establishment, in league with jihadis and a cowardly populace, is trying to drive Wilders from the country much as they did Ayaan Hirsi Ali. Or stage an execution by proxy for the crime of bad taste much as they did Pim Fortuyn.
Much more at the link, please read the whole thing. And on the off chance there is anyone left so starry-eyed as to imagine Canada is any different, it isn't.
This Wednesday in Toronto: Rally for Dutch freedom fighter Geert Wilders. The flyer (with a grateful hat tip to Rochelle).
The film Fitna will be shown and a diverse coalition of community leaders will speak, including Rabbi Jon Hausman from Boston, a close associate of Geert Wilders. On Wednesday, January 20, 7:30 - 9:30 pm, Toronto Zionist Centre, 788 Marlee Ave.
LIVE VIDEO STREAM www.jdl-canada.com AND www.canhindu.com
Speakers
Kathy Shaidle – Five Feet of Fury
Rabbi Jon Hausman - Ahavath Torah, Boston
Ron Banerjee - Canadian Hindu Advocacy
Bjorn Larsen – Geert Wilder Supporter
Meir Weinstein – Jewish Defence League of Canada
Wednesday, January 20
7:30 pm – 9:30 pm
Toronto Zionist Centre,
788 Marlee Avenue
Jewish Defence League of Canada
www.jdl-canada.com
416 736 7000
Note the streaming video option for anyone who cannot be there in person. Emphasis added. Spread the word!
Slavoj Žižek in Examined Life
At a certain level of your most alimentary experience... handy to think with.
January 17, 2010
Keeping occupied
Anyone have the over/under on when the Left accuses Barack Obama of colonial adventurism in Haiti?
And for anyone who thinks the United States is up to good deeds in Haiti this week, please to remember ten, twenty, fifty and one hundred years from now when this week is cited as yet another in a long list of United States "occupations" in the Americas.
Bumped from the comments: Taylor Empire Airways considers the problem after a fashion once common in the West, now vanishingly rare in the public sphere. This is how a man approaches problems in the real world; leave Haitian Studies to the non-contributing zeroes.
The seaport is smashed, buildings and collapsed structures (like loading cranes) have to be cleared from the mooring points so that deep-draught vessels can dock. How long will it take a salvage crew to disassemble a crane leaning precariously beside a pier? If you just brute-force knock it down, how deep is the draught there, will the sunken crane leave enough room for ships to pass overhead without wrecking their hulls? There's some kind of petro spill leaking from a tank farm on the coast, too, plus sewage effluents from the city, which complicates a vessel's arrival into the harbour.
The main airport (MTPP) desperately needs a new taxiway system, at minimum.
Right now it's a single runway with one fixed-wing (med/heavy) apron and one rotary-wing apron, and a single taxiway leading from each to the runway.
In a well-developed airport the taxiway system helps aircraft flow on and off the runway smoothly. Aircraft waiting to take off hold short of the departure end of the runway on one taxiway, aircraft landing taxi off the runway on another taxiway further down. When the arriving aircraft clears the rwy, the departing craft is cleared on to it. At a busy airport these movements are very closely sequenced.
In MTPP with a single taxiway, the departing craft has to sit on the ramp itself. It can't position at the departure end because the turnaround bays at either end are too small for the wingspan of a med/heavy aircraft. Likewise it can't position on the single taxiway because the arriving aircraft needs to use that taxiway to exit the runway.
And because the taxiway is in the middle, arrivals need to backtrack the runway in order to reach the taxiway. Similarly, departures also need to backtrack the runway in order to position at the departure end.
The med/heavy ramp has spaces for 12 aircraft, at most. Airfield facilities include two fuel trucks and two pushback mules.
You would be lucky to get one aircraft movement every ten minutes under such a system, or 144 movements per day. Assuming the movements occur like clockwork, nobody has to remain on the ramp for any longer than it takes to unload, and everybody tankers their own return fuel aboard and does not require refueling from one of the airfield's two trucks.
Pearson airport, in contrast, handles about 1200 movements a day, and it slows down considerably after midnight due to aircraft class noise restrictions. Haiti will never handle 1200 movements a day, not even if every single airport in the nation were pressed into service. There are six of them, and all have single-runway, single-taxiway designs. Only two have runways long enough to cope with international transoceanic flights.
