At Home with the Farooks

Posted on December 11, 2015 by leslie
Syed Rizwan Farook & Tashfeen Malik

Syed Rizwan Farook & Tashfeen (Malik) Farook

At Home with the Farooks

Ilana Mercer endorses The Trump’s modest proposal

Right after the Murder-by-Islamist of the San Bernardino 14 on Dec. 2, immigration lawyers peppered the press with praise for America’s fiancé K-1 visa program. This immigration program is “robust” came the message from the lobbyists.

Onto this rickety scaffolding stepped the attorneys for The Fockers, I mean the Farooks, the family that spawned the assassins. The two put on a masterful display, demanding what the American political class had authorized them to demand: attach no culpability to Islam. Give “the alleged shooters” the benefit given to victims of religious bullying.

The Media-Congressional complex was poised to make suitably weepy statements and move on. Death by Jihadis was just one of those things the little people would have to endure in “a free society.”

This, too, was the attitude of the asses warming the anchor’s chair in TV newsrooms. We’ll show the grief; we’ll slobber suitably with the aggrieved, we’ll lead with the most emotional clichés about the dearly departed, and on we’ll go to the next news story. Any change in the status quo would be contrary to “our values.”

Such is life: C’est la vie, so long as it doesn’t happen to me.

In effect, the politicians committed to do nothing to reduce the exposure of America to the source of death. No domestic policy changes in the homeland have been floated. Promises aplenty, however, are being made to “carpet bomb” faraway lands as the solution to the “problem” in our land.

Enter Donald Trump.

THE POLITICAL CALCULUS OF COLLATERAL DAMAGE

Mr. Trump appears genuinely outraged by this crass and cruel political calculus. Trump was not going along with the notions implicit in the strategies proposed by the administration and the colluding political duopoly. These are that we trade a few American lives, every so often, in return for getting to boast about America’s commitment to “freedom,” our “open society,” all the intangible nostrums Rome-on-the-Potomac instructs us to celebrate.

Mr. Trump was not OK with the idea that mass murder, every now and then, was the price of “our tolerance.”

Trump’s visceral response seems odd to the political class and their media barnacles because it’s the reaction of a regular, clear-thinking individual who has yet to be housebroken by Washington.

If you’re a Jihadi who’s travelled to train abroad—American, permanent resident or anything else—“you are never-ever coming back into the US,” vowed Trump. Having suggested the same a few months back (“A Modest Libertarian Proposal: Keep Jihadis OUT, Not IN”), I would venture that immigration is a political grant of privilege; there is no natural right to immigrate into the U.S., not least if you are fixing to kill your co-workers.

Later, Trump followed up with a more radical statement; radical from a political perspective. He “called for a total and complete shutdown of Muslims entering the United States until our country’s representatives can figure out what is going on”:

According to Pew Research, among others, there is great hatred towards Americans by large segments of the Muslim population. Most recently, a poll from the Center for Security Policy released data showing “25% of those polled agreed that violence against Americans here in the United States is justified as a part of the global jihad” and 51% of those polled, “agreed that Muslims in America should have the choice of being governed according to Shariah.”

“Without looking at the various polling data,” stated Mr. Trump, “it is obvious to anybody the hatred is beyond comprehension. Where this hatred comes from and why we will have to determine. Until we are able to determine and understand this problem and the dangerous threat it poses, our country cannot be the victims of horrendous attacks by people that believe only in Jihad, and have no sense of reason or respect for human life.”

SQUANDERING versus CONSERVING SCARCE RESOURCES

To grasp why Trump would counsel something so practical, yet so politically improper, one has to understand Trump the businessman.

Good businessmen are programmed differently than politicians. As a tremendously gifted entrepreneur, Trump is averse to squandering scarce resources, money or manpower.

By contrast, politicians do not understand the natural economic reality of scarcity. They control the production of money for their promiscuous purposes and they exert power over millions of interchangeable people in their territorial jurisdiction.

To a politician, 14 lives in 322 million is a small price to pay for “our freedoms.” Trump’s political rivals look at the price exacted by Syed Farouk and his bride in the aggregate. Fourteen dead is not a steep price to pay for unfettered immigration from Islamic countries, peddled politically as “our values,” “our tolerance,” “our greatness.” This callous calculus is second nature to politicians like Lindsey Graham or Darth Vader Cheney.

Not to Trump. “This must stop. We can’t have this,” he roared.

See, statistics are funny things. Insignificant probabilities, in this case an attack on each one of us, are immaterial unless they happen to YOU or ME. It is this calculus that politicians peddle. They rely on the fact that we’ll adopt their sloganeering because each one of us is unlikely to die.

But to do nothing stateside, as Trump’s rivals imply, is to accept that lives lost are, in the grand scheme, insignificant.

The opposite is true for Trump. Taking losses offends his sensibilities. Trump, the consummate businessman, abhors and is angered by the preventable squandering of scarce assets: American lives. (Yes, Trump is an American Firster.) The death of a few Americans pains Mr. Trump, something that cannot be said about Obama, Hillary, Bernie or any of the insider GOPers.

How can you tell? The politicians—Rubio, Rayan—offer up platitudes; political niceties to excite the asses in the anchor’s chair. They propose nothing to stop the slaughter, stateside. Instead, they demand a leap of faith—that you believe dropping “daisy cutters” in the Middle East will reduce the danger to Americans at home.

The instincts of private enterprise and politics; never the twain shall meet. Private-enterprise driven considerations are aimed at conserving, not squandering, scarce resources. If it loses an asset, the Trump Organization hurts.

IN POLITICS, NOTHING SUCCEEDS LIKE FAILURE

The second thing a businessman must do—a trait so obviously ingrained in Trump—is solve “The Problem.” In Trump’s universe, solving problems is ineluctably tied to the greater goals of realizing profits and growing the organization. (“Making America Great.”)

The opposite is true in politics. You don’t solve problems; you let them fester. Politically, problems are not all bad. Plunge the people into crisis, and they are likelier to fall prey to state schemes.

Politicians accrue power over people in crisis. “War is the health of the State,” said a good progressive, Randolph Bourne (1918). “Never let a serious crisis go to waste,” said a bad progressive, Rahm Emanuel. Both men understood the dynamics of state control. The first warned against it; the second capitalized on it.

Trump talks about taking practical, focused steps to reduce the murder- by- Islamist of Americans in the homeland.

The politicians speak of abstractions; upholding our values, blah, blah—gibberish Trump is genetically incapable of uttering. For the “Our Values” Speak is meant to addle the mind; shame individuals into believing they are evil if they don’t adopt the liberal pluralist faith put forward by all those who ride at the king’s bridle, Republican and Democrat.

Ilana Mercer is a paleolibertarian writer, based in the U.S.  She pens WND’s longest-standing, exclusive paleolibertarian column, “Return to Reason.” She is a fellow at the Jerusalem Institute for Market Studies. Her 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   Follow her on Twitter:  https://twitter.com/IlanaMercer “Friend” her on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/ilanamercer.libertarian

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Radicalism’s Glittering Allure

Posted on December 8, 2015 by leslie

Radicalism’s Glittering Allure

Peter King resumes his exegesis of ‘real’ conservatism

There is an obvious allure to radicalism. It all seems so straightforward. We can identify what is wrong, we strongly oppose it, and we seek to bring it down. We want a remedy for this all-too-apparent problem. No more argument is necessary. All we have to do is to make the change.

And we claim the moral high ground: we are the ones being active and purposeful. We have a cause and we are acting for a reason. Justice is on our side: the faults in the system are all too apparent and the future, unlike the sullied present, can be pictured without blemish. We are, to coin a phrase, ‘going forwards’ as moral beings doing the right thing.

