The Obama Ebola Doctrine

Posted on November 3, 2014 by leslie
Peter Breughel the Elder The Triumph of Death

Peter Breughel the Elder
The Triumph of Death

The Obama Ebola Doctrine: Worship the Saints in “Spacesuits” 

Ilana Mercer debunks the new “patriotism”

The tweets came fast and cynical: “That’s so science!” “I saw those white lab coats on the men behind [Obama], which pretty much convinced me.” “Another day, another POTUS presser on Ebola. If you missed it, here’s the summary: ‘White lab coats, science.’”

The Obama Ebola Doctrine (OED) was dictated during the presidential addresses, this week, on Ebola. The message, delivered against a backdrop of demigods in freshly unpacked, white laboratory coats, was hardly subliminal. So serious was Obama, he even threw in references to a God not himself, something he rarely does.

The president used the word “troops” to describe the individuals stationed behind him. These public health workers were “serving” America (much like soldiers would). Theirs was a “sacrificial service” (much like that of saints). They were “citizens of the world, global citizens,” who were “leading globally” (as all you locals should strive to do).

Volunteering in Africa Obama has equated with American “patriotism.” Well of course. If being “citizens of the world” is the existential state-of-being, then patriotism must be redefined. No longer does it mean the love of one’s country and countrymen, but love of The World. Go to West Africa, and you are demonstrating “citizenship … and public service at its best.” In Africa, you will be serving America, “the country that we love.”

The medics who rush headlong into the Ebola maelstrom embody “American exceptionalism” (unlike all those Americans who run businesses).

To the extent that America’s Ebola workers are motivated by “faith,” it is their “sense of faith and grace” that Obama has commanded all Americans to emulate.

The president is now defining for his subjects the very meaning of worship.

Aversion to Ebola, Obama mocked as “hiding under the covers,” indirectly associating precautions with cowardice, even venality.

His Holiness “saluted” Dr. Craig Spencer for “his service” – Spencer is the saint in scrubs who lied to investigators about his whereabouts. He had been gallivanting around Manhattan when already symptomatic.

Is Nurse Kaci Hickox the next to be canonized? Just back from treating Ebola-afflicted patients in Sierra Leone, contempt dripping from every word disgorged – threatened: “If the restrictions placed on me by the state of Maine are not lifted by Thursday morning, I will go to court to fight for my freedom.” Paul Callan, a usually reserved, dignified, civil-rights attorney expressed his disgust: Hickox is “setting a bad example … for the rest of the public” in the event that “this thing gets out of hand,” and there’s a quarantine across the United States.

So listen up, petty, provincial Americans: These are your new deities. Worship the saints in “spacesuits”!

Ultimately, Americans are meant to forget that the duty of the U.S. government is to its people, first. Obama is obligated by the Constitution to protect the liberties of his constituents. Without life there is no liberty.

But not according to the Obama Ebola Doctrine, which is this:

  • The health of West Africa is the health of America.
  • Those serving as healers in Africa are serving as healers in America.
  • Africa’s medicine men are America’s medicine men.
  • Local yokels dare not “discourage” these new deities; “disincentivize” or inconvenience them. Rather, the “health care workers” who are sacrificing for us must be lauded and “applauded,” and should certainly not be made to bear the brunt of our scientific ignorance.

Dr. Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, parroted the president: “by going over there, they are helping us to protect America.” Therefore, the lives of doctors fighting Ebola in West Africa must not be “disrupted” on their return.

This means no quarantines, cretins.

There you have it. Funded by Americans, the role of the president of the U.S. is to engineer desirable political, social, medical and financial outcomes for the world.

What else does the OED imply?

Preparing Americans for the inevitable sacrifice for the greater global good is essential. As we move to eradicate Ebola “at the source,” we, concomitantly, must maintain the unfettered movement of people in and out of the U.S. Consequently, our prejudiced, unworldly citizens must be conditioned to accept “the few Ebola cases that we see here.”

A few dead Americans is a small price to pay for the greater global good.

The Bush Terrorism Doctrine was as follows: we’re fighting them over there, so we don’t have to fight them over here.

The Obama Bioterrorism Doctrine runs parallel. Barack Hussein Obama’s express objective is to convince Americans that if we fight Ebola in West Africa, it won’t threaten America: “If we [don’t] deal with this problem there, it will come here,” he asserted.

However, as revealed by State Department documentation marked “Sensitive But Unclassified, Predecisional,” the policy is as fluid as the “liquefying” internal organs of a hapless Ebola patient.

Prior to being petitioned by a Judicial Watch Freedom of Information Act Request and subsequently exposed by Fox News, the knaves at State were considering the “expeditious” “medevacing” of Ebola-infected non-citizens into the United States for treatment.

If Ebola doesn’t “come here” in a big way, Obama may just introduce it to you by hook or by crook.

