We’ve bagged our limit. Photos to follow. A travel day tomorrow, and things should be back to normal by Friday.
Next year, I’m inviting Kathy Shaidle. It’s so much funner when they let you kill stuff.
We’ve bagged our limit. Photos to follow. A travel day tomorrow, and things should be back to normal by Friday.
Next year, I’m inviting Kathy Shaidle. It’s so much funner when they let you kill stuff.
James Watson was forced to retire after he claimed that African intelligence wasn’t “the same as ours.” Was he wrong? William Saletan on race and IQ… more»
Created Equal
from: William Saletan
Liberal Creationism
Last month, James Watson, the legendary biologist, was condemned and forced into retirement after claiming that African intelligence wasn’t “the same as ours.” “Racist, vicious and unsupported by science,” said the Federation of American Scientists. “Utterly unsupported by scientific evidence,” declared the U.S. government’s supervisor of genetic research. The New York Times told readers that when Watson implied “that black Africans are less intelligent than whites, he hadn’t a scientific leg to stand on.”
I wish these assurances were true. They aren’t. …-
http://www.slate.com/id/2178122/entry/2178123/
I hope everyone will read the 3-part Slate piece maz linked to. I’ve been following it at my blog. I quoted the same century’s worth of racial IQ findings here at SDA a while back. Now that those findings are finally hitting the mainstream, is Slate “racist” too?
As for hunting, I don’t know if I could kill a poor dumb (cute) animal. I’m more of a shoot-someone-who-breaks-into-my-house kinda gal.
NOW AVAILABLE —UNCUT & UNCENSORED— VIA YOUTUBE:
BEYOND THE RED WALL: THE PERSECUTION OF THE FALUN GONG
http://www.youtube.com/user/canboguscorp
Internet/Falun Gong: 1
CBC/Chinese Communist Party: 0
Sacred texts/myths are not to be dismissed.
…-
Did a Comet Cause the Great Flood?
The universal human myth may be the first example of disaster reporting.
by Scott Carney
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1929074/posts
“Noah’s Flood” May Have Triggered European Farming
Anil Ananthaswany
for National Geographic News
November 20, 2007
The flood that is said to have inspired the story of Noah’s Ark may also have sparked the rapid rise of agriculture in Europe, a new study says.
Scientists have speculated for some time that the biblical account of Noah’s flood was rooted in a real event thousands of years ago. …-
http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2007/11/071120-noah-flood.html
“Entine laid out the data.”
…-
Jewgenics
Jewish intelligence, Jewish genes, and Jewish values.
By William Saletan
Are Jews a race? Is Jewish intelligence genetic?
If these notions make you cringe, you’re not alone. Many non-Jews find them offensive. Actually, scratch that. I have no idea whether non-Jews find them offensive. But I imagine that they do, which is why Jews like me wince at any suggestion of Jewish genetic superiority. We don’t even want to talk about it.
Actually, a bunch of us did talk about it, three days ago at a forum at the American Enterprise Institute. The main speaker was Jon Entine, an AEI fellow and author of a new book, Abraham’s Children: Race, Identity, and the DNA of the Chosen People. He was joined by fellow AEI scholar Charles Murray and by Laurie Zoloth, a bioethicist at Northwestern University. Entine and Zoloth are Jewish. Murray isn’t but talks as though he wishes he were. “One of my thesis advisers at MIT was a Sephardic Jew,” he announced proudly, turning the old “some of my best friends” cliché upside down. …-
http://www.slate.com/id/2177228/nav/navoa/
PRESIDENT HILLARY’S FOUL MOUTH AND CRAPPY ATTITUDE:
http://tinyurl.com/2jqc82
“” F**k off! It’s enough that I have to see you shit-kickers every day, I’m not going to talk to you too!! Just do your G*damn job and keep your mouth shut.” (From the book “American Evita” by Christopher Anderson, p. 90 – Hillary to her State Trooper bodyguards after one of them greeted her with “Good morning.””
The CBC is still forecasting a huge winter storm today–up to 15 cm–in Toronto.
However, at the Weather Network’s site, the picture’s ENTIRELY different: in its 12 hour forecast, from 9:00 a.m., it says snow at 9; light snow from 10-12; then flurries until 4, when the sun might show through; then cloudy. Accumulation of snow? Less than 1 cm.
So, who’s right?
I’ve just checked with a friend in downtown Toronto: as of right now, there’s a mere dusting of snow on the ground and only “the tiniest flurries” are falling.
And why is the CBC, where all one of its dupes has to do is look out the window to see that its gloom and doom scenario’s not panning out, still totally misreporting today’s weather? For sure, the threat of a HUGE winter storm has been the cause of all kinds of changed plans today, apparently, for nothing. This is serious business.
CBC: all wrong, all the time.