To be radical means being both fundamental and extreme. This is a necessary part of radicalism and indeed it is part of why being radical is so celebrated. We are aiming for the complete or fundamental solution. Our efforts are not half-hearted and tempered by circumstance. No half measures will do: this is what to be radical means: to get to the very core of the issue. There is then an imperative sense here. We need a far-reaching solution and there is no moral purpose in holding back. Once we have identified the problem we must go right to the very end, to where the logic of our argument leads. Achieving our virtuous ends matters more than any means. We want to deal thoroughly with the problem rather than put anything off.

Radicals are not satisfied with just getting by. They do not want a band-aid solution, but a complete cure. Radicals want it all. They want, and expect, to win.

So it is obvious why radicalism has such an appeal, and it is no surprise that the leadership of the Conservative party has rejected the idea that the role of the party is simply to be the protectors of the past. The Conservatives claim that they wish to take the country as it is. But by this they mean that they want to be modern and progressive and acknowledge that politics is a concern for change rather than stability. They are forward-looking and wish to create a new society, even if the rhetoric of Cameron’s ‘Big Society’ was somewhat short-lived. The party has sought to compete for the same constituency as the parties of the left, as can be seen by their promotion of gay marriage, and the suggestion that mothers should be working rather than at home looking after the children.

These policies have inevitably created hostility within the natural constituency of the Conservative party. This has led to a considerable decline in party membership and to defections to the United Kingdom Independence Party. There is now an emerging constituency to the right of the mainstream Conservative party. Yet these opponents of the Conservative leadership, be they still within the party or without, also wish to wear the badge of radicalism. They too wish to fundamentally change Britain, whether by an end to mass immigration or the exit of the UK from the European Union. Of course, instead of looking to a better future we might suggest that these more extreme conservatives wish to return to a better past. So they wish to end the multicultural society that they argue has been imposed on us by a metropolitan elite and the European Union. They wish to end immigration and repatriate those who are not of British or European descent. They claim that this is ‘real’ conservatism, but their language is often extreme and full of demands, calling for things to be stopped, ended, or torn down. Like radicals on the left, they present politics in simple oppositional terms and present straightforward and clear proposals for change, in the belief that no right-minded person could possibly object to them.

Radicalism, by its very nature, tends towards the extreme position. There is a natural tendency for radicals to congregate together. However, the consequence of this is that their views are only ever confirmed and this process of confirmation leads to the development of ever more extreme positions, where the truth becomes blindingly obvious and no alternative is tenable. Thus the future becomes quite clear and the route to it simple and evident to all.

But just because something appears straightforward does not mean that it is readily attainable. Indeed, if we seek to change the world in a fundamental manner, we will necessarily be taking risks both in terms of where we are going and how we will get there. If we pull something apart, can we really be confident that we can put it back together and make it work again?

Yet while we see radicalism as far-reaching and decisive in its impact, we need make very little effort to be radical. We can readily point to the problems of the present and the past. Their faults are all too clear to us. We can put forward simple slogans and claims that the future, because it is as yet unsullied, will be better. We can rely on a natural optimism, and the desire that things can and will be better. We can offer a total answer, free from compromise, and this will have a ready appeal compared to the muddied, partial solutions of those dependent on the past.

The problem, however, is that conservatism is a disposition that takes the past very seriously. Conservatism is usually taken to mean reliance on the tried and trusted, on tradition and a scepticism about rationalism and theoretical speculation. It is a backwards-looking ideology, which stands for what currently exists and against utopianism. It relies on experience to justify action, and so is wary of anything that appears to be too easy. So while radicalism doubtless has an appeal, we can question in what manner it is compatible with conservatism.

Lip service is paid in Conservative circles to such thinkers as Edmund Burke and Michael Oakeshott. But are these luminaries actually being listened to? Indeed what would it mean for a Conservative politician to follow Burke? Conservatives, if they are to take seriously the name by which they are called, should accept that we are not here to create change, but to pass on to the next generation what has been left to them by their predecessors. We are born out of a particular tradition and it is our responsibility to pass that tradition on. Society owes us nothing, but we owe it everything.

If we are to take seriously Burke’s dictum that society consists of the living, the dead and the as yet unborn, we must recognise our place as intermediaries who are to transmit the wisdom of our predecessors to our successors. It is a very modern conceit to believe that the world, and everything in it, is a resource for us to use in the here and now. The older, the traditional, view is that we merely hold it in trust, on a temporary lease before it is handed on to others.

PETER KING is Reader in Social Thought at De Montfort University. His most recent books are Keeping Things Close: An Essay on the Conservative Disposition and Here and Now: Some Thoughts on the World and How We Find it, both published by Arktos in 2015

*See more of BOB BARRON’S art work at http://bob-barron.com

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ENDNOTES, 2nd December 2015

Posted on December 6, 2015 by leslie
Immortality, rss.ayosearch.com

Immortality, rss.ayosearch.com

ENDNOTES, 2nd December 2015

In this edition: BBC Symphony Orchestra in Gallic mood at the Barbican * Edward Gardner conducts Janacek * Rare Grieg piano music from Somm Records

Only a few days after the appalling terrorist outrage in Paris, the BBC Symphony Orchestra took to the platform at the Barbican to perform a concert of Gallic music (a programme which had been scheduled long before the gunmen ran amok in the French capital). Clearly, many London concertgoers had decided to stay at home in the aftermath of the Paris attacks, as the Barbican seemed to be only half-full. Normally, a programme which included the Berlioz Symphonie Fantastique – not to mention Jean-Efflam Bavouzet performing Ravel – would have attracted a much larger audience, but what the hall lacked in numbers and atmosphere, the orchestra made up in its thoughtful and compelling performances.

Needless to say, the artists – which included a relative newcomer to British concert platforms, conductor Pascal Rophé* (he replaced an indisposed Francois Xavier-Roth) – dedicated the evening to the victims of the Paris attacks, a dedication which drew warm applause from the audience. I hope that the Radio 3 audience that night included many French listeners, enjoying the inspiring music of their country in an immaculate realisation by one of Britain’s greatest orchestras.

A work by Pierre Boulez had originally been programmed, but this was replaced by César Franck’s 1882 symphonic poem, Le chausseur maudit (‘The Accursed Huntsman’) – a quarter-of-an-hour-long curtain-raiser full of late-romantic forest murmurs and a growing sense of diabolic doom. Franck was born in Liège, a city whose Belgian status belies a French cultural hegemony – so it is perhaps right to see Franck as a French composer. And yet his music does have a Germanic drive to it, rather like the works of Vincent D’Indy, that French Wagnerian. However, the next composer on the BBC SO’s menu was Maurice Ravel; a deeply private, inscrutable, fastidious, almost classical figure transported to the 20th-century, and as profoundly French as it is possible to be. Franck’s 19th-century forests gave way to the light and shade of Ravel’s modern impressionism – in this concert, the Piano Concerto for the Left Hand (1929-30), written for Paul Wittgenstein, brother of the philosopher, Ludwig.

I have never encountered even a semi half-hearted review of anything undertaken by Jean-Efflam Bavouzet, and it is little wonder – considering this artist’s total self-assurance and possession of the stage; his astonishing ability to bring finer shades even to the fine shading of Ravel; and the sense that he brings to his performance – even with a large orchestra – of being within the fibres and fabric of a chamber group. The BBC Symphony Orchestra has played this concerto many times, but its low, deep, formless, almost grumbling opening from the deeper register of the orchestra has seldom sounded so mysterious; with the more “open air”, exultant passages which follow achieving a great sonority. The work’s harder edges – its post-World War One “angles” and shapes, and occasional coldness were all summoned and highlighted in this excellent performance. After the interval (and there was very little of the usual bustle in the bars, in fact, everything was very subdued indeed) the ensemble delivered a remarkable reading of the Symphonie Fantastique by Berlioz, the French romantic who took Beethoven’s concept of programme, scene-setting music and added huge brush strokes and grand gestures to it. This five-movement symphony – a love-sick wandering through French fields to a ballroom; back to a countryside menaced by approaching thunder; and then to a terrifying execution at a scaffold – followed for good measure by a witches’ Sabbath – dates from 1830, with revisions made a year later, and once again, in 1845. For such a pre-Wagnerian work, the Symphonie Fantastique sounds as though it belongs to much later in the century.