ILANA MERCER is a paleolibertarian writer based in the United States. She pens WND’s longest-standing column, “Return to Reason” and is a Fellow at the Jerusalem Institute for Market Studies. She is a Quarterly Review Contributing Editor. Ilana’s latest book is Into the Cannibal’s Pot: Lessons for America from Post-Apartheid South Africa. Her website is www.IlanaMercer.com. She blogs at www.barelyablog.com

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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Tsar Putin’s Pobedonostsev

Posted on November 1, 2014 by leslie

 Tsar Putin’s Pobedonostsev*

Ed Dutton reviews a timely analysis of Russian ideologue Alexander Dugin

‘The American Empire Should Be Destroyed’: Alexander Dugin and the Perils of Immanentized Eschatology, James D. Heiser, Repristination Press, 211pp. 2014

Alexander Dugin is little known in Western countries. In this book, James Heiser convincingly advances the case that this Russian philosopher and occultist should be better known and helps us to get to know him.

In ‘The American Empire Should Be Destroyed’, we meet the most powerful Russian advocate of the philosophy of ‘Traditionalism.’ In Western countries, Traditionalism is fringe philosophical movement on the most esoteric edges of the extreme right, but in Russia its leading exponent is a professor at Moscow State University and an adviser to President Putin. More worryingly, Putin has adopted aspects of Dugin’s philosophy of ‘Eurasianism,’ which advocates Russian Empire building, as state policy.

To that extent, this is a useful book. It also gives us an insight into Dugin’s psychology. Born into a Soviet Military family in 1961, as an adolescent, he became something of a drifter, dropping out of college and becoming involved in assorted occult and ideological circles before finally attaching himself in the early 1990s to the ‘New Right’. The latter is centred around French philosopher Alain de Benoist and is, in essence, a form of neo-Paganism which rejects liberalism, democracy, and individualism. Dugin’s philosophy began to gain popularity during Russia’s turbulent 1990s and he established the National Bolshevik Party, and gradually gained political influence, even (apparently) co-writing one of his philosophical works with a Russian minister of defence.

But what is Alexander Dugin’s philosophy? Part Paganism, part occultism, part Russian imperialism and part something like Fascism, I expected this book to clearly explain precisely what it is. Instead, the author offers a series of similes (usually Christian, possibly reflecting the author’s position as a bishop in USA Lutheran church) to explain aspects of it – thus, in some respects it is rather like Gnosticism, in others Nazism, and in yet others a Millennial Cult – but what we require is a clear explication. Instead, we receive summaries such as, ‘In short, then, what Dugin proposes is that National Bolshevism takes from the “metaphysics” of Marxism a secret, initiatory Gnosticism and mysticism which seeks to accomplish a spiritual alchemy to transform society – National Bolshevism thus becomes a secret society based on the theurgic, magic transformation of reality’ (p.61). In many ways, this kind of prose raises as many questions as it answers. In addition to this ideology, Heiser points out that Dugin argues that on earth a cosmic battle is played out between Cosmic Angels – a Russia Angel and a bad Western Angel. Ultimately, this will culminate in some sort of mass war and the rise of ‘Eurasia’ at the end times.

Traditionalism itself is associated with various early twentieth century philosophers who had some influence on Fascism such as Julius Evola. It is based on the idea that all religions share the same origin in a primordial, transcendent unity and that they all operate according to the same metaphysical principles. Thus, some kind of spiritual realm is assumed to exist. Following pagan ideas (perhaps regarded as the closest to the origin?), certain traditionalists (such as Evola) see the world as passing through a series of ‘ages’ with the current age being the ‘dark age.’ It is ‘dark’ because it is materialistic, deviant and anti-tradition and, as such, we must work towards a primordial rebirth which is spiritual, traditional, group-oriented and aristocratic. Part of this seems to include selectively accepting Pagan and other religious ideas and the belief that truth can only be reached through a kind of religious experience. Accordingly, Traditionalism, which has led some Western followers to adopt Sufi Islam, is a kind of Nietzschean philosophy plus Pagan religious and occult belief. Traditionalism, then, would appear to be the philosophical glue that has held together the disparate anti-democratic and Eurasianist forces that have emerged in post-Soviet Russia and, accordingly, Dugin, its most charismatic advocate, has become their influential, de facto leader. He has drawn upon Pagan ideas to give a theological justification to Eurasianism and to provide it with a religious gloss.

A central objective of Heiser’s book is to explain Dugin’s philosophy and in particular to clarify the essential nature of Traditionalism and Eurasianism. However, I am not sure that he does. Indeed, throughout the book, Heiser provides extremely long verbatim quotes not just from Dugin but also from other political scientists and philosophers (such as Mark Sedgwick’s Against the Modern World: Traditionalism and the Secret Intellectual History of the Twentieth Century, OUP, 2004) who have written about them. Not only does this technique entail piggybacking off the work of other writers but it means that Heiser’s book potentially adds little to the discussion. If the author is simply going to quote the summaries of others, why not simply read the others?