Hey Lookout, over here in Hamiltoon I’ve got a bit of ice in the driveway, zero buildup on the road. I understand from the radio that school buses have been canceled all over Moronto. But not school.
Suppose the kiddies will all arrive by matter transmission.
Yep, its that kind of thing that makes us call it Moronto. Five flakes of snow and they start in closing stuff. Suck it up, its CANADA for crap sakes. Its been known to snow here occasionally. Throw a bag of salt in the trunk and get on with it!
Lookout, the CBC forecast was probably based on an AGW climate modelling program that must not be questioned or disputed.
Perhaps I’ll amend my post: I predict that CBC is reporting the wrong information. It’s usually wrong.
However, at its site, there’s a link to Environment Canada, which is predicting the doom and gloom scenario being reported by the CBC.
How is it, that AS IT’S HAPPENING, the Weather Network and Environment Canada’s reports of Toronto’s weather are almost the complete opposite? The Weather Network: light snow to flurries and a small amount of snow (less than 1 cm). Environment Canada/CBC: winter storm warning, wind gusting from 30-50 km and an accumulation of 5 to 10 cm of snow.
As I said, reporting the weather is serious business. Part of the story today in Toronto should be the two conflicting forecasts.
And if two “authoritative” sources can be so far apart on the WEATHER, on the very day it’s happening, how is it that the AGW “gloom and doomsayers” think computer models can accurately predict the CLIMATE for decades?
CM, I’ve just read your post. “Great minds think alike. . . “!!
Daniel Pipes, Lee Harvey Oswald’s malign legacy
What’s wrong with American liberalism? What happened to the self-assured, optimistic, and practical Democratic Party of Franklin D. Roosevelt, Harry Truman, and John F. Kennedy? Why has Joe Lieberman, their closest contemporary incarnation, been run out of the party? How did anti-Americanism infect schools, the media, and Hollywood? And whence comes the liberal rage that conservatives like Ann Coulter, Jeff Jacoby, Michelle Malkin, and the Media Research Center have extensively documented?
In a tour de force, James Piereson of the Manhattan Institute offers a historical explanation both novel and convincing. His book, Camelot and the Cultural Revolution: How the Assassination of John F. Kennedy Shattered American Liberalism, traces liberalism’s slide into anti-Americanism back to the seemingly minor fact that Lee Harvey Oswald was neither a segregationist nor a cold warrior but a communist.
http://www.theglobeandmail.com/servlet/story/RTGAM.20071122.wschools22/CommentStory/National/home
From the comments thread at the Globe & Mail:
The declining enrollments story is a way for universities to press for more foreign students to be let into the country to swell the ranks and university coffers, especially since the universities charge them higher tuition than home grown students. Who cares if Canadian students get educated as long as university staffers get paid.
The rising enrollments story is a way for univerisities to press for infusions of tax money for infrastructure, more teachers, more catered luncheons. You get the picture.
Meanwhile the recipients of all these valuable degrees are pouring coffee in Starbucks and living in their parents basements into their thirties, but they have the “prestige” of being “educated”. They were sold a bill of goods.
Make no mistake, universities are big business, not altruistic or idealistic institutions. There are a lot of big salaries riding on peretuating myth of a value of university degree.
Smart kids today are taking a trade, two years later making six figure salary. People are starting to catch on, and the fossilized universities are wetting their collective pants.
lookout – models can only predict with any reliability, if they have a full data base.
The climate models screaming about AGW don’t have such a data base and are thus, effectively useless as scientific tools. However, they are just great as tools to extort money from western nations to use to build polluting/emitting factories in non-western countries.
I live in downtown Toronto. There are snow flurries. Wet rain/snow that melts before it even hits the road. The roads and sidewalks are relatively clear in downtown Toronto. However, further north of the city, of course there would be some build-up. But, nothing much (you can see the dusting on cars/trucks coming in).
Darcy – I agree completely with your overview of universities. They are indeed ‘big business’ and they require those thousands of students, especially in the non-specific liberal arts degrees (social sciences and humanities) to fund their middle class faculty and staff.
Furthermore, these students are kept off the job market for years. Just imagine what it would do to the economy if the 60,000 plus students at York/U of T tomorrow moved into the employment market!
By the way, just for your information, in Quebec, foreign students, if they are from French-speaking countries, DON’T pay the higher fees of ‘international students’. They pay the same ultra low fees as Quebec students.
Furthermore, in Quebec, students from the ROC, don’t even have access to these low fees. They must pay higher fees, about 1/3 higher than Quebec-French country (eg, France, Belgium) fees. And these Quebec universities are certainly not self-sufficient in Quebec; they are subsidized by the federal govt, ie, we taxpayers from the ROC.