Pascal Rophé’s conducting style was most interesting: an intense direction of events (as if conducting one of the contemporary music ensembles in which he first made his name), but without overblown or over-dramatic arm gestures, and yet conveying much through his clearly technical mode of operation. But this did not mean that there was restraint all the way through – far from it, in the terrifying, braying brass accompanying the March to the Scaffold, with percussion that thudded through this dream of imminent death; and then the shrieking, almost atonal moments in the nightmare torrents and torments of the finale.

Hector Berlioz

Hector Berlioz

The acoustic of the Barbican Hall is such that the music is revealed very much in its bare bones – as if a piercing light is shining on each section of the orchestra. The sound is not exactly dry, but in sharp relief – and it seemed, at least in the first movement, that the clear, unfussy, astringent approach to the Symphonie took the BBC Symphony Orchestra close to the performance style of the Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment or the London Classical Players, especially in the economy and “attack” of the violins and violas.

One of the BBC Symphony Orchestra’s regular conductors is Edward Gardner, an artist of what might be called the younger generation, but at the age of 41, already a figure of great musical authority and international achievement. On a recent recording for the Chandos label (CHSA 5156), Mr. Gardner raises his baton at the Grieghallen, Bergen, Norway – eliciting playing of pinpoint accuracy and polish from the players from the city’s Philharmonic Orchestra in the music of Leos Janacek (1854-1928). Works such as Jealousy, the Violin Concerto (The Wandering of a Little Soul), The Ballad of Blanik make this a CD rich in central-European flavour. But the greatest piece, by far, on the collection is the tense symphonic poem, Taras Bulba, based on a tale by Gogol about the heroism of a legendary Russian warrior as he fights to liberate his ancient lands (the steppes of the Ukraine) from the Poles. A dim light of legend and melancholy permeates the opening of the work, the Chandos sound-engineers capturing the yearning woodwind phrases and the gloom-laden organ passage which floats above and “behind” the orchestra – adding to the feel of ancient prophecy and landscape.

Finally, folklore is very much celebrated in a remarkable new CD from Somm (CD 0154), a re-mastering of an RCA record from 1978 in which the composer and pianist, John McCabe (who passed away this year – a great loss to music) performs rare works by Grieg. His Stimmungen (Moods) opens the collection, and this seven-piece pot-pourri includes a Studie (Hommage a Chopin), Folk Tune from Valders, and The Mountaineer’s Song. Norwegian Peasant Dances, Op. 72 follow – the soloist bringing to life scenes from an idealised world: spring dances, bridal marches, a tune for a goat-horn, a Bridal Procession for Goblins, and a Tune from the Fairy Hill. Perhaps McCabe’s inner sensitivity as a composer has worked a magic here: he certainly brings tenderness (but never over-romanticism) to Grieg’s dreams of a world beyond our own. A splendid tribute to John McCabe and something of a coup for Somm in finding and presenting this evergreen recording made nearly 40 years ago. With its Nordic feeling, I have no hesitation in recommending the CD as an ideal present for – should I say, yule?

STUART MILLSON is Classical Music Editor of The Quarterly Review

*Pascal Rophé studied at the Paris Conservatoire and won second prize at the 1988 Besancon competition for conductors. He worked with Pierre Boulez, and has conducted a number of orchestras worldwide, including the Philharmonic forces of Radio France, the NHK Orchestra in Japan, the BBC National Orchestra of Wales and the Norwegian Radio Symphony Orchestra

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Panama City

Posted on December 6, 2015 by leslie
image.anywherepanama.com

image.anywherepanama.com

Panama City

Bill Hartley savours the sights

Panama City is all about business and that business can be seen out in the bay as the queue of ships moves towards the canal. By nine in the morning those on the Pacific side of the isthmus have had their turn. As the last ship leaves the lock at Miraflores and joins the slow procession shepherded by tugs across the man made lake beyond, so ships from the Atlantic appear and the traffic changes direction. This goes on unceasingly around the clock.

Parallel to this marvel of civil engineering a new canal is being constructed. Of course it is all done with heavy machinery these days. The heroic age of construction involving a cast of thousands is long gone. The new canal is designed to take monster container ships perhaps twice the size of those which can navigate the existing canal. Observing the process makes one aware of the challenge of squeezing modern ships into locks built in the 1900s. For many ships the locks are a tight fit. So tight that the skill of a pilot cannot be relied upon to keep a vessel on the straight and narrow as it proceeds. Instead the ship is attached by cables to railway locomotives known as mules which run on tracks flanking the locks. These are not to provide power, the locomotives are tethered to a ship by cables and their job is to keep these taut and the vessel on a straight course, preserving those few feet of clearance on either side.

There has been talk about a rival to the canal which would involve ships crossing Lake Nicaragua. This is a Chinese backed scheme but many in the financial press believe it will never happen. The plan raises environmental concerns, notably the risk of exposing Nicaragua and indeed Central America’s largest source of fresh water to the risk of oil spillages. Last month the Miami Herald reported that the start of construction work had been put back again to 2016.

Like the San Tome mine in Joseph Conrad’s novel Nostromo set in a mythical Central American republic, the lights from the canal can be seen from the city signalling its overarching role in the economic life of this small country. Panama City is dominated by skyscrapers housing banks many of which you will probably never have heard of; their presence proclaimed via logos on the buildings. There is the sense of a city which has grown too fast and is near to outstripping the infrastructure. The towering buildings make for an impressive city scape but down at street level are poorly maintained roads and pavements. Often power is carried overhead and jerry-rigged with great loops of cabling left dangling above drains with missing covers. In fairness Panama City is not all like this but rush hour gridlocking suggests that the authorities should have given more thought to the horizontal whilst allowing so much vertical growth. For the pedestrian there is a subway system and given the quite ferocious levels of humidity this must be particularly welcome.

There is a lot to like about Panama City, notably the people. Because the place isn’t strong on tourism, visitors get little hassle even in the locations where there are souvenir shops. Whilst Panama City isn’t a place for fine dining there are many small cafés and restaurants where prices are modest. Indeed it has been listed as one of the world’s cheaper capital cities. It would though be unwise for the visitor to stray too far from the city centre. Even in bright sunshine the closest barrio is a depressing and sinister place, where passing cars are viewed from balconies by expressionless faces. It is a location where taxi drivers, always a good barometer of public safety, will not go.

A flavour of this can be found in the city centre. Within a single block of my hotel I encountered five armed guards. Every bank has them, frisking customers with metal detectors before they are allowed to enter. It would seem that in Panama criminals still resort to the low tech method of bank robbery. The more upmarket shopping malls also use armed guards. Given the traffic congestion rapid reaction policing is done by cops on trail bikes. The pillion man being the one with the sub machine gun.

Beneath the sophisticated veneer of a modern city the local press shows other forces are still at work. Newspaper small ads are full of individuals promising to use their soothsaying powers to attract great wealth. To emphasise this many advertisements are illustrated with dollar bills. Shrewdly the Panamanians chose to adopt the US dollar to maintain financial stability. There is a local currency running parallel to the dollar but it generally turns up only in small change. Separate from the soothsayers are those practising a different sort of necromancy involving Indian spirit guides. Despite Panama being a long way from the American West these shamans are always illustrated by men in full head dress as if they belonged in a John Ford western. In Panama day dreams about money aren’t restricted to lottery wins, there are inhabitants of the supernatural there to help you: for a fee of course.

Certainly money would come in useful to avoid being a patient in one of the public hospitals. My taxi driver reported that they are places to be avoided, where a patient may be told to return when a new batch of hypodermic needles is available. This was echoed by my Mexican hotel manager who added an even more ominous concern, being of the opinion that in Panama they can run up any kind of certificate of qualification, raising the risk, he suggested, that you might be treated by the local equivalent of Dr Nick from The Simpson’s.