Now compound that with tons of aid arriving, and literally about a hundred thousand foreign nationals requiring evacuation (that alone would be about 300 flights) and you're looking at a recipe for unimaginable delays for a very long time.
More Taylor Empire Airways on the subject: Haiti c. 1958, by Nick DeWolf, Coming again, to save the mother f*!#ing day, More Haiti updates and USAF takes charge at Port-au-Prince airport.
SS-ON
Josephine of Lumpy, Grumpy and Frumpy discovers a truth all conservatives need to learn sooner rather than later: The police are not your friends. It is the job of the police to keep the peace, not enable your freedom of speech.
A comment left by The Phantom sums up my impressions of Canada's police forces (and, more recently, EMS workers):
...
Never had it done to me, because I say yes sir, no sir, three bags full sir. Guy says leave, I leave. Quick.
Once again, it is the job of the police to keep the peace, not to defend your freedom of speech. It is your job to defend your freedom of speech. Americans have a Second Amendment for a reason. Canadians don't have a Second Amendment for the same reason.
Identity: Peter Hitchens, the UK and much the same thing.
...
Are there still people who don't grasp that the police are much more excited about hanging on to their monopoly of force than they are about defeating crime and disorder?
If an ancient, famous, contented and free country were to turn, slowly but definitely, into a spiteful, bureaucratic tyranny, isn't this exactly how it would happen?
Analogy: The Liberal party and their media allies are trying to smear Canada's troops as "war criminals".
Such is Canada's transvaluation of values: Every day is Opposite Day and, having forbidden the teaching of history, the Dictatorship of Feelings reigns unopposed by truth, reason or common decency, let alone common sense.
January 16, 2010
Voodoo economics
Remind me again: How much help Haiti offered to the United States in the wake of Hurricane Katrina? After 9/11?
There are reasons these people cannot - will not - help themsleves and these have precious little to do with an earthquake. Worse yet, there are reasons these people cannot - will not - help themsleves in future. For one thing, our help is not helping.
There is nothing compassionate about ensuring a people live in penury forever, for all they seem willing to endure such compassion indefinitely.
On point: Assuming this Time Magazine report is accurate, Haitians are responding to crisis with their usual unique aplomb. Let's send them 100 millions dollars!
"They are starting to block the roads with bodies, it's getting ugly out there, people are fed up with getting no help," he told Reuters.
Aside from a complete lack of elementary building codes, emergency planning and the rule of law, you know what is slowing down emergency aid? Road blocks made of corpses.
On a related note, Time Magazine is racist.
A voluntary organization for every 800 residents: Theodore Dalrymple on Haitian poverty, a matter of deep ideological contention.
...
A Nigerian journalist once said of his country, “No known system of government works in Nigeria.” This is even truer of Haiti. It’s often claimed that Haiti’s desperate situation is the consequence of outside interference—principally American, of course—plus recurrent, often bizarre, dictatorship. But Haiti’s neighbor, the Dominican Republic, has suffered similar disadvantages; yet it prospers.
Top 10 Places You Can’t Go
My favourite place I can't go from a top 10 list of places you can't go is the one I had never heard of, is Club 33, "officially maintained as a secret feature" of Disneyland.
According to Wikipedia, the waiting list closed to new enquiries in 2007.
U.S. to trade gold reserves through Cash4Gold.com
Watch this space. It took several long seconds before I worked out where this link went, just wait until you hear their Craigslist plan.
U.S. To Trade Gold Reserves For Cash Through Cash4Gold.com
January 15, 2010
Inglorious and impotent
Armed Forces Minister Bill Rammell warns Britain may have become so risk averse it could have lost the stomach for war. Perhaps his first clue should have been his fellow ministers, terrified lest a jihadi hostage taker offer a British soldier a cigarette.
“We, sadly, face a series of threats, the nature of which will require the projection of power beyond our borders to protect our national security,” he said. “My great fear is that we as a nation will become so risk-averse, cynical and introverted that we will find ourselves in inglorious and impotent isolation by default.”
Risk aversion is only a technocratic symptom of a once heroic nation suffering an aversion to glory. Such is the end of Western civilization.
Speechless: If you removed these distinctions, it would not be Britain.
You said it.
"I think the headscarf is the epitome of Britishness," the 25-year-old library assistant who holds a degree in media studies told The Independent on Wednesday, January 13.
The Ideological War Within the West
An excerpt from John Fonte on an alternative ideology to liberal democracy that has taken to extra-constitutional lawfare to achieve its ends (via Gates of Vienna).