The hungry professor? He was working on a sociological research study, “Why Oscar Is Grouchy”. The preface was peered by Cit. Professewer Dion.
…-
Harpist Kicking off Homelessness Tour
Gospel musician Jeff Majors watched a former Howard University professor slowly sift through a trash barrel on campus, searching for food.
“It hurt,” said Majors, who had met the professor a few years earlier on one of his visits to Howard University. “To see that he was homeless, I realized that it could happen to me.”
After that “moment of spiritual awakening” in August 2006, Majors said he made a point to spend time with homeless people to see how they survived from day to day. Since then, the harpist and TV show host has been trying to raise awareness about homelessness in America. …-
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1929287/posts
Kathy, honey – get out and practice on cute and dumb. Because you may be faced with smart and ugly some day and you don’t want to second guess yourself.
In reference to the James Watson article some of my friends were discussing the implication when it was first reported earlier. During the discussion it was mentioned that it was surprising that at a Search and Rescue conference in May of this year we noticed that probably 95% of the attendees were all WASP’s. Then it was mentioned that at a Lower Mainland combined search for an Asian male that had wandered away again approximateky 95% of the searchers were WASP’s. It also appears that nearly all of the casualties that Canada has suffered in Afghanistan (approximately 90%) are WASP’s. So why is it that WASP’s seem to be more willing to get involved on a personal level in voluntary community system than do other races? Just thinking!
Buy the beeerd of Allah! It was Muslim Islamist Abdelhaleem, ex-prof at Howard University, who was digging for OscarAllah. Citoyen Dion says: Tha’s not fair.
…-
Little Green Footballs | Islamist Professor Sentenced to 11 Years
Former Howard University professor Abdelhaleem Ashqar was sentenced today to more than 11 years in prison for refusing to testify to a grand jury in a Hamas funding case. …-
http://www.jacksnewswatch.info/
Antenor, I wondered that during the katrina coverage.
It couldn’t have helped residents’ self esteem, not only to have been revealed to the world as being foolish enough to live in a hopelessly corrupt, morally dubious town below sea level, and have been too foolish or lazy to leave, but to have to be rescued by white people.
As for up here: when I worked for a Very Famous Charity in Toronto, minority groups would, in general, only donate to the “community chest” if the money was earmarked for their own people and not to other groups.
Now I can understand that to some extent. Asians don’t tend to put their parents in old folks homes, so why should they give money to white people stuff like that.
But in general, I found it depressing. And the craven way the organization agreed to this charitiable discrimination was just as bad.
Last night I made the mistake of pausing long enough to catch a feature on CBC’s National on multiculturalism in Quebec. It was nauseating. The host was the quintessentialy urban, Canadian, metrosexual Marc Kelly(sp?). No need to guess his take on “reasonable accomodation” debate, which permeated his report; the manner and inflection of his questions alternated between incredulous and condescending. But to really drive home how silly the native Quebecers were he decided to interview a class of 10 year olds, asking them how it is that they all seem to get along so well. The childrens responded by saying things like, ‘it isn’t nice to make fun of others’, and, ‘respect other cultures’. How quaint and trite.
When CBC presents these features, are they actually editorializing, thus presenting whatever viewpoint as its own? As a taxpayer funded broadcaster, features such as last nights should have been counter balanced by a fair (or equally biased) report. Instead it was a serious issue that was borderline lampooned by the reporter.
Any chance we’ll see the other side of this from CBC?
Incidentally, Marc Kelly was a colleague of another smug metrosexual, CFRB Toronto’s John Moore. Is there a school where these tall-foreheads go to for their indoctrination? (I already know the answer to that, by the way…;P)
Kathy:
My wife shares your dislike of the long guns. She does not shoot more than a dozen rounds from the rifles on any range day anymore, and only when I insist that she has to maintain experience using the scopes.
What she loves shooting is the antique revolvers. Cute, light and with little recoil. She’s quickly became a crack shot with the 1880s Webley. Try that. They cost quite a few bucks and you have to reload your own ammo, but it’s very gratifying to shoot them.
MRV,
Brought up in mixed culture Montreal there is a natural effect on kids to realize race and colour have nothing to do with the nature of any individual.
I am the first to condemn how CBC does things, but I was brought up in Montreal West high school, so unless things have changed a whole lot, students of every colour and nationality are just students.
Merv, did you come up through the Montreal school system? Where were you brought up? = TG
Do you think that Liberal MP Robert Thibeasu who has been visiting with Karlheinz Schreiber for more than 8 months, who has possibly assisted Schreiber with these “letters”; who has defended Mr. Schreiber and is rabid about keeping him in Canada and who defamed Mr. Mulroney and is facing a $2 million lawsuit for defamation is in a CONFLICT OF INTEREST sitting on the Ethics Committee which is reviewing the Schreiber case?