The Americans were running the canal up to 1999. Part of the concession they got from the Panamanians was a land corridor across the isthmus. You can cross an invisible line just outside the city and this is the point where the traveller would once have entered the Canal Zone and US territory. Since 1999 it has been locally run and the business world believes the Panamanians do a good job. The cost to a shipping line may seem considerable (between $50,000 and $250,00 for a container ship) but still a lot cheaper in time and money to sail from say Shanghai to Tilbury via that route, rather than round South America.

The Panamanians try to talk up the country as a tourist destination but it has its limitations. For example no effort has been made to tidy up the scrap of beach on the edge of the city, which would seem the obvious thing to do. For the time being at least neighbouring Costa Rica is going to continue to get most of the tourists, though Panama also has a good sized chunk of rain forest. Really though the thing to see is that wonder of the modern world just outside town: the relentless procession of ships transiting the isthmus from ocean to ocean.

Panama Canal construction. www.businessinsider.com

Panama Canal construction. www.businessinsider.com

BILL HARTLEY is a freelance writer from Yorkshire

                                                                  

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Lost in France

Posted on December 6, 2015 by leslie
Static.dnaindia.com

Static.dnaindia.com

Lost in France

Ilana Mercer lambasts the Hexagon’s Keystone Cops

“HEY, it’s me, Salah Abdeslam. Did you see the attacks across Paris? Bismillah, may we have many more like them. Brothers Brahim Abdeslam, Abdelhamid Abaaoud, my self and others pulled it off. I’m still in Paris. I need a ride back to Brussels. Come get me.”

After executing 130 people in Paris, and maiming many more, Abdeslam called his compadres in Belgium to ask for a lift home. I can’t vouch for the precise wording of the telephonic exchange between Salah Abdeslam and his contacts in Belgium. But the call took place, as BBC News reported. And it must have been quite a relaxed one, circumstances considered.

Still on the lam, Abdeslam knows he has nothing to fear. The French authorities were on heightened alert. The Kufar’s telephones had all been tapped. Yet Salah’s faith in the French fools was unshaken for a reason.

Without court orders, as The Guardian tells it, François Hollande’s socialist government taps phones and emails, hacks computers, installs “secret cameras and recording devices in private homes”; infects French Internet and phone service providers with “complex algorithms” designed to “alert the authorities to suspicious behavior.”

Yet it all—the French Surveillance State—amounts to naught.

Like gun laws, spy laws oppress only law-abiding, harmless individuals.

As in all western democracies, France’s Big Brother surveillance apparatus is as useless as it is oppressive.

France’s “protectors” knew nothing of the conversations taking place under their noses.

Duly, Marine Le Pen would be summoned to appear in Court for “inciting religious hatred against Muslims,” in October. Leader Le Pen, who loves her countrymen and would never harm them, was in court for saying “France for the French.”

Marine le Pen

Marine Le Pen

Yes, Salah knew all too well—still knows—that offensive speech French authorities would diligently prosecute, all the more so when uttered by a “white supremacist.” But a suspicious looking supremacist like himself, hell bent on killing his hosts, would not so much as be stopped for an inquisitive chat.

Not on returning from one of many round trips to Syria and back, to Turkey and back, to Morocco and back. And not on returning to the scene of the crime.

Megyn Kelly took up an entire segment of her Fox News extravaganza to kibitz about the un-Islamic lifestyle of the architect of the attacks. OMG! Abdelhamid Abaaoud had been swilling whiskey in Paris’ Saint-Denis district, in contravention of Islamic law, moaned Imam Kelly.

The real “breaking news” story Kelly missed.

Abaaoud was thus relaxing and celebrating a day after the successful attacks.

Shortly after the attacks, Abaaoud had managed to return undisturbed to the scene of the crime to mill about among the moronic French gendarmes and survey his handiwork with them.

The “breaking news” here, Ms. Kelly, is the criminally negligent, worse-than-shoddy French police work.

Where were the roadblocks? Where was the rational profiling at the roadblocks? Where was the basic police procedure that used to see cops stop and politely question loiterers at a crime scene?

Nowhere!

Thus did Paris’ chief gendarme order the city’s peaceful Jews to cancel public Hanukkah celebrations. Better that, than to stop a North-African looking chap for a chat.

Jews may be removing themselves from Paris’ Public Square, but not Jihadis. Rest assured: with the help of their political and constabulary enablers, Jihadis are already surveying the city for more soft targets, just like the Parisian headquarters of Charlie Hebdo, a satirical newspaper, whose writers were exterminated in January.

France is no civilized outpost; it is paradise on earth for martyrs; it’s hell on earth for their dhimmis.

Why, just the other day a Jewish teacher was stabbed in Marseilles by purported ISIS supporters. And a local businessman was beheaded near the city of Grenoble. These French Salafists brazenly impaled the poor man’s severed head on a fence.

Other than the U.S. Transportation Security Administration, nobody employs more un-vetted Muslims than the French. According to The Australian, at least “57 workers with access to runways and aircraft were on [a French] intelligence watchlist as potential Islamist extremists.”

One of the assailants at Bataclan, Omar Ismail Mostefai—mercifully, he blew himself to smithereens likely because he knew the gendarmes would take pity on him and slow down his journey to Gehenna—was fingered back “in 2010 as a suspected Islamic radical. Since then, Mostefai appears to have been able to travel to Syria; he may have also spent time in Algeria.”

Another Bataclan alumnus, Samy Amimour, a 28-year-old Frenchman, also partook in France’s generous, frequent-flyer terrorist tours. He scuttled to commune with ISIS in Syria without being kept out of France, or deported for good to ISIS Land.

A BBC News headline asked: “Paris attacks: Is bashing Belgium justified?”

An unqualified yes is the answer—provided blame is apportioned between France, Germany, The Netherlands and other European countries, which all keep the revolving door in operation, so that their Islamist youngsters may circumambulate from Europe to ISIS Land and back again.

When the butcher aforementioned, Brahim Abdeslam, commenced his pilgrimage to Syria, the Turks were sharp enough and responsible to send him packing back to Brussels, where he was wanted, but not a Wanted Man.

The best I kept for last: Salah Abdeslam was stopped by police “in his car,” not once, but “three times in the hours following the attacks, on the last occasion near the Belgian border” (BBC News). Abdeslam and two fellow travelers were waved by, presumably because they did not resemble Marine Le Pen.

The little man in charge of France responded in Syria to the presence of ISIS in France. Hollande’s lunacy excited neoconservatives stateside no end. That’s because the inmates are running the American and European asylum, where The People are the real refugees.

Patriots who promise no more than to make the West safe for its people again; the gilded traitor elite threatens with court orders.

Marine Le Pen’s Front National, the Freedom Party of Austria, and Geert Wilders’ Party for Freedom (to be joined, indubitably, by Donald Trump) are outsiders in their homelands. But in France, it’s business as usual for the barbarians.

Ilana Mercer is a paleolibertarian writer, based in the U.S. She pens WND’s longest-standing, exclusive paleolibertarian column, “Return to Reason.” She is a fellow at the Jerusalem Institute for Market Studies. Her 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   Follow her on Twitter:  https://twitter.com/IlanaMercer “Friend” her on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/ilanamercer.libertarian

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The Peacock at Rowsley

Posted on December 2, 2015 by leslie

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The Peacock at Rowsley

First impressions of this small boutique hotel in Rowsley, near Bakewell in the Peak District, are very favourable. Staff welcome one into a space that is at once cosy and smart; both the greeting and the rooms make one feel relaxed and at home. The latter are not huge (and our bathroom really was quite on the tiny side – but smart nevertheless, with marble tiles and a shower over the bath) but are immaculately clean and combine quirky touches both modern and old. In our room we found plenty of comfortable chairs – again a combination of traditional armchairs and more modern pieces (a pink velvet chair looking as it was out of the 1950s); whilst a beautiful old desk calls to one to sit down and write letters, and an antique oak Jacobean-style wardrobe lends further interest to the room. I also rather loved the old radiator and original leaded windows – behind, of course, a second layer of glass to keep out the noise from the road (and probably obligatory for ‘health-and-safety’ reasons). Lamps lend a warm glow to the room and a pot of orchids a touch of elegance. The four-postered bed is huge, high and extremely comfortable, and covered in soft and flawless cotton. Another feature of interest was the old iron fireplace – it was just a shame that the small pile of logs wasn’t blazing away! We were pleased that there was only one moderate-sized TV screen, and that not, hurrah – for once, dominating the room.

