January 05, 2009
Someone get the CHRC on the phone
They have got their Daily Kos and Stormfront account log ons confused again (via Mere Rhetoric).
State actors
Greg Sheridan points out a blindingly obvious fact that proves to be anything but blindingly obvious to any establishment of the West.
We are at war.
Yet it may be that since the 9/11 attacks in New York, the world has completely misconceived the age of terror. The radical increase in the lethality, range, political consequence and strategic influence of terrorists comes not from their being non-state actors at all. Instead it comes from their being sponsored by states.
Note to India: You are doing it wrong. Enjoy your next massacre. Would that the Jews of Bombay not have to pay for your blinkers.
Ô douce France
Lest anyone doubt I was serious in declaring this to be France Appreciation Week @ The Flea. If things go badly, there will still be a country called France - for a time - but it will not be the France we know. And we shall miss her.
I am uncertain of the history and provenance of the following piece. I believe it to be the hymn of the paratroop regiment, by whatever name it is called and no matter how formally they have adopted the song. I would be grateful if a Flea reader better educated in these matters might enlighten us. Whatever it meant to the composer, it is a beautiful piece in itself.
The lyrics: From my limited googling, the writer was Cpt J.E. Lamaze at Saïgon in 1946. Or possibly 1948.
O douce France,
Mon beau pays,
Lieu de mon enfance,
Du bonheur, des chansons et des rires,
Ta souvenance berce ma dolence
D'un chant d'espérance.
Hélas sur cette terre
Ou je suis exilé,
Mon ame est solitaire
Et mon coeur désolé.
J'attend chaque jour
Le moment du retour.
Ici ton cher visage
Eclaire nos destins.
Pour garder bon courage,
On pense aux clairs matins
Qui chassaient toujours
L'ombre des mauvais jours.
Who also suck
The governments of Sweden and Norway and everyone who voted for them. I condemn and vehemently distance myself from these traitors to democracy and civilization. Sweden: A country so convinced of its authority it awards "peace prizes" to the morally retarded, so convinced of its piety it could not bring itself to oppose Nazism or the Soviet empire yet feels bestirred to (once again) condemn the Jews. Norway: A country whose sole contribution to 20th century is the term "Quisling".
One of the few pleasures remaining to those of us in the Cassandra Party will be to watch as these shitty little countries are overrun by the horde and everything they treasure put to the torch.
The Czech Republic, by contrast, rocks.
Beware of Pick Pockets and Loose Women
Roy Boehm, the retired U.S. Navy lieutenant commander who started the Navy's first SEAL team, has died aged 84.
"My ashes are going into the sea bag," Boehm had said in a 1997 interview. "How many people can hardly wait to get where they're going?"
January 04, 2009
Our Army failed its test
Christopher Booker outlines the destruction of the Army's reputation.
RTWT. And from the comments:
We Still Run This
A message from Anonymous to Scientology.
Anonymous hopes you are still having as much fun with this as we are.
Almost a year ago now, Anonymous launched Project Chanology in response to your attempts at internet censorship. What started as just another raid became a full-scale war against the Cult of Scientology. Let us review the year in the spirit of auld lang syne.
Your attempts at dead agenting have repeatedly failed. Your laughable black propaganda has fooled only the unwary, while Anonymous has been widely spreading the truth about your cult's evil, malicious, and suppressive policies. The tactics you refer to as "Fair Game" are now common knowledge within law enforcement agencies worldwide. The treatment of your Sea Organization staff has become infamous, and has earned you the scorn of the entire world. Your subversive fronts have been exposed. Your elite members continue to leak damning documents to the internet. Everyone knows who Xenu is. Scientology has become a joke, and "David Miscavige" is the punchline.
Anonymous has wounded your organization, perhaps mortally. Sales of Dianetics have been cut almost in half this year, and your favorite recruitment tool, the stress test tables, are taken down by your own people at the mere sight of a Guy Fawkes mask. Your own celebrity members refuse to speak your name. Staff block their ears to avoid hearing Scientology doctrine read aloud. Anonymous is at cause. Scientology is, was, and always will be, at effect.