The Liberals on the committee don’t think so.
What do you think?
Liberal Ralph-Income-Trust-Me-Goodale doesn’t want a gong show.
It’s started already, Ralphy.
…-
PM Stephen Harper arrives in Uganda for Commonwealth summit
KAMPALA, Uganda – Canada has called for Pakistan’s suspension from the Commonwealth following the anti-democratic crackdowns imposed during its emergency rule. (canoe news) …-
Opposition parties agree on Mulroney-Schreiber parliamentary probe […]
“We want a competent examination and we want one that doesn’t turn into a gong show,” said Goodale.” (cbc)
I want to be a lifeguard!
http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,312454,00.html
STOCKHOLM, Sweden — A group of Swedish women is making waves by taking their tops off at public swimming pools in a protest against what they call gender-biased rules on swim wear.
About 40 women have joined the network and staged topless protests in at least three cities, said Sanna Ferm, 22, one of the founders of the group called Bara Brost, or Bare Breasts.
(love her name by the way, sounds too close)
“The purpose of the campaign is to start a debate about why women’s bodies are sexualized,” Ferm said Wednesday.
She said the fact that men can be bare-chested in public swimming pools but not women is “a concrete example of how women have fewer rights than men.”
…speaking of bagging a limit, I hope Kate has a fridge full of beer when she arrives back home…
http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,312444,00.html
WAUPACA, Wis — A man who was upset with his wife for not buying beer took vengeance by shooting one of the family’s two pet goats, prosecutors say.
Peter W. Mischler, 48, was charged this week in Circuit Court with mistreatment of animals, possession of a firearm while intoxicated and disorderly conduct with a dangerous weapon.
The complaint said Mischler came home Saturday from hunting and became angry with his 22-year-old daughter for letting the goats out and making a mess. While she was talking on the phone to her mother, authorities said, he told her to tell his wife to bring home some beer, but his wife refused.
Five Feet of Fury with a gun… sounds scary to me.
Seriously, like everything else, there are responsibilities that come with guns & rifles. But then owning and driving a car has responsibilities too. Full marks for taking lessons and learning to do things properly.
Happy Thanksgiving to those SDA readers south of the 49th.
TG:
I think how the kids responded was completely natural and I wouldn’t have expected any differently. If only we could all retain a childs innocent view of the world.
Bear in mind though that the nature of a person is shaped by many things. And for the most part race or gender doesn’t play a significant part. But what I think scares many is the recognition that there are immigrants here for whom religion and politics are inseparable and the practice of which runs contrary to established western values. Ordinary citizens have been noticing this for the last generation, and seeing government making no conditions about the resposibilities of citizenship or consideration of no-questions-asked immigration. And the result has been “Hotel Canada” where being a Canadian is about a passport and economic opportunism.
This is the viewpoint CBC, nor any MSM, doesn’t take seriously.
Oh yeah. I grew up in the GTA, am Canadian born of European immigrants who were given, and asked, for nothing.
Suck it up, Kathy…;) http://unclemeat.wordpress.com/2006/08/08/girls-of-the-idf/
Venezuelan ladies defy military garrison (pics)
Caption in article at link says:
“Fatherland, Socialismo or Death” scratched. Ladies paint over the CORE 7 military garrison facade with white paint.
A group of women from Anzoategui went over to the CORE 7 in Puerto La Cruz to white out the “fatherland, socialism, or death” mural outside of the garrison.
I believe the messages directed to the troop couldn’t be more clear.
I think the lady-in-red-hat’s sign reads: “You are The People. We are The People. We are a Family. We are the fatherland”.
The lady-in-glasses’ sign reads: “Just like you honor the fatherland, honor your children”
One of the posters in the comments section cleverly modified the “no” slogan for the upcoming constitutional referendum with Spain’s King Juan Carlos’ “¿Porque NO te callas?. …-
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1929333/posts
Kathy Shaidle:
I’m in the middle of the grim task of reading the three foundational texts of Islam, aka 7th century hate lit.
One of the five pillars of the faith: charity.
However, only to other Muslims.
The thing I find amusing about those infamous Muslim “charities” [read: terror funds] is their unabashed, unembarrased use of that dead give away phrase “widows and orphans”.
And of course their use of the word “reflief” as in infidels being relieved of their property and their lives.
“Five Feet of Fury with a gun… sounds scary to me.”
Not they it can’t shoot worth a damn and the arms quiver holding a pistol 😉
Gotta do those strength building exercises if your gonna burn hogleg charcoal with the big boys.
As long as the money keeps rolling in, the GW fraudmobile keeps rollling on.