We ate dinner in the bar, seated in a little alcove with the low copper surface of the glorious old-fashioned bar behind my husband and tiles of a peacock behind Tristan and myself on the bench; an original stone wall to our right and rather gorgeous oak panelling to the left. Lamps are complemented by discreet and warm spotlighting; paintings hang on the walls and old furniture abounds. I was particularly impressed by the ancient leather wine carrier hanging from a hook behind my husband. On the other side of the room was a log fire next to another beautiful item of furniture – an antique oak settle. We looked round the bar the next morning in daylight and were even more impressed than we had been the previous might – a beautifully carved antique wooden settle; the lovely rounded, enveloping shape of the bar; an antique cock fighter judge’s chair (impressive, even if one does disapprove of its original use) – and that beautiful, glowing copper top! Surely the most splendid bar I have ever seen.

The Peacock Bar

The Peacock Bar

We started dinner with cocktails, for which The Peacock has developed something of a reputation. My husband’s chilli concoction was a very ‘cleansing-feeling’ drink, calling to mind P.G. Wodehouse’s phrase (in connexion with Bertie Wooster) about feeling “as though someone was strolling down my oesophagus holding a lighted torch” but the fiery, energising taste was particularly refreshing. In my cucumber champagne cocktail, the initial notes were strongly redolent of champagne and gin, but the cucumber made its presence felt a little later. This was a beverage of real sophistication, and one to be enjoyed and appreciated with due focus. Amuse bouche were brought shortly after the cocktails and set the high tone for the rest of the meal – really rather delicious beef and horseradish croutons; and a very sweet chilled carrot soup with cumin.

The menu lists a reasonable number of starters and main courses as a la carte choices (around seven) and there is also a menu of “Classics” at far more reasonable prices (that’s not to say that the a la carte dishes may not be worth the amount charged – I’m sure they are, but it would probably push it into a ‘really special occasion’ meal bracket). We ate from the classics menu, which had just three options each for starters and mains, including soup and fish of the day.

I started with a venison terrine – this was very strongly flavoured with dark, gamey notes, with the crunch and heat of the green peppercorns complementing the rich texture and flavour of the meat. It was served with sourdough toast with celeriac, which worked well. My husband’s egg Benedict was pronounced superb. The egg was rich and cooked to perfection; the muffin was beautifully soft but not without a little resistance that complemented the egg perfectly; and the whole was accompanied by simple rocket leaves that added colour as well as an added dimension of texture and taste.

The wines chosen to accompany the starter (by the sommelier) were also immaculately judged: both were complex and sophisticated white wines with very clean, centred tastes and wonderful noses – mine in particular had an immensely floral nose with those floral notes also coming through strongly on the palate, alongside baskets-full of fruit. The red wines which followed with the main courses were equally rich, complex and well-chosen.

For my main, the braised lamb shoulder was excellent – the shoulder itself was both immensely flavoursome – rich and succulent – and wonderfully tender – literally falling into pieces when one cut into it. It was accompanied by pearl barley – which gave a good complement of texture in its bursting crunches; slightly bitter kale, and lamb ragu. The latter was in and of itself also excellent – very tomatoey in flavour – yet I felt that it was one dimension too many and actually obfuscated rather than added to the overall dish.

The steak pleased even fussy Mr Marshall-Luck! This was deliciously and vividly flavoured, with an effective salty tang and an intense depth. It was simply but effectively served with chips and rocket and with an extremely more-ish Béarnaise sauce. Young master Tristan tried substantial bites of all of these and strongly approved – as indeed he did of the beautifully freshly-baked bread rolls, which were also unusual in flavour and of the very highest quality.

He was equally impressed by his father’s bread-and-butter pudding and not surprisingly. It’s very rare that one can find a restaurant that can do this so successfully. Here at The Peacock, it was light enough not to be stodgy but at the same time had plenty of substance and heft which made it an extremely satisfying dessert; juicy raisins, plump from marinating, vied with layers of bread and a soft yet slightly resistant filling. Furthermore, it was complemented admirably by brown-bread ice cream that was deliciously smooth and boasted more than a hint of caramel.

I opted for cheeses, wherein one may choose three out of five listed items (an excellent selection of different types, with each accompanied by a little dab of carefully-chosen sweetness). Thus honey perfectly complemented my goats’ cheese; date puree my English “Swiss”, and apple puree my semi-soft cows’. Again, every element pleased and impressed: delicious cheeses, beautiful accompaniments – which really worked with the individual cheese – and all superbly presented. Tea and coffee were excellent too – the tea very clean tasting, and the coffee strong enough even for Mr Marshall-Luck.

The service had been extremely good as well for the duration of the meal. Staff were smartly attired, attentive and friendly. One even brought chalks and encouraged Tristan by example to squat down on the slate floor and draw all over it. When I later found Tristan scribbling all over my kitchen tiles with a pencil I was less persuaded that this had been a good idea – but the friendliness and attempt to include their youngest dinner was nevertheless laudable.

It was with the very deepest regret that we loaded the car the following morning after an admirable breakfast, noting, as we walked to and from the car park the other thoughtful touches such as the bowl of water inside the door for dogs and a rack of umbrellas for patrons’ use. It is rare that one finds an establishment that offers such a high level of service; such exquisite food and drink; and such fine surroundings (not to mention that bar!).

The Peacock Garden

The Peacock Garden

One of the things that struck me most, however – apart from that supremely gorgeous bar – was the clientele, who were far more civilised than one usually encounters – unusually, we noted that these were all people of good breeding, manners and culture, rather than the moneyed hooligans one all too often finds in top hotels. Perhaps a case of like attracting like, with the refinement and elegance of The Peacock calling to more cultured and civilised patrons.

Em Marshall-Luck is QR’s Food and Wine Critic

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The Martian

Posted on December 1, 2015 by leslie

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The Martian

Film Review by Robert Henderson

Main cast:

Matt Damon as Mark Watney (botanist, engineer)
Kristen Wiig as Annie Montrose, NASA spokesperson (Director, Media Relations)
Jeff Daniels as Theodore “Teddy” Sanders, Director of NASA
Michael Peña as Major Rick Martinez, astronaut (pilot)
Kate Mara as Beth Johanssen, astronaut (system operator, reactor technician)
Sean Bean as Mitch Henderson, Hermes flight director
Sebastian Stan as Dr. Chris Beck, astronaut (flight surgeon, EVA specialist)
Aksel Hennie as Dr. Alex Vogel, astronaut (navigator, chemist)
Chiwetel Ejiofor as Vincent Kapoor, NASA’s Mars mission director
Donald Glover as Rich Purnell, a NASA astrodynamicist
Benedict Wong as Bruce Ng, director of JPL

Director Ridley Scott

************************

Imagine Robinson Crusoe without a Man Friday and stranded on another planet rather than a deserted island and you have the plot of The Martian in a nutshell.

Botanist Mark Watney (Matt Damon) is part of the Ares III mission which has landed on Mars and set up a temporary base there. A dust storm blows up while the crew are out on the surface and Watney is hit by some flying debris. The rest of the crew are sure he is dead, but they also have a major threat to distract them from searching for him: the dust storm is threatening to blow over the rocket that will take them back to their orbiting Hermes spaceship. If the rocket topples over the crew will be stranded on Mars. Consequently, they make an emergency take off without Watney, get safely to the Hermes and head for Earth.