Nothing that you have done has stopped Anonymous. We are inoculating the public - those you contemptuously refer to as "wogs" and "fresh meat" - against the lies of your cult. Your libel litigation is ineffective, for you cannot prove false what is true. Your attempts to censor the facts have failed repeatedly. This is a lesson you have refused to learn. Scientology is powerless in the presence of Anonymous. You fear us because you fear the ubiquity of the truth. You fear for an organization founded on peddling deceit to the uninformed. You fear those you have ensnared will desert you. You should, for knowledge is free.
It is midwinter in East Grinstead. For many Scientologists, that winter has lasted a lifetime. Your orders are set out by L. Ron Hubbard, now long dead. You are bound to and by the tech. You cannot adapt. You cannot learn. The self-proclaimed homo novis is many decades out of date, trapped in the permafrost of your own dogma.
Outside, the world has changed. The habits that once made Scientology a ruthlessly effective organization now condemn you. Your persistence with obsolete, ineffectual practices yields ridicule, not results. You cannot win. Your tech has failed you. Scientology is imploding at its core, and this is evidenced by the increasing levels of desperation seen in your attempts to handle us. It is only a matter of time before humanity is purged of your malign influence.
We are the people you pass on the street. We are your friends, family, sons, daughters, and siblings. We are the person right next to you.
Scientology cannot win a war of information against the internet itself.
We are Anonymous.
We are Legion.
We do not forgive.
We do not forget.
Expect us... until you have lost the game.
Operation Cast Lead: Background Briefing
Related: To what extent are soldiers expected to keep shabbat?
January 03, 2009
Prayer for the Welfare of Soldiers in the Israel Defense Forces
May the Almighty deliver us our enemies who arise against us, may the Holy One, blessed be He, preserve them and save them from all sorrow and peril, from danger and ill.
May He send blessing and success in all their endeavors, may He deliver to them those who hate us and crown them with salvation and victory, so that the saying may be fulfilled through them, "For the Lord, your God, who walks with you and to fight your enemies for you and to save you", and let us say, Amen.
Via The Muqata, which has extraordinary updated posts on the IDF operation in Gaza. Also, Solomonia has excellent links to links.
Dutch MP calls for intifada
Dutch Socialist MP, Harry van Bommel calls for intifada against Israel during a pro-Hamas, pro-Hezbollah demonstration in Amsterdam. I would be grateful if Dutch speaking Flea-readers might interpret the tenor of the comments at the video.
The cretin clearly has not noticed the intifada currently underway in Amsterdam. Or, rather more likely, he approves of it.
Background: Connections between the Dutch "left" and Hamas. Also, this is the same Harry van Bommel who called Theo van Gogh a hatemonger. That last link goes to van Gogh's " 'America - America' -The last beacon of hope in a steadily darkening world"; RTWT.
According to Harry Van Bommel, a parliamentarian from the Socialist Party, I am a hatemonger who drives Muslim youth into the waiting arms of Jihad recruiters. Harry said this into the microphone of the Muslim radio station. He was supported by the General Intelligence and Security Service (AIVD), and is a peace loving parliamentarian whose party claimed that the concentration camps in China under Mao were necessary. He was certainly honored to find the General Intelligence and Security Services by his side. That's how a campaigner for the censorship of tommorrow lands on his feet.
Update: Please see the comments to this post for a Dutch perspective. It turns out the woman marching with Van Bommel is Gretta Duysenberg.
Gretta Duisenberg also came under fire when she announced her intention of collecting six million signatures as part of her campaign to draw attention to the Israeli occupation of the Palestine Territories. She was asked how many signatures she'd been able to gather for the petition against the occupation and replied that 6,000 supporters had signed so far. And how many signatures would you like to collect, she was asked. Duisenberg hesitated for a moment and then said, "Six million," and laughed. Critics stated that the figure was clearly an allusion to the number of Jewish victims of World War II.
Such is progressive humour.
Godspeed the IDF
Respect to Hot Air, etc. but Allahpundit's analysis of Israeli war aims is ridiculous. Absurd. According to this line of thought, Hamas does not need to survive to win, they win no matter what Israel does or does not do. Such is the intellectual poison of pacifism and cultural Marxism that such drivel can now pass for conservatism.