The excerpt is too good to excerpt, RTWT.
Unrelated: But also via Gates of Vienna; laminated linen armour protected Alexander the Great.
Presented at the annual meeting of the Archaeological Institute of America in Anaheim, Calif., the study suggests that Alexander (356–323 B.C.) and his soldiers protected themselves with linothorax, a type of body armor made by laminating together layers of linen.
I am looking forward to a Dragon Age: Origins
Titus Awakes
A new Gormenghast novel based on notes left by Mervyn Peake was written by Maeve Gilmore shortly after her husband's death from Parkinson's Disease in 1968 and discovered only now having been lost to the attic (a Gormenghast plot in itself; spoiler warning on the following).
Mr Peake said: "I was mesmerised."
Maeve Gilmore concluded the story with Titus making his home on an island, which Mr Peake interpreted as Sark in the Channel Islands, where the young family had lived in the 1940s. "It was where the family was at its happiest," he said.
"Titus metamorphosis’s into Mervyn Peake and comes home to where he wants to be," he explained.
Bless.
Lady Gaga talks about her new role as Creative Director at Polaroid
The Flea: For all your secular music programming needs.
January 14, 2010
The ceremony at the Bois Caïman
Call Pat Robertson crazy or, worse yet, insensitive for his remarks following the earthquake in Haiti. To a reasonable person (by which I mean an NPR listener's self-concept), the notion Tuesday's 7.3 magnitude earthquake was punishment for a 200 year old pact with the Devil sounds crazy or, worse yet, insensitive. This perhaps particularly so to a reasonable person recalling Robertson's remarks along similar lines following 9/11. The trouble for critics of Robertson's insensitivity (I have seen no sympathy for the devil troubling him), is that Haitians say much the same thing themselves.
The commonly accepted date for the start of Haiti's slave revolution against the French is August 22, 1791, the date a voodoo priest named Dutty Boukman presided over a ceremony at Bois Caïman. Whether or not such a ceremony ever took place is beside the point, it is an important part of Haiti's national mythology and, I would argue, Haiti's national mystique.
Most reasonable people would be skeptical as to the efficacy of Boukman's ritual in its own terms. This is because most reasonable people claim to respect cultural difference but actually think voodoo is superstitious bullshit. Academics would attribute the power of Boukman's rite - and its memory - to revolutionary theatre not to divine - let alone infernal - intervention. That most Haitians really do believe in voodoo does not trouble reasonable people in the slightest; reasonable people could not care less what Haitians think about anything, let alone a 200 year old voodoo rite.
What reasonable people do care about is pretending to celebrate religious diversity but actually kicking religious diversity if it is of the Christian variety. Pat Robertson's real crime was aesthetic. If he had expressed much the same views while sacrificing a chicken to the gods he would have gotten a pass, even a pat on the head.
Here is what bothers me about the criticism leveled at Pat Robertson by reasonable people, including the criticism of all too many reasonable conservatives: If it is fine for Western academics to celebrate "the voodoo revolution" as part of Haiti's rich historical tapestry, to stage reenactments of Boukman's voodoo ceremony in New York as revolutionary theatre, it seems turnabout is fair play should a Bible believing evangelical have the temerity to identify vodoo spirits with demons and a voodoo ceremony as a demonic rite. Haitian's have traditionally made this identification themselves, albeit as a syncretic borrowing of European devil imagery into their West African spirit worship.
By all means dismiss Robertson's beliefs as nonsense if you will but do not blame the man for doing what the Left cannot quite manage, taking Haitians at their word about their own history. Jihadis everywhere are familiar with the problem; no matter how many times they try to tell us why they want us killed or converted the Left insists these doctors and engineers and billionnaire's sons are revolutionary proletarians with a colourful religious vernacular. Only a few latter day Crusaders have the courtesy to respect Muslim beliefs concerning holy war for what they are and to take jihadi statements as to their intentions at face value.
To place Robertson's analysis in context, tell me how the Left's version of witchcraft - vulgar economic reductionism - is any less condescending, any less inappropriate to the ongoing horror for survivors.
Ironically for the only country ever to have had a successful slave revolt, child enslavement is also a culturally accepted practice in Haiti.
Modern medicine and, presumably, seismology and engineering. That last bit about child slavery is off topic but something to keep in mind as Obama's media people sell you on Haiti's exemplary slave revolution.