But Watney is not dead. He has been injured by the flying debris, but not mortally. The facility which sheltered the crew on Mars, the Hab, is still functioning and there is a large Mars rover vehicle intact. Watney sits down in the Hab and does exactly what Crusoe does, takes an inventory of what he has then sets about working himself out of the monumental hole he is in. This he achieves in a series of ingenious ways including, again mimicking Crusoe, by scavenging equipment from wrecks, in this case from abandoned equipment left from previous missions, manned and unmanned, to Mars.

Most of the film is taken up with Watney’s efforts to overcome one daunting obstacle to surviving after another long enough to have any chance of rescue. He starts from the bleak point of knowing that NASA think that he is dead. Hence his first need is to establish contact with Earth to let them know he is alive. He eventually does this by cleverly tinkering with equipment intended for other things until eventually he has an email link with NASA.

After making contact with NASA, Watney’s most pressing problem is having enough food to keep him alive until Earth can attempt to rescue him. It will take several years to send another spaceship to Mars and Watney has food for nothing like that long. Luckily he is a botanist so he works out a way of producing water and this, with the excrement from the astronauts acting as fertiliser, allows him to grow potatoes inside the Hab with sufficient success to enable him to survive for considerably longer but not long enough for the next Mars expedition, Aries IV, to arrive and save him.

While Watney is problem solving on Mars NASA is problem solving on Earth and meeting with disaster. Their attempts to launch an unmanned rocket with extra supplies to allow Watney to survive until Aires IV can get there ends in disaster and all looks lost. But eventually the Aries III mission ship Hermes ship is re-provisioned in space and then turned around on its flight to Earth and sent back to Mars to rescue Watney. This is done only with the help of the Chinese (note the glib internationalism and/or kowtowing to the Chinese).

After further adventures including a disaster with the Hab and a long ride across the Martian surface in the Mars Rover the film culminates in a hair-raising exercise to rescue Watney. Does he make it? Well, you will need to see the film to discover that.

Damon’s performance as Watney recaptures the engaging boyishness of his early films like Goodwill Hunting and Rounders. He is decidedly funny. Without him the film would be pretty dull, for apart from Damon the plot involving the rest of the cast is rather predictable and even those with the larger parts such as Jeff Daniels as Theodore “Teddy” Sanders, the Director of NASA and Jessica Chastain as Melissa Lewis, the Ares III Mission Commander, are distinctly one-dimensional. Sean Bean is horribly miscast as Mitch Henderson the Hermes flight director speaking what lines he has with as much verve as a speak-your-weight-machine.

The Martian has been criticised in some quarters for Damon’s role being too comic. That is a mistake. Whether or not someone in such a desperate and isolated position would be able to maintain such an upbeat persona with the sense of both his utter physical isolation and desperate circumstances pressing upon him is of course debatable. But that is to miss the point. The same objection could be levelled at Robinson Crusoe. But in both cases what counts is whether there is a good story to be told and in both cases the answer is yes.   Moreover, the attitude of Watney is that of those with the “right stuff”, an epitome of American can do. Nor is he utterly alone for most of the film. To keep him sane he has contact with Earth for most of the time and eventually the Aries III ship Hermes. He also records his progress on a video blog, something which would provide a sense of purpose. It is Boy’s Own stuff but none the worse for that. Nor is it utterly unbelievable. Think of the tone of the diaries kept on Scott’s doomed return from the South Pole or the resolution of the crew on Apollo 13 after an oxygen tank exploded two days into the mission and crippled the spacecraft. Boy’s Own behaviour is sometimes found in real life.

The depiction of Mars is unnecessarily sloppy. It looks convincing as far as the scenery is concerned, but there are anomalies. The gravity on Mars is one-third of that on Earth yet when Damon moves around there is no indication of this in his walk, which one would expect to be at least mildly bouncing. Nor when Damon moves things does he do so with unexpected ease as one would imagine he should with only one-third Earth gravity. Then there is the atmospheric pressure which is around one-hundredth of that on Earth. Would the storm which causes the Aries Mission crew to leave really have had the energy to hurl debris as violently as it did or threaten to knock the rocket over? The answer is no because it is the density of atmosphere which provides the “weight” behind a dust storm. On Mars the dust storm would be a breeze not a hurricane. As the dust storm plays a significant role in the plot this is not a small thing.

For fans of politically correct casting The Martian provides a feast. The commander of the Aries II mission is a woman; Chiwetel Ejiofor is Vincent Kapoor, NASA’s Mars mission director, Benedict Wong is Bruce Ng, director of JPL and there are ethnic minority and female bodies in abundance in the NASA control room scenes. Donald Glover as Rich Purnell, a NASA astrodynamicist, the whizz kid who produces the maths which allows the Hermes to turn round and head back to Mars, is black. (The overwhelmingly white and male reality of NASA today can be seen here).

Despite its flaws the film is genuinely entertaining. You will not leave the cinema feeling you have wasted a couple of hours.

ROBERT HENDERSON is QR’s film critic

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ET Weeps for the West

Posted on November 29, 2015 by leslie

ET

ET Weeps for the West

Ilana Mercer contemplates the events in Paris

In the West, crying and dying is framed as … winning.

Or so an Extra-Terrestrial from Deep Space would conclude, should he look down upon the landmasses that make up The West.

From his worldly perspective, ET will observe that when they are blown up by those in their midst, the West is wont to display mounds of fluffy objects, flowers and candles.

Somehow, this ritual is equated with resilience and triumph.

Could it be that this pasty-faced, tearful people believes that displays of inanimate objects that swell landfills will appease their gods? ET is still in the preliminary stages of his implacably objective inquiry.

To ET, these perennial, robotic, mass-mourning rituals performed after such strikes are an enigma. Any rational creature capable of distilling events to their bare-bones essence would concur.

The hobbled West, the poor French in particular, is grief stricken. One hundred and thirty compatriots were slaughtered in venues across Paris. The coordinated, Nov. 13 attacks were the handiwork of one Abdelhamid Abaaoud and his band of Islamic State sympathizers. One of the eight evildoers was a refugee, some were European nationals, all were recipients of Western largess.

The sanctimonious literati (not a very literate lot) call Abaaoud a local Belgian boy. They consider the enclaves of Muslims as French as the beret and the baguette.

ET’s enormous blue eyes well up when he listens to Brel’s achingly beautiful “Ne me Quitte Pas”, sung sublimely by Shirley Bassey. How great was the West, he murmurs.

The mastermind of the attacks across Paris was part of the young, restive population living on the outskirts of the great European cities and on the fringe of its society; often in housing projects and on welfare, a propensity that doesn’t detract from this group’s prized and protected position in the West.

ET wonders if westerners, a confused lot, believe the Angry elements in their midst are gods in need of appeasement. This might explain the furry and fiery offerings on the sidewalks. ET also notes that the Pale Faces have the same crippling reverence for blacks and Hispanics.

With his luminous finger—it works like the Microsoft Surface Tablet pen—ET scribbles the following furiously: “Are Western ‘leaders’ recruiting this incompatible cohort because they consider them, irrationally, to be gods?”

Fail to welcome the flooding of your communities with people of a divergent culture and sometimes of a belligerent faith—and the Cultural-Marxist foot soldiers will ruin you with the following labels:

  • Racist
  • Xenophobe
  • White supremacist
  • Extreme rightist
  • Mean
  • Ungenerous
  • Ignorant
  • Redneck

ET can’t fathom why such phrases and words send the earthlings into painful paroxysms. Nevertheless, an earthling would rather die than be called a racist by cultural Marxists.