That said, ‘The American Empire Should be Destroyed’ provides a well-written history of the rise of Dugin and his influence on Russian politics. Likewise, it convincingly makes the case that the West needs to wake up to the threat which Dugin’s philosophy poses when it is advocated, in part, by the Russian elite.

* Editor’s note – Konstantin Pobedonostsev was an adviser to three Tsars

Dr Edward Dutton’s book Religion and Intelligence is published by the Ulster Institute for Social Research

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The Monster Ants

Posted on November 1, 2014 by leslie

Guillotine, Musée de la Révolution Française

 The Monster Ants

Niels Hav wonders about ISIL and life on our planet

“I have the feeling that we small
monster ants are alone at home
on this mystical planet.”

The universe consists of 100 billion galaxies; our galaxy is just sea spray in the cosmos. If there are sentient civilizations on just a millionth of those planets we are far from alone. But what is going on here on Earth right now?

Recently I attended a demonstration in Copenhagen against ISIL. It was raining, as it always does in Denmark when something important is happening, but there was a decent attendance even so. Without flags or proclamations, we walked soberly beneath our umbrellas through the city while the rain poured down – walked in solidarity with the victims of these benighted fanatics. On our way I talked with a pair of Danish women of Turkish background. “We are against what is happening,” they said. “To behead people is against Islam, it is a French invention.”

True enough, during the French Revolution the guillotine was industriously employed. Executions developed into public entertainment, hysteria took over, and the revolution was drowned in blood. Continue reading →

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Pretending Wall

Posted on October 29, 2014 by leslie

crumbling-wall

     Pretending Wall

He made a show of spitting on his hands;

he had a trowel, a hammer, and a tape,

and eyed the ground as one who understands

the way a wall might possibly take shape.

He didn’t dig a trench or fill with stone,

he didn’t even stake a line with string;

but while he talked to someone on the phone

he scuffed a crooked boot-wide path-like thing.

He kicked them into rows then, brick by brick —

it looked like he had never heard of math —

he’d sometimes give the dirt another kick

along his crooked and unlevel path.

It might have been his girlfriend or his bank,

but on he talked as back and forth he walked:

He’d move one brick, then give his hat a yank,

or wipe his face, or gesture as he talked.

And then the mortar – one place way too wet

another dry as if it were unmixed.

He tells me not to worry — it’ll set

as well as all the others he has fixed.

Unconsoled, I watch it as it grows:

he jams in legos, rocks, and broken wood

to try to even out the ragged rows,

but it’s not even close to being good.

“Being any good?” He gave a stare,

surprised to be confronted with such gall.

“Whatever structure that I may declare

to be a wall, it thus becomes a wall!”

At least two follies stand there, his and mine,

along that ugly length of anti-art:

There’s his incompetence’s little shrine,

and how I could have ever let him start.

Poem by MARCUS BALES who lives and works in Cleveland, Ohio

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America, Your Benefactor is Never the State

Posted on October 29, 2014 by leslie

Leviathan_livre

America, Your Benefactor is Never the State

Ilana Mercer sides with the market

The market place brings plenty; the state does the opposite. Yet not a day goes by when consumers, ignorant of the forces that feed, clothe, cure, employ, entertain them and innovate for them, don’t demand that those who’ve done nothing of the kind – the McCains, Obamas, Bushes, Clintons of the world – proceed with force against those who do nothing but.

Expect the anti-Walmart jousting to begin, because Walmart has done it again. To fill the need created by the Obamacare wrecking ball, Walmart Stores, Inc., is venturing into the business of providing primary health care. For $40, the price of a copay (in an Obama-mandated, subpar, healthcare plan), “you can walk into a Walmart clinic and see a doctor.” It’s “just $4 for Walmart U.S. employees and family members.”

Via Market Watch:

“On Friday, a Walmart Care Clinic opened in Dalton, Ga., six months after Walmart U.S., the retailer’s biggest unit, entered the business of providing primary health care. It now operates a dozen of clinics in rural Texas, South Carolina and Georgia and has increased its target for openings this year to 17. … A typical retail clinic offers acute care only. But a Walmart Care Clinic also treats chronic conditions such as diabetes. (Walmart U.S. also leases space in its stores to 94 clinics owned by others that set their own pricing.)”

“It was very important to us that we establish a retail price in the health-care industry because price leadership matters to us,” said Jennifer LaPerre, a Walmart U.S. senior director responsible for health and wellness, in an interview. Hear, hear!

The argument against Walmart presses its case with an impressive array of economic fallacies. Typically, the critic – an example is “The High Cost of Low Prices,” in The American Conservative – does nothing to trace the mysterious mechanism by which Walmart is said to impoverish. By offering “the lowest possible prices all the time, not just during sales”? What precisely is the economic process that accounts for Walmart’s ability to “expel jobs and technology from our own country”? Competition? Offering a product people choose to buy?