Now there’s a warming theory we know is true.
http://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2007/11/run_kids_its_the_warming_monst.html
Comment re Saletan article:
Quite frankly, I find the idea of reducing something as complex as human intelligence to a “number” to be somewhat foolish. It’s as bad as taking something as complex as climate and suggesting that the number we assign as an “average” earth temperature can be used to predict future climate change. It is virtually impossible to construct “IQ tests” that do not incorporate some sort of cultural bias.
Yeah, we know that the Asian kids typically get most of the awards for being top students – that’s because school typically involves a lot of memory work and attention to detail. Asian kids are very good at that. I think Black kids typically have a hard time sitting in their seats for hours on end let alone focusing on taking pencil and paper tests. A friend of mine once taught ESL (English Second Language) for business students and she got a lot of Asian students. She said they were brilliant at memorizing and mastering a lot of detail but that they almost invariably had a lot of trouble with graphs. Graphs represent visual-spacial thinking. By contrast, I once heard that many Africans are particularly strong in eidetic memory. What IQ tests tell us – if anything – is how likely someone is to succeed in the already highly articificial world of school and not much more, so I think we should call it that “SSQ” (for school success quotient), rather than “intelligence quotient” – which really is presumptuous.
Kathy, congratulations and let me offer a few caveats.
1. Studies have suggested that there is a better way of handling the trigger finger than laying it alongside the gun pointing at the target.
The trigger can be accessed more rapidly if it is crooked with the finger tip touching the metal surface above the trigger. This shrinks the time required to move the trigger finger into shooting position while still maintaining the safety precaution of not resting the trigger finger on the trigger.
2. I don’t know enough about the peculiarities of your size and Canadian law, but I assure you, if you look around long enough you’ll find a rifle or shotgun that is more accomodating to your particular requirements.
3. As general advice to whomever, depending on how serious you are about training, here is a suggestion.
Before you grab the piece and start practicing marksmanship, get down and do so many squat-thrust pushups and other exercises that you are literally sweating, and your arms and hands are trembling. Then jump up, grab the piece, and start trying to hit the target.
To some extent, this mimics the effects of adrenaline hitting your blood stream and suddenly maintaining in the face of acute panic reactions. In World War II studies were done in the context of training hand-to-hand combat that demonstrate that normally the body loses the capacity for fine motor movements when adrenaline hits the system.
So preparation must contain the awareness that one will not be operating in normal physiological/psychological territory when one confronts an intruder. This is one of the reasons that I recommend revolvers over semi-autos for people who don’t practice and train as a part of their job-related skill set. Some police officers have died in gun battles simply because in the emergency of the moment they forgot to click off the safety and were squeezing against the frame while the bad guy was shooting them.
If you’re thinking shotgun, I have a semi-automatic 12-gauge that requires no pumping or cocking. However, this may not be legal in Canada. Furthermore, a 20-gauge would be more suitable for a woman. Down here, a riot gun is legal in some cases, that is, a shotgun with a pistol grip that can be held and fired at the waist sort of like a big pistol.
You might want to take a look at a book entitled, “The Shotgun in Combat” by Tony Lesce. This book also demonstrates some methods of using the shotgun as an impact weapon and defensive weapon against knife attacks. The book shows that the shotgun can be used sort of like in bayonet fighting. The horizontal butt stroke, the slash, using the gun to block the knife wielder’s arm, for close-quarter conditions when one does not have time to bring the shotgun to bear.
Congratulations again, and good luck as you go forward with your gun hunt and practice. It is a terrible shame that we have to be capable of dealing with murderers and torturers and the rest, but ultimately it’s a lot better to be prepared than sorry.
TG writes, “I am the first to condemn how CBC does things, but I was brought up in Montreal West high school, so unless things have changed a whole lot, students of every colour and nationality are just students.”
TG, things have, indeed, changed a lot. It’s called the Charter, “equality”, multiculturalism, and entitlement. I too went to a school with many nationalities. Also, the adults were the adults and we, the kids, were REQUIRED to behave. We did. We also felt secure and were polite and well educated.
Today? Too many kids come from totally irresponsible, dysfunctional (often fatherless) families. A critical mass of these Charter-entitled, egregiously insubordinate children have no manners at all and behave in the most barbaric, anti-social ways. Are the adults able to deal decisively with such behaviour? No. The children’s feelings are NOT to be hurt. May one physically redirect them if they refuse to comply with a direct request? No, just touching a student on the arm is considered “abuse”. The kids know all about this. “You can’t touch me!” “That hurts!” “I’m telling the principal!”
Who are the students most likely to abuse these (ridiculous) privileges? Those from “victim” groups, before which our politically correct overlords grovel and cave. The growing number of teachers being persecuted—and often having their careers ruined—on the flimsiest pretext of hearsay evidence from the most unreliable miscreants in the school is shocking.
Unfortunately, students are not “just students” anymore. Those from “victim” groups are now allowed huge latitude to extort adult compliance to their puny, vindictive agendas. It’s enough to make a grown person cry.