From his seat in the heavens, ET can see that the soft nations are comprised of supremely kind people, verging on the sanctimonious. Africa, the Middle East, Near East, Far East: as do-gooders go, there is no match for the giving, gullible people of America, Australia, Canada, Europe and New Zealand. Wherever you look, the whites of the world are untiring in doing the world’s good works and saving the planet and its creatures.

Yet every other people aside whites is allowed to claim and keep its corner under the sun. Dare to suggest that China, India, Saudi-Arabia, Yemen, Japan, or South-Korea open the floodgates to immigrants who’ll disrupt the ancient rhythm of these countries—and you’ll get an earful. Yet this is what Anglo-Americans and Europeans are cheerily called on to do by a left-liberal establishment, which finds the exotic more sympathetic.

True, westerners have the best countries. But the verdant, lush, lovely West is the way it is due to Western civilization’s human capital. The core, founding populations in these countries once possessed the innate abilities and philosophical sensibilities to flourish mightily.

Yet despite The West’s generosity to The Rest, it’s people is the only people to be shamed, ostracized, threatened and maligned when talking about the lands of their forefathers, the beliefs of forebears, the faith and folklore of Founding Fathers. (Discussing quilting is OK, I suppose.)

Another of ET’s insights: no sooner than the pale people question the edicts enforced by hostile, hateful elites—that they must invite into their midst still more volatile, culturally divergent, sometimes dangerous aliens—leaders in politics, media, academia, and “think” tanks start going stir crazy about a thing called “Our Values.”

“We’re risking American dignity,” crowed the generic, telegenic, Mr. Muhamad, on Fox News’ Hannity.

In his formidable intelligence, ET asks: what is this collective “dignity” of which you speak, Mr. Muhamad? Who defines it? This communal “dignity” sounds suspiciously like a catechism sculpted by the State and its supporters, to bring about compliance.

ET is getting hot under the scales about this “dignity” thing: why don’t the foolish opinion formers, summoned by television program-makers to wield this weapon, ask the dead in Paris whether they’re glad to have died on the altar of this “dignity,” or would they rather have their full, young, promising lives back, instead?

A species of the “dignity” cudgel is the term “This is not who we are.”

Barack Hussein Obama has weaponized this collectivist phrase. A member of what ET terms The Merkel Media, a clone of the American MSM, waxed fat about her country’s “true values”: “An open, democratic society defined by pluralism, equal rights and freedom of expression, belief in the rule of law …”

If so “free” and orderly, ponders ET, why does Angela Merkel’s Germany jail a German grandma aged 87, for a thought crime (Holocaust denial), while allowing tens of thousands of strangers (“refugees”) to swarm over Germany, riot, litter and vandalize, as they go?

In his implacable objectivity, ET intends to further investigate. His soft, sweet heart pounds for the melancholy, mindless men and women of the West. His working hypothesis, so far, is this:

While the ordinary Pale People are the focus of disaffection, responsibility for the carnage lies with leaders in western lands. Westerners are kicked about and killed by Angry Others because their “leaders”—a likely low-intelligence, parasitical sample of humanity—has adopted a two-pronged strategy with which to beat the Pale People into submission and drain the life-blood from them.

The strategy represents two sides of the same neoconservative/left-liberal coin. It was first described, somewhat inartfully, on a website called WND:

On January 16, 2004, recalls ET, the “Return To Reason” cyber column encapsulated the scheme as, “Inviting an invasion by foreigners and instigating one against them.”

Later, on, another super-smart earthling, Steve Sailer “turned [that idea] into a neat slogan,” naming the policy, artfully, as “invade the world/invite the world.” This radical strategy permanently destabilizes the homeland and the world and gives western governments all the power, everywhere.

From his worldly perspective, ET gets the Big Picture: For whites, it’s war abroad and hell on earth at home.

Now he is crying. After all, ET almost died without his people.

©
ILANA Mercer
November 27, 2015

Ilana Mercer is a paleolibertarian writer, based in the U.S.  She pens WND’s longest-standing, exclusive paleolibertarian column, “Return to Reason.” She is a fellow at the Jerusalem Institute for Market Studies. Her 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   Follow her on Twitter:  https://twitter.com/IlanaMercer “Friend” her on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/ilanamercer.libertarian

 

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Only Conserve

Posted on November 27, 2015 by leslie
Bob Barron, The Remains of the Day 1

Bob Barron, The Remains of the Day 1

Only Conserve

Peter King condemns change for change’s sake

One of Edmund Burke’s most famous sayings is that ‘A state without the means of some change is without the means of its conservation’. This is sometimes used to suggest that conservatives should not oppose change, but rather engage with it and that without change there is no possibility of survival. The result is that Burke can be, and is, used to justify political change, and to make it respectable for those conservatives, including many in the current ruling party, who like to label themselves as progressives.

It is no longer enough for a Conservative merely to want to conserve things. Conservatives have to be modern and progressive and seek to create a better society. Conservative politicians argue that they wish to help people achieve their aspirations, to reach higher and to make a better life for themselves. What they cannot countenance is that we might actually prefer where we are and only want to be left alone. We do not all want to be somewhere else and are very sceptical of the idea that there can be somewhere better.

It is worthwhile, then, putting Burke’s quote in its proper context. In doing so, we shall see that Burke is actually pointing toward a rather different conclusion that the ready grasping of change. He says:

A state without the means of some change is without the means of its conservation. Without such means it might even risk the loss of that part of the constitution which it wished the most religiously to preserve. The two principles of conservation and correction operated strongly at the two critical periods of the restoration and Revolution, when England found itself without a king. At both those periods the nation had lost the bond of union in their antient edifice; they did not, however, dissolve the whole fabric. On the contrary, in both cases they regenerated the deficient part of the old constitution through the parts which were not impaired. They kept the old parts exactly as they were, that the part recovered might be suited to them.[1]

Burke is writing here in response to a request for his views on the French Revolution and, in particular, whether he would agree with those in England who argued that the French were merely doing what the English had done in their Glorious Revolution of 1688, namely, overthrowing an illegitimate monarch. Burke’s correspondent was trying to enlist Burke’s support for the premise that the people had the right to rid themselves of a king they could no longer support. Burke, a noted supporter of the rights of the American colonists and the Indian native population, was presumed to stand behind the idea of universal rights.

But this was a complete misunderstanding of Burke’s position. For him, rights did not arrive out of some abstract principle but from particular historical circumstance. Burke argues that the revolution of 1688 did not involve the overthrow of a monarch so much as a situation where the English used their traditional and considered Constitution to correct a deficiency that had arisen through the abdication of an unsuitable monarch. The Constitution was not set aside, but rather was used and followed in order to repair the deficiency and so continue on much as it always had done. Precedent was used to determine a way forward that was consistent with the traditions and history of the country.

Accordingly, the decisions taken in 1688 were not acts of repudiation but rather acts of repair. The deficiency caused by the abdication of an unsuitable king was remedied using those parts of the Constitution that still held fast. The result was that the traditions of the country were strengthened rather than weakened. The Glorious Revolution was not a transgression but a clarification of already existing ideas.

Burke was here seeking to deflect the accusation that the French, with their capture and imprisonment of their monarch and usurpation of his authority, were in some manner mimicking the English. The French, however, had committed the treachery of innovation and operated according to the fiction that a monarch could be replaced if he no longer governed according to the will of the people. Burke showed that this was opposed to those actions of the English, who had merely sought to protect their constitution and ensure a recovery of tradition. They were not then properly speaking revolting but acting in a manner consistent with established ways.

We should note here that Burke talks only of conservation and correction and makes no mention of reform or improvement. Change is necessary not to modernise but to maintain and preserve what is ancient. Change is not something to relish but rather it is something to be managed. Change is something to endure or suffer as best we can. The best means to get through it is by using our working traditions to salve those parts that need repair. In other words, a society has to have the means to react to circumstance.