“Protecting the home market,” which is what The American Conservative’s writer advocates, is to the detriment of consumers. It forces them to subsidize less efficient local industries, making them the poorer for it. To keep inefficient industries in the lap of luxury, hundreds of others are doomed to shrink or go under.

The writer also froths at the mouth over “the teenage girl in Bangladesh … forced to sew pocket flaps onto 120 pairs of pants per hour for 13 cents per hour.” It sounds dreadful. However, the economic reality is this: Walmart is either offering higher, the same or lower wages than the wages workers were earning before its arrival in Bangladesh. The company would find it hard to attract workers if it was paying less, or the same as other companies. Ergo, Walmart is a benefactor that pays the kind of wage unavailable prior to its arrival. More materially, if the entrepreneur were forced to pay workers in excess of their productivity, he would eventually have to disinvest. What will the Bangladeshi teenage girl do once Walmart departs?

Even the Hollywood “Idiocracy” is hip to the spontaneously synchronized order that is the free market. Just for a change, the feminist lobby is moaning about the movies and its members’ representation therein. By Variety Magazine’s telling, “[Female] characters are still significantly under-represented on the big screen. … The numbers for minority females are even lower. African-American female representation on screen [has] climbed to 14 percent, from 8 percent in 2011, but [is] down from 15 percent in 2012.”

The presence of minorities in movies often signals a two-hour long, oppressive racial lecture. Most movie-goers are no more inclined to turn to “12 Years A Slave” for fun, than they are to subject themselves to Oprah Winfrey and her M.O.P.E. (Most Oppressed Person Ever) “Butler.”

Anti-man moaning notwithstanding, the general public must be on to this, because it is quite clear that Hollywood is giving viewers what they want to see: men in lead roles. If film executives listened to the feminist lobby, rather than to the demands of consumers – the industry would go under.

Alas, most liberals (and that includes “conservatives” aplenty) are foolish enough to lump business with government as an eternal source of disappointment to Americans. Noodles Ron Fournier of National Journal:

“Steadily, over the past four decades, the nation has lost faith in virtually every American institution: banks, schools, colleges, charities, unions, police departments, organized religion, big businesses, small businesses and, of course, politics and government.”

As I type, I consume a plate of seven different fruits topped with nuts. Many of the ingredients on my plate are organic. These used to be exorbitantly priced; out of reach. But as demand for organic produce has grown, production has increased and prices have dropped dramatically.

Each day I give thanks to the businessmen who, against all odds, bring such abundance to market and provide such plenty. There is nothing in my home that comes courtesy of the blessings of bureaucrats. I guarantee that it’s the same in your home.

If you, like Fournier, fail to distinguish the blessings of the private economy from the blight of government – you deserve none of the former and all of the latter.

 

ILANA MERCER is a paleolibertarian writer based in the United States. She pens WND’s longest-standing column, “Return to Reason” and is a Fellow at the Jerusalem Institute for Market Studies. She is a Quarterly Review Contributing Editor. Ilana’s latest book is Into the Cannibal’s Pot: Lessons for America from Post-Apartheid South Africa. Her website is www.IlanaMercer.com. She blogs at www.barelyablog.com

 

 

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Our friends in the North

Posted on October 27, 2014 by leslie

Snow covered pine trees, Wikipedia

 Our friends in the North

Endnotes, November 2014. A vision of Norway – the music of Johann Halvorsen * Remembrance – and the spirit of King Arthur from Elgar * A Bach pilgrimage in Kent.

The Estonian conductor Neeme Jarvi must be one of the busiest recording artists in contemporary classical music. Endnotes has covered many of the fine recordings he has made for the Chandos label – everything from Parry, Wagner and Johann Svendsen, to the symphonies of the 20th-century Swede, Kurt Atterberg. Returning to Scandinavian territory, Jarvi brings the Bergen Philharmonic Orchestra (one of Europe’s emerging ensembles) into the recording studio – in this instance, the Grieghallen in Bergen – for a cornucopia of fascinating, enjoyable, colourful pieces by the Norwegian, Johann Halvorsen (1864-1935). Halvorsen was a true romantic in music, a member of Grieg’s circle, and – in so many ways – a sort of alternative Grieg: offering us a Bryllupsmarsch (Wedding March), a Brudefolget drager forbid (Bridal Procession), Sorte Svaner (Black Swans – although swans are more associated with Sibelius), a Wedding of the Ravens, ancient Norwegian dances, rhapsodies, ‘Fairy Tale Pictures’ (Eventyrbillder, Op. 37), snowy scenes from the Nordic imagination and melancholy melodies of great touching tenderness. Continue reading →

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Replay – Last Orders – The desolation of quiet desperation