Citation: The internets suggest Tom Barrett's "Government Of The Devil, By The Devil, And For The Devil" is the go to reference for the folks in Robertson's corner. You have to admit as an essay title, it rocks.
The offending remarks: Not quite long enough for a proper Two Minutes Hate.
Background: An international crime scene, not a country.
Successive dictators have raped, murdered and even reputedly eaten their enemies.
Described by one commentator as an 'international crime scene' rather than a country, Haiti became infamous around the world during the reign of Francois 'Papa Doc' Duvalier, a former doctor who murdered 100,000 people and formed a private band of killers called the Tonton Macoutes. Wearing their trademark mirrored sunglasses and designer T-shirts, these murderers and cannibals were named after a terrifying bogeyman from Haitian mythology, who carried off naughty children into slavery.
The Tonton Macoutes cut out the hearts, eyes and lungs of opponents with machetes, while Papa Doc, who stole almost a billion pounds in foreign aid, insisted that every television and radio programme had to be entirely in praise of his rule. In power from 1957, Papa Doc made voodoo the country's official religion and claimed to be Baron Samedi, the religion's spirit of death. He often wore a top hat and tails while demanding the skulls of his dead victims were brought to his palace in Port-au-Prince.
He collected blood from prisoners who had been tortured and killed and sold it for $22 a pint to U.S. health groups. He once ordered the death of all black dogs in the country after a political enemy was rumoured to have transformed into one.
How anyone could confuse these charming folkways with Devil worship is beyond me.
January 13, 2010
Israeli war robots
The Flea approves this message.™
...
In 10 to 15 years, one-third of Israel's military machines will be unmanned, predicts Giora Katz, vice president of Rafael Advanced Defense Systems Ltd., one of Israel's leading weapons manufacturers.
"We are moving into the robotic era," says Mr. Katz.
So long as they remain Israeli war robots, this is awesome. Once those robots start thinking for themselves it is past time for a Butlerian Jihad.
The answer to airport security is clear
Everyone except Muslims should be forced to undergo a full body scan.
"Realize that a Muslim will know that his wife was seen naked in this machine," Yeffet said. "You know what would be the reaction? ... Terrible."
You may imagine I am joking; all too soon, even joking about the exception will be considered racist. Nothing here but prophecy, folks.
January 12, 2010
St. Ambrose with Saints, c. 1514
Ambrogio Bergognone, 1470s-1523/1524.
Vegetating in fibres of blood
The discovery of lost works by William Blake is the sort of thing that forces a less fortunate book collector to break out in hives; a not entirely pleasant experience I can assure you.
So boring did this tome appear to be that the seller apparently missed the eight small etchings hidden between the pages — a mistake that, in effect, handed the buyer a small fortune when they were identified three years ago as unique works by the visionary artist and writer William Blake.
Tate galleries have now bought these brilliantly executed and disturbing pictures for £441,000 and will exhibit them at Tate Britain in July.
They are not the sort of images that are likely to be ignored again. In one a naked man screams in horror as flames rage around him. In another a figure with long hair bends over a glowing red pool. Blake’s caption reads: “vegetating in fibres of blood”.
That's the stuff.
Dear Mr. Harper
Baird was asked by media Sunday about the treatment of the four-foot-10, 90-pound woman who was travelling from Ottawa to Toronto on Dec. 28. The woman was asked to remove her boots and then unzip her pants. A female inspection officer then poked at her abdomen.
Existentially related: We need a smarter way to fight the international jihadi elite. Our police-assault-on-little-old-ladies-in-wheelchairs strategy is not working.
Or we could line them up against a wall and shoot them. Call me old fashioned.
Optimistic about the impending apocalypse
The Dutch believe the end is nigh.
They are quite right, of course.
Some interviewed by the newspaper were optimistic about the impending apocalypse, UPI reported.
"You know, maybe it's really not that bad that the Netherlands will be destroyed," Petra Faile said. "I don't like it here anymore. Take immigration, for example. They keep letting people in. And then we have to build more houses, which makes the Netherlands even heavier. The country will sink even lower, which will make the flooding worse."
Too good to excerpt, I stole the whole article. To hell with Iranian IP.