Dion Write’s Again
Dion announced in QP today that he has written a letter to the Govenor of Montana? asking for a stay of execution for the canadian that has been in jail for Double Murder awaiting his judgement day.
He wants to know When the PM will do the same.
Dion says most Canadians don’t agree with Capitol Punishment.
States this in QP today
I have never been asked, Have you?
WL Mackenzie Redux, why are you obsessed with me? And it wasn’t a pistol.
Why you aren’t man enough to post under your real name, I don’t know.
Did you get that b-j yet? Obviously not… You still need one. Tell your wife I said so.
For Poor Citoyen Dion.
Here is poor, Citoyen. Socialism/communism/Dionism: Prisoners of the State, aka “the locked ward of the political asylum,”.
Now you know why we loathe/hate you and your socialism.
Enter the morgue, Dion; the sepulchral graveyard of socialism. Meet your buds: Trudeau, Castro, Lenin-Stalin, Mao, Duceppe, Hitler, Mugabe, Chavez, Pol Pot, lberia, et al.
Here is what you and your vermin rely on; the sleep of the citizen; to wit,
“For while visitors may see this place as a prison, many of its inmates show every sign of regarding it as a shrine to the human god whose image they all wear on their clothes and whose various names cannot be pronounced without reverence: the Great Leader, Gen. Kim Il Sung.
…-
Prisoners in Camp Kim
American Conservative Magazine ^ | 11/17/07 | Peter Hitchens
Strange, secretive, and desperately poor, North Korea tests the limits of social control.
PYONGYANG—Here is the locked ward of the political asylum, the place where politics has actually become an official state religion, and power is worshipped, directly and literally, in the form of a colossal bronze idol to which the people come and bow with every sign of reverence. Nothing in the modern world compares with North Korea, though it gives us some clue about how life must have been under the pharaohs, in Imperial Japan before Hiroshima, or in the obliterated years—conveniently erased from memory by blushing fellow travelers—when Josef Stalin was revered as a human god.
Pyongyang is the most carefully planned and also the most mysterious city on the planet. You cannot, unless you escape from the warders who accompany foreigners everywhere in North Korea, walk inquisitively along its surprisingly green and spacious streets. If you did, you would rapidly be apprehended and returned, amid fierce reprimands, to your tour bus or to the special hotel on an island in the Taedong River, where outsiders are comfortably but irksomely confined when they are not on supervised expeditions. But you can glimpse the shady, fenced-off streets where the elite live, close to the Russian Embassy from which subsidies used to pour in Soviet days.
You can gaze on the gargantuan housing estates, made up of scores of apartment blocks, a great festival of concrete outdoing even Soviet Moscow in its gigantism. You may admire the Juche Tower, which symbolizes North Korea’s supposed self-reliance. The tower is a column three feet taller than the Washington Monument, weirdly topped by a great simulated red flame, like a much larger version of the World War I Memorial in Kansas City, but only when there is enough power to keep it aglow. That is not always. Voltage is a problem in Pyongyang. The streetlamps are never switched on, and there is a strange interval between sundown and total darkness, before the lights start to come on in the windows of all the apartments. There is also a wonderful quiet, since Pyongyang has hardly any motor traffic by day and even less at night. Human voices can be heard from astonishing distances, as if you were in a tranquil lakeside resort rather than in the center of a grandiose metropolis. The electric current in homes and offices seems suspiciously feeble and shuts down abruptly when the government thinks bedtime has arrived. The authorities also have views on when you ought to wake up. A siren rouses the sluggards at 7 each morning, though light sleepers will already have been alerted to the approach of the working day by ghostly plinking, plonking music drifting from loudspeakers at 5 and 6 o’clock. The sensation of living in an enormous institution, part boarding school, part concentration camp, is greatly enhanced by the sound of these mass alarms.
I wondered what they reminded me of until it came to me that they resembled the Muslim call to prayer, wavering and throbbing across Islamic cities for the pre-dawn prayers. For while visitors may see this place as a prison, many of its inmates show every sign of regarding it as a shrine to the human god whose image they all wear on their clothes and whose various names cannot be pronounced without reverence: the Great Leader, Gen. Kim Il Sung. It is Kim, not Marx or Lenin, who is honored everywhere. In fact, the Communist nature of the regime is hardly ever stated, except in the hammer, sickle, and writing brush of the Korean Workers’ Party symbol.
If you are very lucky and honored, you may penetrate the Kumsusan Memorial Palace. This was the home of the Great Leader when he was ordinarily alive, kept going in his later years by a special diet of extra-long dog penises. Today, it is his mausoleum, where he lives forever in the extraordinary fashion devised for him by whoever actually controls this country. This is no mere Lenin’s Tomb but a temple of awe, where devotees must have the dust blasted from their clothes and shoes before approaching the sacred body and bowing deeply.