Posted on October 27, 2014 by leslie

Bar-P1030319

Replay – Last Orders – The desolation of quiet desperation

Robert Henderson discovers that more may not be less

Last orders, main cast – Michael Caine as Jack Dodds, Tom Courtenay as Vic Tucker, David Hemmings as Lenny, Bob Hoskins as Ray Johnson, Helen Mirren as Amy Dodds, Ray Winstone as Vince Dodds: Director: Fred Schepisi

Last orders (released 2001) is centred around as starry a cast of British actors as you are likely to find in a film, namely, Michael Caine, Tom Courtenay, David Hemmings, Bob Hoskins, Helen Mirren and Ray Winstone. Often when a cast has so many heavyweight actors it just does not work either because the actors’ egos clash or the roles they have are too small for them. Not here. Probably because they are all actors brought up in the English repertory tradition they know how to play as a team.

Vic, Lenny, Ray and Vince are on a sentimental journey to scatter the ashes of their old friend Jack Dodds (Michael Caine) in Margate. The film is notable for being a story with solid English working class roots which does not involve crime, something of a rarity in modern British cinema. Jack was an East End butcher, Ray (Bob Hoskins) is a professional gambler and Jack’s best friend since they fought together in the second world war; Lenny (David Hemmings) is a still belligerent former boxer; Vic (Tom Courtenay) a quiet character who is an undertaker and Jack’s adopted son Vince (Ray Winstone), a car dealer whose real family perished in a wartime bombing.

Counterpoised to the four on the trip is Jack’s wife Amy on a journey of her own. For fifty years she has unfailingly visited her mentally retarded daughter June (Laura Morelli) in a home, while her husband could barely acknowledge the daughter’s existence, a fact which has tainted their marriage. The daughter is so severely handicapped she does not even recognise her mother. At the end of the film Amy decides that 50 years of visiting is enough and sees June one last time. The visit means nothing to her daughter but is part relief and part shame at the desertion for Amy.

On the journey to Margate, Vic, Lenny, Ray and Vince stop at various places which were significant in Jack’s life. They reminisce about Jack and the times they had together. This leads to flashbacks to various times in their lives and in the lives of Jack and his wife Amy. We see the characters in their vigorous hopeful youth before the Second World War and their subsequent messy way through their lives, lives full of disappointments and betrayals as well as friendship, love and loyalty. Whether intentionally or not, the depiction of England over the 60 years or so of the film’s span seems to be come greyer as time passes, the shabbiness and existential exhaustion of the four men as they are now mirrored in the England they live in.

As they travel they drink at various pubs old tensions gradually emerge and arguments break out, but these are superficially smoothed over and Jack’s ashes are scattered amongst a painfully forced sentimentality. By the time they have scattered Jack’s ashes Vic, Lenny, Ray and Vince are all diminished. The journey has not been about Jack but themselves. They have tried to fill their lives with significance but either circumstances or their own weaknesses and limitations have prevented it. The trip has shown them what they are. They are left only with a sense of unfocused regret, a sense that not only has their friend Jack gone but something from themselves.

Little needs to be said about the acting other than it is uniformly first rate with Caine producing one of his very best performances and Helen Mirren wonderfully sympathetic as Jack’s wife.

More than a century and a half ago, the American idealist Henry Thoreau said “Most men lead lives of quiet desperation and go to the grave with the song still in them.” That is as true today as it was when Thoreau said it, although the desperation will have different causes and effects in different times and places. Last Orders is a study in such desperation, of people living lives which are not in their control or even worse potentially within their control but not controlled.

ROBERT HENDERSON is QR’s film critic

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A drama of the everyday

Posted on October 26, 2014 by leslie

Locke

A drama of the everyday

Robert Henderson relishes the return of the real

Film review – Locke, 2014. Locke, main cast – Tom Hardy as Ivan Locke, Ruth Wilson as Katrina (voice), Olivia Colman as Bethan (voice), Andrew Scott as Donal (voice), Ben Daniels as Gareth (voice), Tom Holland as Eddie (voice), Director: Steven Knight

Perhaps the rarest of films are those which make gripping dramas out of ordinary life. This is somewhat surprising because everyday existence does not obviously lend itself to drama. Locke is a film which shows how wrongheaded this idea is as a general rule by producing a truly gripping film from the everyday.

The film depicts a few hours in someone’s life filled with the sort of things which could happen to anyone. Apart from a minute or two at the beginning and end of the film the entire on screen action consists of the eponymous character Ivan Locke (Tom Hardy) in his car driving and making and receiving phone calls about his work and personal life. It is just a hideously bad day at the office with a messy private life looming over it. There is no disaster to keep up the tension, just the net of circumstances remorselessly closing.