There's nothing more annoying than Mr. Garibaldi when he's right
With the release of Have You Seen My Country Lately?: America's Wake-Up Call
Long time Flea-readers will most probably best know Jerry Doyle as Babylon 5 security chief, Michael Garibaldi. Even long time Flea-readers may not know Doyle was not the only conservative in the cast.
That's Bruce Boxleitner and Tracy Scoggins, to the uninitiated. You may all enjoy Tron Legacy with a clear conscience.
January 11, 2010
Flea demands Persian Wars reparations from Iran
The West suffered immensely after it was invaded by the Persian Empire during the Persian Wars and deserves reparations, Canadian blogger Ghost of a flea said in a post this morning.
The hard line Canadian blogger has ordered the formation of a team to study the damages Western civilization suffered from the 498 BC Persian invasion in order to demand compensation.
"You inflicted lots of damages to the West, put your weight on the shoulders [of European people] and became victors in Asia Minor. You didn't even share the war profits with the West," Flea said. "If I say today that we will take full compensation ... know that we will stand to the end and will take it."
3000 years and counting
The earliest known Hebrew writing, dating from the the 10th century BC reign of King David, has been diciphered from a pottery sherd found in the Elah valley. Amongst other things, this is documentary evidence of a Jewish kingdom in existence at the time, no matter what contemporary death cultists would have us believe.
Tangentially related: The notion the pyramids were built by free men and not slaves is not news.
But is also not to suggest they were particularly happy about it. While they were not slaves, Egyptian peasants were obligated to provide corvée labour on public works projects, including the pyramids, as a form of taxation. You can understand the confusion; future archaeologists are likely to look back upon Canada and wonder that men could be enslaved in the service of bilingual breakfast cereal boxes. The pyramids were a better deal.
Surface to air
Using Jane's Land Based Air Defence as a reference and Google Earth as a guide, IMINT & Analysis offers Syrian Strategic SAM Deployment and Iranian Strategic SAM Deployment for your consideration. Not that any Flea-readers are likely to dare an attempt on either polity's airspace in the near future but it is a testament to what is possible in our peculiar digital age.
The following may be the money quote; it is good news.
Second as farce
In a 2006 appearance on the Daily Show, New Yorker food writer Calvin Trillin engages predicted the tactics of Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab (hat tip to Ben).
January 09, 2010
The Siege of Acre. The Hospitalier Master Mathieu de Clermont defending the walls in 1291, c. 1840
Dominique-Louis Papéty, 1815-1849.
Sacred value
Herein lies the reason believing Christians and Jews and Hindus recognize the jihad for what it is and Marxists and secularists find it nearly impossible to do so. Muslim grievances must be about race or economic circumstance, reason the left, because these are the only values Marxists and secularists acknowledge.
Take Iran's maniacal drive for atomic weapons, for example. Given the costs - and the final potential cost - why don't they give it up?
Ancient Warriors - The Knights Templar
"Seventy years before, the Templars - this Scourge of God - was only eight men strong..."
Just saying.
January 08, 2010
Portrait of a Knight of Malta, Fra Antonio Martelli, 1607-8
Caravaggio, 1571-1610.
The identity of Caravaggio's Knight of Malta.
Adversus Haereses
Jon Stewart speaks truth to the Heresiarch George Lucas: "My son's favourite movie is The Phantom Menace and I explain to him, no it's not. Your favourite movie is A New Hope."
* In case that link does not work for Americans; web broadcast of the show appears to be restricted to different national markets.
The dignity and security of women
France's ruling UMP Party proposes £700 fines for women who wear burkas and niqabs on the street. Imagine the neck splitting outrage should this have been proposed anywhere in the United States or the United Kingdom.
France proposes. The left disposes.
Jean-Francois Cope, president of Nicolas Sarkozy’s ruling UMP Party, said the legislation was intended to protect the ‘dignity’ and ‘security’ of women.
By contrast, French Muslim women could always try dressing in Western women's fashion on the streets of Riyadh. Here's your ticket. Enjoy!
The personal is the political: Israel's female warriors.
If the right were the misogynists we are made out to be, these women would not be our heroes. If the left supported the rights of women, these women would be their heroes too.
Tally ho
January 07, 2010
Jeremiah lamenting the destruction of Jerusalem, 1630
Rembrandt van Rijn, 1606-1669.
Make bright the arrows; gather the shields
Israel's Iron Dome missile defense system has successfully intercepted a number of missile barrages in tests mimicking Kassam and Grad-model Katyusha rockets deployed by Hamas.