Welcome to the 1930s.
What, like WMDs? This must be the nadir of the West's loss of confidence in itself; casting about for false flags and conspiracies when the blindingly obvious is no longer intellectually calculable. When the Allies landed at Normandy they were not trying to give Hitler a bloody nose and they were not preempting Germany's atomic weapons program. Their aims were to defeat the German military, destroy the Nazi party and along with it their doctrine of German racial supremacy and to remake German culture into something that could live with itself and its neighbours.
So, yes, the IDF can decisively, permanently stop the rockets if Israelis have the inclination to let the IDF do so.
Whether the Israeli government shares this entirely sensible ambition is beyond me but not beyond the realm of possibility. Hamas is a nothing, capable of terrorizing its subject population (i.e. everyone who voted for Hamas and everybody else too) thanks to arms from Iran and funding from - amongst many others - the Canadian taxpayer. But militarily they can be squashed flat, killed to a man and replaced by the Fatah government in waiting. It is a no brainer. Though living as we do in an age of no brains this is by no means necessarily the Israeli war plan. But to assume the IDF is bound to repeat Lebanon rather than learn from it is to underestimate a people perhaps grown sufficiently tired of living with the consequences of their misplaced mercy.
For rather more cogent updates and analysis I refer you to Mere Rhetoric, added to my blogroll effective immediately.
Related: Mark Steyn and those thoughts a Western mind can no longer compute.
The civilizational clashes of professor Huntington's book are not inevitable. Culture is not immutable. But changing culture is tough and thankless and something the West no longer has the stomach for. Unfortunately, the Saudis do, and so do the Iranians. And not just in Gaza but elsewhere the trend is away from "moderation" and toward something fiercer and ever more implacable.
More updates: Also following Israellycool and The Muqata.
Rant Against Communists
Someone has been spying on me at my keyboard. Which reminds me, time for coffee (via duct, who probably meant it ironically).
A loss for words
If our civilization is to survive, conservatives must begin their own long march through the institutions. It may take twenty or thirty years to matter much, but imagine twenty or thirty more years of this and then imagine what - if anything - will be left.
Today, this is England.
The headteacher of Sheffield's Watercliffe Meadow, Linda Kingdon, said the south Yorkshire school, which is due to open on Monday, will instead be called a "place for learning".
"We decided from an early stage we didn't want to use the word 'school'," she told local newspaper the Sheffield Star. "This is Watercliffe Meadow, a place for learning. One reason was many of the parents of the children here had very negative connotations of school.
The jihadis had better get a move on. At this rate, there will be not much left of Byzantium to plunder.
Interconnected like Gaia: Glastonbury residents afraid of WiFi, counter with orgone generators.
Banjara
Now is the time at the Flea when we dance.
January 02, 2009
Their crusade against girls
Force-marriage is a press euphemism for systematized mass rape. The Taliban just call it marriage. Progressives can undoubtedly conjure up an excuse, a grant application to study our racist attitudes toward this indigenous expression of jihadi culture and a feminist term for the practice without bothering to follow the link.
Salma, who teaches in a primary school in Peshawar, told the Dawn newspaper that Taliban have told families to declare in mosques if they have unmarried girls so that their hand could be given in marriage, most probably to militants. If they did not do so, the girls would be forcibly married off, the newspaper quoted the 30-year-old widow as saying.
The naive and the ignorant might be excused for assuming the Taliban share their opinion of what a "grown up daughter" might be. Long time Flea-readers should have no trouble guessing; just follow the example of the Perfect Man.
"I have heard that Taliban have announced that if a girl above the age of seven is found outside her house, she would be slaughtered," Salma said.
Not only a death cult. Not only a rape cult. A child rape cult.
President-elect Obama: You promised to do something. Soon, you will have your chance to show your mettle.
Panis Angelicus
I would be grateful if there is a Flea-reader who owns the soundtrack for a mid 1990s BBC television series called "The Choir". I gather much of it was filmed at Gloucester Cathedral; I am trying to find the rendition of Panis Angelicus as heard in the series.