Sounds tedious and limited in dramatic scope with precious little opportunity for character development? Don’t you believe it. Locke is in circumstance hell. Everything conspires to put pressure on him. Worst of all he knows in his heart of hearts that he is the author of his misfortunes. He is a foreman in charge of a building site. The next day he is due to supervise a huge concrete “pour”, that is huge amounts of wet concrete poured on site to create a large structure, a very demanding technical task. But Locke will not be at the “pour” because he is headed for a hospital where a woman (Bethan) with whom he had a one-night-stand is about to give birth to his child. To add to these worries his wife Katrina knows nothing of the other woman or impending child and she and their son are expecting him home where Locke and his son are supposed to watch a football match together.

So far so traumatic, but it gets far worse. Locke rings one of his workers at the site to get him to do the last minute checking he should have done and to prepare him to oversee the “concrete pour” in Locke’s place. But the worker Donal has a drink inside him and does not feel confident of taking Locke’s place. Locke rings Bethan to say he is on the way. He speaks to his son and wife saying he will not be home in time for the match. He discovers that a road he needed closed to allow the concrete to be delivered has not been closed. Locke sorts it out. He speaks to his boss who pleads with him to be there to supervise the concrete “pour” and eventually fires him when he realises that Locke will not be at the site to supervise the “pour”.

As Locke drives he also has the stress of breaking the news to his wife that he is going to see a woman who is having his child and tries desperately to explain to his son why he will not be home. After several phone calls his wife decides to throw him out of the house.

Why has he sacrificed so much for a woman he barely knows and a child he has not wanted?  It transpires that Locke was abandoned by his father soon after his birth and did not meet him until he had reached adulthood and with whom he never came to terms when they did meet as adults. This provides the impetus for Locke behaving in this quixotic way because he does he does not want this child to be deserted by its father. His uneasy relationship with his father also provides a hook for Locke to have imaginary conversations with his father while he drives. These are the only weak and sentimental things in the film. They would have been better left out and the circumstances left to speak for themselves. But they are a small blemish.

As the seeming never ending barrage of stress hits Locke he keeps his cool and provides solutions to the practical difficulties he faces but fails with his relationships. By the end of the film Locke has lost his wife, his home and his job but gained a son and a resolution in his mind of his relationship with his father.

The role of Locke is as demanding a part as could be imagined because the character is centre stage throughout and has to carry the film utterly for the rest of the cast, which includes some fine actors, cannot in the nature of things make much impact because they are simply disembodied voices who appear only in short bursts. Hardy carries it off immaculately. In fact, this film is made for him because he has great screen presence and exudes self-possession.

This is a film which shows that a silk purse can be made out of what looks like a sow’s ear when the basic premise is baldly stated – highly recommended.

 ROBERT HENDERSON is QR’s film critic

 

 

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History for Sale

Posted on October 20, 2014 by leslie
Rag and Bone Man

Rag and Bone Man

History for Sale 

Bill Hartley salvages some buried heritage

A community may lose its sense of place and cohesion for various reasons. Economic decline or changes to the built environment are two of the most obvious. Sometimes though it can be brought about by the destruction of history: physical symbols that should connect people to their past.

In West Yorkshire there is a former mill town in what was once known as the Heavy Woollen District. This was far from being the quality end of wool textiles production since the town specialised in shoddy; the recovery of waste cloth which could be stripped and then rewoven. People old enough to remember the Rag and Bone man will have witnessed the first stage in the process of creating cloth made this way.

This business at the bottom of the wool textiles hierarchy helped the town to expand during the nineteenth century leaving former farm buildings marooned among houses built for textiles workers. Inevitably there was a coal mine, spilling its waste down a slope which created a barrier to further expansion. Then in the early 1880s came a peculiar twist in an otherwise standard tale of Victorian industrial expansion. Despite the best efforts of the colliery to wreck local drainage a mineral spring was discovered and bizarrely an entrepreneur decided this would be the ideal location for a spa.

Unsurprisingly New Harrogate was a failure. It would have been difficult for those taking the waters to avert their gaze from a colliery rapidly gobbling up the remaining farm land for waste disposal. Plus shoddy is the only raw material in weaving which stinks and lots of it was stored close by courtesy of the Victorian Rag and Bone men.

Weaving and coal mining attracted religious non conformism and it was this not the eventual disappearance of the two local trades, which delivered a blow to the community. The county is still littered with large structures which remind us of the size of the congregations these places used to attract and the Baptist church opened in the 1870s was no exception. Next to it a school was built to serve the growing population and so two of the focal points for an industrial community were established. Eventually the school moved to new premises but the Baptist church remained, becoming harder to maintain as the congregation shrank.

The Baptists were on the lookout for smaller and more convenient premises which eventually they found. The old church stood empty for a while until the demolition men moved in. Such buildings are rich in what is called architectural salvage: dressed sandstone, aged brick and of course well seasoned pews polished by generations of worshippers. Bits of it are probably in barn conversions and the like all over the county. A shrewd operator can negotiate a decent deal with the demolition people in exchange for all this salvage and several businesses in West Yorkshire operate to this day on what came out of such buildings.