During the test, the radar succeeded in detecting which rockets were headed towards designated open fields and therefore did not launch an interceptor to destroy them.
The fall of Europe
Archbishop belatedly considers mild defense of Christianity I: Outgoing Prague archbishop Miloslav Vlk.
"If Europe doesn't change its relation to its own roots, it will be islamized," the 77-year-old cardinal, who was named Prague archbishop by pope John Paul II in 1991, added on his website www.kardinal.cz. He blamed immigration and Muslims' high birth rate for helping Muslims to "easily fill the vacant space created as Europeans systematically empty the Christian content of their lives".
"At the end of the Middle Ages and in the early modern age, Islam failed to conquer Europe with arms. The Christians beat them then," Vlk said. "Today, when the fighting is done with spiritual weapons which Europe lacks while Muslims are perfectly armed, the fall of Europe is looming," added the cardinal.
Archbishop belatedly considers mild defense of Christianity II: Former Archbishop of Canterbury Lord Carey.
Lord Carey said: ‘We Christians are very often so soft that we allow other people to walk over us and we are not as tough in what we want, in expressing our beliefs, because we do not want to upset other people.’
Think not to bring peace on Earth but a sword (hat tip to Five Feet of Fury).
Lady Gaga: Kaboom
The Fred Phelps family covering Lady Gaga's Poker Face is news, I admit, if only because the original is so catchy I was singing along to the revised lyrics... "God hates you!" (more Phelps/Gaga after the jump).
But I think the real news is to be found in the lyrics to Lady Gaga's aptly named "Kaboom"; expect human rights fatwa service presently.
baby boy whats up
dynamite sh*t go Boom in the club,
baby boy get on
oooooh, alahh halahh alahhh
Westboro Baptist continued: I recognize our American cousins to the south will not find this amusing.
Unprecedented Talent and Unthinkable Challenges
One week to go and it is back to New York for Project Runway Season 7. Regular Flea-readers will not be surprised to learn Lifetime gives me nothing for plugging this stuff.
"Project Runway" season 7 premieres January 14th on Lifetime.
January 06, 2010
Baroness James, and her killer instinct
PD James talks to BBC director general Mark Thompson on the Today Programme. Enjoy.
“It seems so extraordinary,” tutted the old lady as she slipped the DG a deadly question about the high salaries paid to the corporation’s executives.
Even on the radio, you could see Thompson turning pale. “Well, we, we, the, the, it,” he spluttered, “…the private broadcasters, as you know, are, um, ITV, er, Channel 4….” Gasping for life, he claimed that Lord Reith would be proud of today’s Beeb, and was then stretchered from the studio, leaving Baroness James – just the tiniest note of satisfaction in her voice – to dismember her next guest, Justice Minister Jack Straw.
Hat tip to the SIster of the Flea.
Fall of the Rebel Angels, c. 1528
Domenico di Pace Beccafumi, 1486-1551.
Burj Khalifa
An article about window cleaning leads me to an opening ceremony and, with it, a true name.
Makes you wonder why they don't want English-speakers to know what the "Burj" "Dubai" is actually called. Here "Burj" is like "Beijing", a febrile gesture of cosmopolitan ignorance. If they had called the thing "Sword of the Jew Killers" the BBC would be calling it the Dubai Tower.
January 05, 2010
God the Father in Glory with St. Mary Magdalene and St. Catherine of Siena, 1509
Fra Bartolommeo di Pagholo, 1472-1517.
Ours is still the most '70s
I only link to this story about the opening of the Burj Dubai* as it includes an height comparison with the CN Tower, most often neglected in related reportage.
* Soon to be the Smoking Crater Dubai, if recent events are any indication.
For people of the 21st-century
Julia Fischer on the strangely gripping world of Bach concertos.
January 04, 2010
The apotheosis of barbarism
"Al Qaeda in Great Britain" has threatened to film to torture and murder of the families of British snipers (via Blazing Cat Fur).
The plans came to light when the security services monitored “chatter” – believed to be on mobile phones or the internet – between al-Qaeda extremists. It is the second time a soldier or his loved ones are known to have been targeted in the UK by groups linked to al-Qaeda.
The Snows of Madness
Fenris Badwulf wrote this. Emphasis added. Warmening commentary at the link.