So, to follow Burke, we only change because it is necessary to do so, and we use what still works to remake what is deficient. We do not innovate or invent, and we do not rush our change as if it were an end in itself. What we have to do is to slow down, to ensure that we retain control. We change only to preserve what we already have, and we do so out of a recognition of its intrinsic value as the means by which we are what we are.

This puts a completely different complexion on the original quote. It is only by removing it from its proper context that anyone can use Burke’s statement to justify the changes we see going on around us. The fact that change is inevitable does not mean that we must encourage, promote or even accelerate it. Change is to be mitigated and we do this using the safety and security provided by known ways. So to claim that Burke is somehow on the side of progress is to seriously misunderstand one of the great masters of conservative thought.

[1] Burke, E 1999, Reflections on the Revolution in France, Liberty Fund pp., 108-9

PETER KING is Reader in Social Thought at De Montfort University. His most recent books are Keeping Things Close: An Essay on the Conservative Disposition and Here and Now: Some Thoughts on the World and How We Find it, both published by Arktos in 2015

See more of Bob Barron’s artwork at www.bob-barron.com

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Critical Race Theory

Posted on November 23, 2015 by leslie

Ilana Mercer

Critical Race Theory

Ilana Mercer indicts an illiberal ideology

The spectre, on the nation’s campuses, of frightened, middle-aged white educators, mostly men, resigning in fear of a mob rising in rage against hurtful words and gestures—all constitutionally protected speech—is an organic extension of the American educational project, down to your child’s school.

If your kids are in the country’s educational gulag—primary, secondary or tertiary—however well they’re faring, they’re still being brainwashed and de-civilized. Most private schools are now bastions of progressivism, too. “Progressivism,” of course, does not imply progress.

The “justice” for which privileged youngsters on America’s coveted campuses are rioting—the right to silence and purge dissent and dissidents—they’ve imbibed in schools public and private, prior to arriving at the university.

On the University of Missouri campus, atavistic youth have joined against hurtful words, symbols and unsettling, unorthodox ideas, and for “safe spaces,” where these brave hearts can hideout from “racial microaggression.” Examples of “microaggression” are asking a black student for lessons in twerking, complimenting her weave, or simply being white.

But mostly, these minorities and their propagandized white patsies are campaigning for the unanimous acceptance of the following destructive, dangerous, often deadly, dictum:

“White racism is everywhere. White racism is permanent. White racism explains everything.”

The “systemic racism” meme you hear repeated by media, across the American campus, and preached from the White House is a function of “Critical Race Theory,” the sub-intelligent, purely theoretical, logically fallacious construct, now creeping into American schools at every level.

As detailed in WND colleague Colin Flaherty’s “Don’t Make the Black Kids Angry,” America’s children, black, white and brown, are being taught, starting at a tender age, about “racial hostility and resentment.”

This racial hostility is said to be endemic and always and everywhere a white on black affair.

Ask your state representative and your school board about Glenn Singleton and his Pacific Educational Group’s curriculum, “Courageous Conversations.” The poisonous program has been adopted by “hundreds of school districts across the US,” and foisted on millions of pupils, very possibly your child.

Beware; propaganda is process oriented, and an insidious process at that.

ITEM: Your cherub’s project receives an A. The teacher praises his work before the classroom. Yet, oddly, she will studiously conceal the child’s identity. This is in furtherance of the egalitarian idea, implemented, whereby no individual student is to be identified as having produced superior work to that of the collective.

“[U]nder the Singleton influence,” explains Flaherty, “the Seattle schools [have] defined individualism as a form of cultural racism and said that only whites can be racist.” Moreover, “emphasizing individualism as opposed to a more collective ideology is a form of racism,” too.

The progressive educational project carries its anti-white bias into teaching about the Orient (East) versus the Occident (West).

ITEM: A Christian boy, placed in an academically advanced study program, is tasked with submitting a project about one of three ancient civilizations: Egypt, India and Rome.

Ancient Egypt, a big hit apparently, is spoken for. The teacher, generally “white, female, liberal,” advises the boy: “Choose India. Rome is … BORING.”

What is it that this colossal ignoramus has conveyed to her student with the words “Rome is boring”? Let us unpack the meta-message (with reference to History.org):

Christianity, first adopted and spread by the giant empire of Rome, is BORING.

  • Engineering, which the Romans perfected and excelled at like no other civilization, is BORING.
  • Related in tedium and utterly BORING: the ingenious construction of roads and aqueducts.
  • The Greeks, an inspiration for Rome—what little boy doesn’t love Leonidas of the “300”?—BORING.
  • The form of government known as “republicanism,” an inspiration for the American Founding Fathers: BORING.
  • The notion of equality under the law, invented by Rome and instantiated in Rome’s Twelve Tables, 449 years Before Christ: BORING.
  • The intrigues at Julius Caesar’s court: BORING.
  • The oh-so relevant lessons of Empire and government overreach: BORING.
  • Spartacus, gladiator and rebel leader against Rome: BORING.
  • “Gladiators, Chariots, and the Roman Games,” the riveting stuff of kiddie video games: BORING.
  • The fine art of argument and oratory: BORING.
  • Masters of literature and poetry: Horace, Virgil, Ovid, Livy: BORING!
  • The greatest romance in history, Antony and Cleopatra’s: not quite on the level of a Bollywood tryst.

Rome is the foundation of our Western civilization. The boorishness of telling a Christian young boy that Rome is boring conjures a skit from the “Life of Brian,” a parody by comedic genius John Cleese about Judea under Rome:

So, “What have the Romans ever done for us?” asks Reg, a Jewish rebel against Rome. “The aqueduct,” one rebel ventures. Says a second, “Sanitation, remember what the city used to be like?” A third Jewish rebel praises the roads, a fourth, the public baths. Exacerbated by the growing list of Roman improvements, rebel-in-chief Reg responds: “All right, but apart from the sanitation, the medicine, education, wine, public order, irrigation, roads, a fresh water system, and public health, what have the Romans ever done for us?”

Except that what is par for the course in your children’s’ schools is no laughing matter.

Certainly, parents ought to familiarise themselves with the politicised process of textbook and course-material selection.

In Washington State, the selection of textbooks is a highly centralized affair, arrogated to a “textbook commission,” which consists of five individuals, whose liberal, labor-union credentials are guaranteed to be unimpeachable.

Put it this way, textbook selection effected by the politburo of books will ensure that your child never ever comes away believing in the immutable truth, say, of the philosophy that animated the republic’s Founding Fathers. Or in the originalist intention of the US Constitution.

Yes, your kids will learn about the Constitution and about theories of constitutional interpretation. But so will they be inculcated in the unshaken view of originalism as a quaint notion reserved for oddballs (auntie Ilana’s preference for the Anti-Federalists is tantamount to a thought crime), and that “progress” demands that the Constitution be “updated.”

Your child will be taught that eternal verities—the rights of private property and self-defense—shift with the times, when in fact truth is not relative, but both knowable and immutable (also the theme of a magnificent encyclical penned by the late Pope John Paul II.

Fact: Yale and Mizzou students are oblivious to the cherished American tenets of freedom of speech, freedom of conscience, freedom of religion, diversity of thought, and most important: the magnificent life all people irrespective of skin color can labor to achieve in America.

These students didn’t arrive on campus with such illiberal biases. The rot didn’t start there and didn’t unfold overnight. The closing of the Millennial Minds at the University of Missouri and beyond, to yield such philosophically and ethically bereft boorishness, has happened over time. The seeds of the bizarre contagion spreading across American campuses were sown in your kids’ primary and secondary schools, public and private.

And as we speak…

Ilana Mercer is a paleolibertarian writer, based in the U.S.  She pens WND’s longest-standing, exclusive paleolibertarian column, “Return to Reason.” She is a fellow at the Jerusalem Institute for Market Studies. Her 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   Follow her on Twitter:  https://twitter.com/IlanaMercer “Friend” her on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/ilanamercer.libertarian

 

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