I was not considered worthy to go there, but was allowed to lay flowers at, and bow to, the bronze image of Kim that gleams on a hill above the city—and used to gleam a great deal more before the gold leaf that once adorned it was stripped off. It is widely believed that the extravagant coating was removed in one night after the Chinese leader Deng Xiaoping remarked dryly that if North Korea could afford such a display, it surely did not really need the Chinese economic aid for which it was asking. As for the bow, I performed a perfunctory Episcopalian nod, inoffensive, polite, but far from effusive. One of the many advantages of an Anglican upbringing is that one has gestures for all occasions, including obeisance to the bronze images of unhinged tyrants—though I found myself strangely disturbed by and ashamed of this particular breach of the Commandments for some time afterward. As I laid the equally obligatory and hideous flowers, I silently assured myself that I was doing so in memory of Kim’s many victims. You may classify this as cowardice, and I will not necessarily disagree, but it seemed that I had accepted that I would have to kowtow to this cult the moment I decided to enter North Korea. What is more, I sensed that my guides and guards genuinely revered this thing and that it would be plain bad manners to refuse.
Brooding over this morbid, idolatrous cityscape is a great pyramid, a thousand feet high. But this majestic structure is also a ruin, a grand project that was never finished and now never will be. Visitors are discouraged from asking about it. …-
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1929331/posts
The Rev. Tommy Calvert was focused. Says so here below: “he was focused”. Who was the focee? Or, was it a group focus?
The Loose Jaw is Jason; “Jason Small can be reached at 691-1255.”
…-
Calvert can be the NDP’s saviour, the federal NDP that is
In his final days as premier of Saskatchewan, it suddenly came out that Lorne Calvert is being courted by the federal NDP to be a candidate in the next federal election. Despite the protestations from Calvert’s spokesman that he was focused…-
http://www.mjtimes.sk.ca/index.cfm?sid=82712&sc=10
@Charles MacDonald:
Thanks for the Oswald link. My own private conceit in the matter is that Oswald was a psychopath, and thus quite gifted at charming people into thinking that he was some sort of peepul’s-hero for doing what he did. Ruby’s shooting of him might have been prompted by such a remark (delivered with a smirk.) I may be wrong on that guess, though.
As far as I’m concerned, any Cuban connection, and/or connection with the then-recent assassination of Ngo Dinh Diem, would have just been grist for Oswald’s ‘story’.
This is pretty old — like 1985 — but it has to do with efforts by the KGB to influence North American society. What is interesting is that — regardless of what has since happened to the Soviet Union — we are still living with the effects of these early “opinion shaping” initiatives. It’s a pretty interesting (and unsettling) interview about the “useful idiots.” Interview with
Yuri Bezmenov http://www.liveleak.com/view?i=047_1181753664
Eighth wonder of the world? The stunning temples secretly carved out below ground
Nestling in the foothills of the Alps in northern Italy, 30 miles from the ancient city of Turin, lies the valley of Valchiusella. Peppered with medieval villages, the hillside scenery is certainly picturesque.
But it is deep underground, buried into the ancient rock, that the region’s greatest wonders are concealed.
Here, 100ft down and hidden from public view, lies an astonishing secret – one that has drawn comparisons with the fabled city of Atlantis and has been dubbed ‘the Eighth Wonder of the World’ by the Italian government.
For weaving their way underneath the hillside are nine ornate temples, on five levels, whose scale and opulence take the breath away.
Constructed like a three-dimensional book, narrating the history of humanity, they are linked by hundreds of metres of richly decorated tunnels and occupy almost 300,000 cubic feet – Big Ben is 15,000 cubic feet.
Few have been granted permission to see these marvels.
Indeed, the Italian government was not even aware of their existence until a few years ago.
But the ‘Temples of Damanhur’ are not the great legacy of some long-lost civilisation, they are the work of a 57-year-old former insurance broker from northern Italy who, inspired by a childhood vision, began digging into the rock.
It all began in the early Sixties when Oberto Airaudi was aged ten. From an early age, he claims to have experienced visions of what he believed to be a past life, in which there were amazing temples. …-
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1929371/posts
(Link to pics)
Re: Climate change conference – from the Bali News:
Private jets cause parking problem.
“the management of Bali’s Ngurah Rai International Airport are concerned that the large number of additional private charter flights expected in Bali during the UN Conference on Climate Change (UNFCCC) December 3-15, 2007, will exceed the carrying capacity of apron areas. To meet the added demand for aircraft storage officials are allocating “parking space” at other airports in Indonesia.”