Ronald Reagan Speaks Out Against Socialized Medicine
Where there is discord, may we bring harmony
Margaret Thatcher: The Downing Street Years. No humbug, the unvarnished truth.
where there is hatred, let me sow love;
where there is injury, pardon;
where there is doubt, faith;
where there is despair, hope;
where there is darkness, light;
and where there is sadness, joy.
O Divine Master,
grant that I may not so much seek to be consoled as to console;
to be understood, as to understand;
to be loved, as to love;
for it is in giving that we receive,
it is in pardoning that we are pardoned,
and it is in dying that we are born to Eternal Life.
Amen.
"She thought all men feeble and gentlemen more feeble than most." Classic. She was right about upper middle class intellectuals too; seeing everyone's point of view and having no point of view of their own. God, this is like taking a warm bath. Far, far too much to quote. Budget two hours or so and watch the whole thing. England was still England not so very long ago.
If you do not have time to spare for the whole thing, spare thirty seconds starting at 0:50 of Episode 3. "They are a weak lot some of them in Europe you know..."
January 03, 2010
Old UK Photos
Featuring old photos of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and the British Isles. I have only started poking around but there are a few treasures; I am particularly curious about places where Flea-ish relations once dwelt.
Managing decline
Once we had a Navy: Pirates seize second UK-flagged vessel in days.
The vessel, which has a multi-national crew, is the second UK-flagged ship hijacked in days, after chemical tanker the St James Park was seized on Monday.
Once we had a kingdom: Outrage as Muslim extremists hijack war heroes' town Wootton Bassett.
Islam4UK, which calls itself a ‘platform’ for the fanatical Al-Muhajiroun movement, said its supporters will parade through Wootton Bassett in the near future.
In case you are not depressed yet: The UK, 2009 Rundown: A Year of Fire and Ice.
More her style than karate
Some ideas never get old. Take Margaret Thatcher's first few months in power as an inspiration.
One of her first moves on taking office in May was to start cutting Civil Service jobs. The Government machine needed cutting by at least 5 per cent, she insisted, but ideally closer to 20 per cent.
The United Kingdom is a Parliamentary dictatorship as a matter of fact, if not quite as a matter of law. All that is required is for the people of the United Kingdom to elect parliamentarians capable of making the right decisions and carrying them out. Nothing is irreversible. Nothing is lost unless we decide it is.
Which is the saddest part of the story, actually.
Land of the Gurkhas
I'm in space, I'm looking for the chosen place
According to her publisher, Nina Hagen has written an autobiography and it is not at all what I would have expected.
"On the way, she looked love, drugs and death in the eye. But above all, she encountered God."
The book is to be released in March. Hagen told Thursday's Bild newspaper that she had been baptised in August and that she wanted to share with readers the joy of finding Jesus. "The baptism saved my life," she said. "I was in a bad way before that."
Unfair
TTC spokesman Brad Ross, who somehow manages to sleep at night, said the TTC hopes riders do not take out their frustration with today's fare incrased on frontline workers.
Brad Ross can go to hell. My comment to The Sun.
I don't think so.
Don't get me started on Toronto's sanitation workers, another group who blackmailed the city at the risk of its citizens, another group who should be fired en masse.
January 02, 2010
Meanwhile, in a reality based community
Part of the Indian Army’s estimated $2.5-billion artillery modernisation programme, the Indian government has authorised the purchase of 145 ultra-light howitzers from the United States.
Told you so
Assuming it is the work of English domestic terrorists and not intra-sectarian violence, the burning of a Dudley mosque is a grim harbinger. My only surprise is it has taken ten years for the great unwashed to stop trusting their future to an anti-Semitic Establishment, an Army with no bullets and a Navy without permission to fire them or worst of all an emasculated police force bent on creating injustice rather than righting injustice.
Where there is no law there is the mob.
Expect more and expect worse until Her Majesty's government remembers its duty not least of which is to hang arsonists and anarchists by the neck until dead. An ASBO in defense of liberty is too nice.
Human nature being what it is, what on earth makes anyone think this will stop with burned mosques? Where there is no serious disincentive to political violence - where political violence is celebrated as an expression of "community solidarity" - even the left cannot be surprised if the white working class finally decides to join the fray.
Allow me to offer a hasty, perhaps stereotyped, generalization about the English working classes for anyone who has yet to enjoy their company: The English working class lacks the subtlety of the debating partners most progressives have encountered to date and, high on a sense of entitlement and grievance fostered by the same leftists over these last sixty years, the white working class is entirely unmoved by the ad hominem accusations of racism so feared by polite society.