Baptist Chapel

There was a problem though before the Baptists could finally shut up shop: the churchyard next door. It started to be filled during the high water mark of Victoria’s reign when there was the most money to be made from shoddy and coal. This was reflected in the size and grandeur of some funerary monuments. Lofty obelisks topped by huge urns, box tombs of quasi medieval design and crosses made from silvery granite rather than the local gritstone. Crowded in among these were the family plots with large oblong tombstones designed to be filled by the epitaphs of future generations. And making up the numbers so to speak were the humbler memorials of the other ranks, not just the elderly deceased but victims of industrial accidents and those sad records of infant mortality.

The story came to an end in the 1970s when the last interments were made. Recently enough one might think to ensure the churchyard retained its link with the living. Today however it is gone. Even more strangely the site is covered by housing; dull ‘executive’ designs, monuments in their own way to the last building boom before the crash.

The question is how can a churchyard still in use so recently be obliterated? Under the Disused Burial Grounds Act (1884) which was amended in 1981 it is a requirement that notices be displayed where human remains have been buried in the last fifty years, so that relatives of the deceased may object to any change of use. Interestingly the chief ally in getting round this requirement seems to have been our old friend Health & Safety. The church authorities whilst declaring that no-one ever visited the place (vehemently denied by local people) decided that the churchyard needed to be ‘made safe’ in case one of those massive Victorian monuments might suddenly topple over onto a non existent visitor. However they went further and images are to be found on the internet showing how even modest markers were levelled and smashed. It is a pitiful sight which under different circumstances would have been described as vandalism. What it achieved was the elimination of markers; focal points for the relatives of the deceased, so it was hard to say with certainty where a grave was actually situated. In effect those with an emotional link to the churchyard were defeated at the outset. Without posting a notice of intent the law could be it seems be broken and relatives of the deceased presented with a fait accompli. Articles in the local press told poignant stories of grandparent’s whose graves had now gone, local worthies including a former mayor and even war graves, markers commemorating those who had made it home only to die from wounds.

Following a sale to developers the final act was presumably to clear the remains which could then be disposed of like agricultural waste. A church with a mission to look after the spiritual and moral welfare of local people took this dishonest approach to removing an inconvenience and with it the history of a community.

The story ends with a final horrible irony. Destroy a churchyard and the boundaries go too. The developers were less than thorough and missed a bit. According to another report in the local press there are still 43 bodies down there, with houses and gardens on top.

WILLIAM HARTLEY writes from Yorkshire

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Dying for the President’s Deadly Dogma

Posted on October 19, 2014 by leslie
Ebola Virus

Ebola Virus

Dying for the President’s Deadly Dogma

Ebola – Ilana Mercer barracks Obama

Africa, like Trayvon Martin, is extremely important to Barack Obama. “If I had a son, he’d look like Trayvon,” the president said famously about the slain teenager.

The president expressed his fellow-feelings about the continent, during the August 4-6 U.S.-Africa Summit, this year: “I do not see the countries and peoples of Africa as a world apart; I see Africa as a fundamental part of our interconnected world – partners with America,” he said.

With the wealth of the most industrious, generous and gullible taxpayer at his disposal, the president believes that it is his duty, first, to stop the Ebola epidemic in West Africa, when, in fact, the duty of the president of the United States is to those who pay the piper.

America’s governing elites habitually betray their constitutional and fiduciary obligations to their constituents. The head of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, Tom Frieden, and the director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, Anthony Fauci, claim that restricting entry into the U.S. from the Ebola ground zero is without merit “from a public health standpoint,” and will only worsen matters.

For whom, pray tell, Dr. Fauci, for American nurses? Cui bono Dr. Frieden?

Contrary to the Frieden-Fauci-Obama obfuscations, it is quite possible to both stop at-risk individuals from entering the U.S., as well as assist in curbing the contagion in the hot-spot countries of Sierra Leone, Guinea and Liberia. The two are not mutually exclusive. While the U.S. welcomes, on average, 150 daily travelers from West Africa, dozens of infection-free African nations have done the sensible thing to contain the spread of the dread disease. The most economically advanced of them, South Africa, has “restricted entry for all non-citizens traveling from Guinea, Liberia and Sierra Leone.”

OBAMA’S OBFUSCATIONS ABOUT EBOLA

Back in South Africa of the mid 1990s, I trained and volunteered as an HIV/AIDS counselor. My last client, before I decamped to North America, was a lovely gay man who had just been diagnosed HIV positive and whose CD4-cell count was already low. He wept in my arms for hours.