You just can’t make this up.
http://www.balidiscovery.com/messages/message.asp?Id=4112
Regards your forward on price of oil & gas – I think most of us have already figured out, to one degree or another – a long, long time ago – that the likes of oil companies, banks, insurance companies, and real estate corporations – to name a few -are essentially societal parasites who greedily suck up most of the wealth under the guise of stimulating our capitalist economy. Ironically enough, the last time anyone really stood up to our capitalist ogres began in the early part of the last century with the formation of the German Nazi Party policy under the leadership Adolph Hitler. Did you know that Hitler’s father was an alcoholic and his mother had three children that all died in infancy before the birth of Adolph? The guy was a survivor!! I made some examination of the original Nazi policy documents while taking a WWII History course. The banning of usury or loaning of money for profit, the abolition of private property and the placing of the agricultural (food producing) sector at the forefront of society were just a few Nazi policies that could not possibly have any place in our world today. To cut this long and complicated story short – what I essentially want to say is that the prime characteristics of our society (gluttonous wealth vs. extreme poverty, too many large, greedy, powerful corporations etc., burgeoning crime and social disorders) are largely a reaction to the defeat of the Russian Communism and German Naziism of the last century. Both of those were attempts at bringing about societal EQUALITY. Unfortunately, and in spite of all the phony window dressing displayed by our modern western regimes, equality and freedom DO NOT mix. The promotion of societal equality most definitely demands the restriction of freedom and vice versa. Both Stalin and Hitler got carried away with their extermination policies that drove their quests to eliminate the champions of free thought and action in their respective societies.
You can’t have your cake and eat it too Howard. If you want to live in a capitalist society then you have to accept that the likes of the oil companies are going to keep getting richer at your and my expense. Blatant exploitation of citizens in the pursuance of profit is part and parcel of ‘freedom’. At least you are free to complain. However, it is not going to do you any good. Our politicians are all dyed in the wool agents of capitalism – they have to be if the show is going to stay on the road. Besides, most of ’em are lawyers – Hitler was into getting rid of them too. The legal beagles are trained in the art of deceit – why do you think they end up as politicians? Their job is to keep the masses at bay. Did you know that the early French colonization of Quebec in the 15th century banned lawyers from entering the new society. It didn’t work – they eventually weaseled their way in – another failed attempt to keep things clean – and equal.
Pakistan suspended from the Commonwealth because of anti-democratic crackdown […]
“Canadian Junior Foreign Minister Helena Guergis said Pakistan’s time had run out.
The Commonwealth largely made up of Britain and its former colonies, had already given Pakistan’s military ruler, President Gen. Pervez Musharraf, a Thursday deadline to lift emergency rule and step down as army chief.
“We adhere to and we support the principles of democracy,” Guergis said.
“Right now, we have to uphold that. We have to stand behind that, and support that. Right now Pakistan is not doing that.”
She said Pakistan had failed to accomplish any of the five criteria set out for it by the Commonwealth.
A group of nine countries met to decide on Pakistan’s status. …-
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1929390/posts
Here is socialist Citoyen Dion’s foreign affairs:
“Dipping into his thesaurus, Mr. Dion called the Conservative approach to the world “mediocre,” “rigid,” “simplistic,” “incompetent,” “amateurish” and “ineffective.” He is against buying unwanted military equipment, “insulting” China, selling out on softwood lumber, abandoning mediation.
He reserved his harshest criticism for the war in Afghanistan, where the government’s inconsistency has been “appalling” and “inexcusable.”
And the reason for all this? Blame “the ideological kinship” between Stephen Harper and George W. Bush, he said. You see, Canada’s foreign policy is made in Washington, inspired by “the American right.”
Why, you have only to look at the Kyoto Accord, which Mr. Harper opposes, like Mr. Bush. Or Iraq, which Mr. Harper supported. And, most pointedly, Afghanistan, where Mr. Harper is imitating Mr. Bush in his “unilateral behavior,” whatever that means in a NATO operation. …-
http://www.canada.com/ottawacitizen/columnists/story.html?id=5bfd38d7-b25d-428a-ba43-c7e3ee7f3caa
*
Halton’s Catholic board has pulled The Golden Compass fantasy book –
soon to be a Hollywood blockbuster starring Nicole Kidman – off school
library shelves because of a complaint.
“The Golden Compass is a book about the quest to kill GOD.”
Which begs the question, “What kind of puny-a$$ deity are you people
worshipping anyway?”
*
maz2 – @ your link to the underground temples – that is an incredible piece of work for one man. It took entire civilizations to create such beauty elsewhere.
John West @ 5:36PM – and what a lot of people forget – or simply don’t know – is that if they have a pension plan or RRSPs, etc., they probably own a piece of these same oil companies, insurance companies, etc., and better hope, for the sake of their retirement years, that they continue to hungrily grab profits.