While we are on the subject: Spare a moment in your prayers for Alhaji Umar Mutallab, a Muslim who reported his own son to the authorities that the lives of strangers might be spared. Events suggest he did so at the risk of his own life and despite the faint hope anyone in authority would heed his warning in the slightest.
Safer semiotics
The morally retarded of the Canadian left - I am looking at you de-linked National Post - think criminal profiling (let alone wartime profiling) is inevitably racial profiling. This assertion is so central a tenet of their belief system they are prepared to forgive cop killers, gang rapists, even those who make open war on the West; in fact, so warped is their value system they blame the cop, blame the victim and blame any of us who still imagine representative government must not be allowed to vanish from the world.
In light of this latest attempt by an "isolated extremist" to bring down hundreds and kill hundreds more on the ground, or rather in light of a feckless, fatuous, government mandated response by airport security, I harbour some hope reason may triumph over sentiment at last. The public at large may be fed up with being criminalized, being treated as enemy combatants, to no effect whatsoever.
...
In my documentary, Philip Baum, the editor of the magazine Aviation Security International, said he could not recall a single time when a bomb had been found using an airport X-ray machine alone. Airport security, he said, was "theatre", designed to reassure the public rather than to stop bombers. The Abdulmutallab case would seem to support this view.
...
But even if the technology was better (and it is, to be fair, improving), it's largely beside the point. At the moment, aviation security is about looking for suspicious things. It should be about looking for suspicious people.
This is true not only because the jihadis are likely to beat any technological advance in the offing (click through and read the rest if you do not believe me) but because the jihadis do not have to beat our technology - which is formidable - but our society - which is not. So long as we insist on giving the enemy's ideology a pass we cannot prevent clever, dedicated, well-funded demon worshippers - whatever their denomination - from sacrificing their lives on a pire of their victims.
Yet another good point from the same essay.
The left: So much concern for the civil rights of terror "suspects", so little concern for yours or mine. Most of you who read this blog have never met me in person yet even if you knew I was armed (though the law prevents this), even if you knew I was carring a bomb (which I wouldn't be), I expect something close to 100% of you would feel perfectly safe (barring mishap, let's face facts) sat next to me on a plane. There is an excellent reason for your faith: Technology is not the problem; most people could be entrusted with carry on bomb components, in a pinch. Nihilist ideology is the problem; both the enemy's and ours.
Princess Leia Bikini Contest
I hope Flea-readers will forgive me for these every so slightly out of date Olivia Munn Slave Leia bikini competition interviews.
January 01, 2010
Un Chevalier Sans Peur et Sans Reproche, 1912
Walter Crane, 1845-1915.
Pew v pulpit
As with almost every institution of the West, the elite skews left.
The survey also showed that most parishioners advocated for more enforcement to cause illegal workers to return home while the majority of religious leaders were calling for illegal immigrants to be put on the path to U.S. citizenship.
Part cowardice, part common sense
The Queen's Christmas message for 2009 took a vibrant Commonwealth as a force for peace as its focus. A better force for peace? The force of arms, the will to use them and the British Empire. This Commonwealth idea is not working.
There are even reports that the entire England squad could pull out over worries that the athletes could become a target for terrorist attacks.
Better get used to the idea. Soon enough, it shall be too dangerous to play sports in England.
Pre-occupied
Danny Ayalon makes an excellent point about the disputed territories (though their God given ownership is no matter of dispute to my mind).
That's because the land now known as the West Bank cannot be considered "occupied" in the legal sense of the word as it had not attained recognized sovereignty before Israel's conquest. Contrary to some beliefs there has never been a Palestinian state, and no other nation has ever established Jerusalem as its capital despite it being under Islamic control for hundreds of years.
Etc. etc. Danny Ayalon is right, of course.
But then Danny Ayalon is also missing the point entirely. We are not dealing with anyone susceptible to reason. If we were, none of this would need to be spelled out. As it is, Bibi has to stand before the United Nations with evidence of the Holocaust. Again, we are not dealing with anyone susceptible to reason, let alone a conscience.
You laugh, you lose
Much to the annoyance of received wisdom in Europe, Akmail Shaikh was executed in China. He hoped for a career in music.
This is what keeps progressives awake at night.