My point: comparing HIV/AIDS to Ebola, as the Frieden-Fauci duo has repeatedly done, amounts to politically correct theatre. For one thing, it is not easy to contract the human immunodeficiency virus. For another, the virus is relatively fragile outside the host. Viral load (or titer) factors into the chances of transmission. It is both easy and cheap to prevent infection. HIV infection rates in Africa have little to do with a lack of resources. Rather, they are associated with unprotected sex irrespective of ample outreach and education.

Ebola is the opposite. It is not difficult to get. The virus doesn’t easily destruct outside the body. And it is hard to stop an Ebola epidemic in West Africa because of the magical thinking that pervades the culture and a lack of infrastructure.

Front men for the CDC and offshoots have obfuscated aplenty about Ebola. However, Dr. Barack “Obola” takes the cake. The president has managed to dispense Ebola prescriptions in direct contradiction to even the CDC’s breezy platitudes: “You cannot get it through casual contact like sitting next to someone on a bus. … Ebola is not spread through the air like the flu. … You cannot get it from another person until they start showing symptoms of the disease, like fever. … You cannot get it from someone who’s asymptomatic.”

In fact, “casual transmission in close quarters, in public spaces is quite possible.” Spending a protracted time within three feet of an infected person is not without risk. Flecks of “viremic” spittle sprayed in your direction from a coughing or animated interlocutor on a bus ride could result in transmission.

CONSPIRACY OR JUST GOVERNMENT SOP?

Be it for Jihad or germs, the government prohibits what I’ve termed rational profiling. As to Jihad, airport personnel screen everybody alike, grandma from Nebraska and Abdullah from Mecca. As to germs, the CDC advises screening for symptoms of the Ebola disease. If a traveler is “asymptomatic,” CDC guidelines, given with government imprimatur, prohibit the detention or quarantine of nationals or residents from the “hot zone” countries.

All this is in the service of the deadly dogma of political correctness.

As a Liberian living in the devastated capital of Monrovia, Patient Zero (Thomas Eric Duncan), who brought Ebola to the U.S., posed a grave risk to Americans – as do all residents and nationals of countries at the epicenter of the outbreak.

Writing for the Canadian Centre for Research on Globalization, Dr. Jason Kissner hypothesized that the U.S. government refused to isolate Duncan on the basis of his Liberian and Monrovian origins, because it doesn’t want Americans to associate country of origin with an Ebola risk factor, as this could “conceivably completely destroy the One Party State’s immigration reform goals – especially given psychological associations with mystery viruses and other illnesses believed to have arrived from south of the border.”

While I am no conspiracy theorist – never have been – the theory proffered by Kissner seems plausible, if not by design at least by default. Reflexively if not intentionally, government operatives work to retain their positions and increase their sphere of influence. To that end, justifying their mission – open borders and multiculturalism, always – is necessary at all costs.

GRATITUDE BREEDS CONTEMPT

The index patient aforementioned received exorbitantly expensive, tax-funded care from the dedicated healthcare providers of Dallas’ Presbyterian Hospital, two of whom are fighting for their lives. Nevertheless, the family of the late Mr. Duncan has accused his benefactors of racism. Had he survived, Duncan’s own government, promised the Liberian ambassador to the U.S, intended to sue him for lying to Liberian authorities about his exposure to Ebola on a perfunctory screening questionnaire.

Those of us who hail from Africa proper know how conservative Africans truly are. Most Africans would find American moral relativism repugnant. Ambassador Jeremiah Sulunteh has condemned Duncan’s deception. “Our hearts are broken to witness this reckless behavior on the part of Duncan,” lamented the Liberian diplomat, who had nothing but praise for “a country that has been there for Liberia all the way.”

Let’s see, in the capital Monrovia, American marines are mounting a heroic response to the Ebola outbreak. Stateside, in Maryland, our scientists are developing a vaccine. The Brits will soon land in Sierra Leone with men and medical materiel of their own. Germany, too, is galvanizing its formidable resources. Founded by French physicians, Doctors Without Borders is second to none in alleviating Third World misery.

Yes, Ebola will be defeated by a munificent West. That’s whom Africans must thank.

Come to think of it, Obama owes a lot to the same, much-maligned “system.” From financial aid (for foreign students) to an affirmative-action placement in Harvard Law School, Barry Soetoro* is a beneficiary of America’s largesse. Obama didn’t build what he has; he got it by grant of government privilege.

But like the family of Thomas Eric Duncan, Barack Obama repeatedly demonstrates that gratitude breeds contempt.

*EDITOR’S NOTE: Lolo Soetoro was Barack Obama’s sometime step-father

October 17, 2014

ILANA MERCER is a paleolibertarian writer based in the United States. She pens WND’s longest-standing column, “Return to Reason” and is a Fellow at the Jerusalem Institute for Market Studies. She is a Quarterly Review Contributing Editor. Ilana’s latest book is Into the Cannibal’s Pot: Lessons for America from Post-Apartheid South Africa. Her website is www.IlanaMercer.com. She blogs at www.barelyablog.com

 

 

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