My email link is in the sidebar immediately under the words "Flea Got Mail".
Flea readers deliver: Thank you.
Another part of the field
Eskimo legend: "Perhaps, they are not stars in the sky, but rather openings where our loved ones shine down to let us know they are happy."
The first words I ever heard: King Richard II, Act 2 scene 1, attributed to John of Gaunt.
This earth of majesty, this seat of Mars,
This other Eden, demi-paradise,
This fortress built by Nature for herself
Against infection and the hand of war,
This happy breed of men, this little world,
This precious stone set in the silver sea,
Which serves it in the office of a wall
Or as a moat defensive to a house,
Against the envy of less happier lands,--
This blessed plot, this earth, this realm, this England.
Dame Agnes
Clearly, if somewhat belatedly, the women's shoes of 2008 (via Stacy King).
House Ravenclaw related: This map of Hogwarts and its surround should come in handy for prospective students of witchcraft and wizardry.
For comparison: J.K. Rowling's own sketch. As much as one defers to the author in these matters, I think it makes some sense for the Hogwarts Express to pull in toward Hogsmeade. Otherwise the townspeople would have an almighty trek to the station. But then there is always floo powder, I suppose.
Gothic Finland
Goottirock is Finnish for goth (rock). Potentially handy information should you find yourself in Finland.
From a young age, Oksanen has favoured purple and black, medieval conserts in addition to other music--and traditional goth aesthetics. She is equally attracted to PVC, seamed pantyhose and tattoos. To Oksanen, being a goth is fetishism which she implements in herself, and which fascinates in others.
She perceives gothism as a more feminine style and other genres of rock, and that is why she connects with it: "Goth aesthetics is appealing because it doesn't attempt to minimise the signs of women's femininity, and thus it doesn't conflict with my political conviction. Part of my own feminist manifesto was for years not to wear trousers. I focused on skirts and high heels as a protest against your society becoming overtly masculine."
You go, girl.
IDF Spokesperson
The IDF has a blog. Loving the spokesperson angle, though I cannot imagine it will score points with anyone who would strongly prefer the term to spokesman.
We will be using this site to post official announcements and photographs and generally to make information easily accessible to those who are interested.
For IDF footage and video clips there is the IDF on YouTube.
January 01, 2009
Sir Terry Pratchett
Terry Pratchett has been made a knight in the New Year Honours list. Well done (via The Blog of Walker).
Barry Rubin explains the Gaza War
Barry Rubin explains the Gaza War. His explanation takes one sentence, the rest of his article making an interesting and informative gloss.
Correct to a point. Hamas' ceasefire meant firing rockets at Israeli children at only 40% of the rate they do when on an open war footing. Furthermore, I can only wish for a world where Israel attacks Gaza. Having invented accuracy, every Western military power now engages in the sort of futile pinprick war the left would have you believe amounts to carpet bombing; in Israel's case, going so far as to robo-dial targets so as to ask occupants if they would be so kind as to leave their mosques and hospitals before the munitions arrive.
My most important reservation with the piece concerns Rubin's claim the "real conflict" lies between Iran-Syria and Egypt-Saudi Arabia. I believe the real conflict is between an axis of cowards-fools who believe there is no psychotic who cannot be appeased either through bribery or artificially inflated self-esteem and that vanishingly small minority in the West who believe revenge is a dish best served immediately. There is no war between Israel and the Muslim world; Israel could eradicate Muslim "civilization" by the end of today. The war is between Israel and its own liberal delusions.
Forecast
Light posting with a chance of tweets. Starting Monday: France Appreciation Week @ The Flea!
The Juice Lobby
Rob McClelland needs to brush up on his "code". His true feelings are showing themselves again.
Remember: It is never hate speech if it is "the left".
No frenemy to the left
A General Theory of Rubbish cites Slavoj Zizek (much more at links). This doubles as a preliminary diagnosis of the Obama administration. We are the change we have repressed.
Also prominent in the symbolic classes: Lawyers. An adjunct law prof as President counts as a twofer.
