The English are feeling the pinch in relation to recent events in Syria and have therefore raised their security level from "Miffed" to "Peeved." Soon, though, security levels may be raised yet again to "Irritated" or even "A Bit Cross." The English have not been "A Bit Cross" since the blitz in 1940 when tea supplies nearly ran out. Terrorists have been re-categorized from "Tiresome" to "A Bloody Nuisance." The last time the British issued a "Bloody Nuisance" warning level was in 1588, when threatened by the Spanish Armada.
The Scots have raised their threat level from "Pissed Off" to "Let's get the Bastards." They don't have any other levels. This is the reason they have been used on the front line of the British army for the last 300 years.
The French government announced yesterday that it has raised its terror alert level from "Run" to "Hide." The only two higher levels in France are "Collaborate" and "Surrender." The rise was precipitated by a recent fire that destroyed France 's white flag factory, effectively paralyzing the country's military capability.
Italy has increased the alert level from "Shout Loudly and Excitedly" to "Elaborate Military Posturing." Two more levels remain: "Ineffective Combat Operations" and "Change Sides."
The Germans have increased their alert state from "Disdainful Arrogance" to "Dress in Uniform and Sing Marching Songs." They also have two higher levels: "Invade a Neighbour" and "Lose."
Belgians, on the other hand, are all on holiday as usual; the only threat they are worried about is NATO pulling out of Brussels ..
The Spanish are all excited to see their new submarines ready to deploy. These beautifully designed subs have glass bottoms so the new Spanish navy can get a really good look at the old Spanish navy.
Australia, meanwhile, has raised its security level from "No worries" to "She'll be right, Mate." Two more escalation levels remain: "Crikey! I think we'll need to cancel the barbie this weekend!" and "The barbie is cancelled." So far no situation has ever warranted use of the last final escalation level.
Regards, John Cleese,
British writer, actor and tall person
And as a final thought – Greece is collapsing, the Iranians are getting aggressive, and Rome is in disarray. Welcome back to 430 BC.
Cleese didn't write this, it's an urban legend.
Read for yourself about it here. It dates back to 2005. This isn't the only such piece John Cleese is falsely accused of.
This was written for Esquire magazine by Charles P. Pierce. Pierce is the guy who said back in 2004 that had Mary Jo Kopecne lived, she would have been 62 and Ted Kennedy would have worked tirelessly on her in her behalf to bring her comfort. At the time he said that, the audience didn't know whether to laugh or cry.
A lot has been made of the contrast between how the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation handled the events yesterday in Ottawa, and how our own cable news networks handle practically everything. In brief, the difference was roughly the difference between the morning edition of The Times Of London and a tornado siren. However, one of the more startling things about CBC's coverage has gone largely unnoticed.
When there stopped being news, the CBC News stopped covering the story and cut away to its regular daily programming. It happened so quickly that it caught me by surprise. One minute, there was anchordude Peter Mansbridge, who's now the guy I want at the desk when the Last Trumpet blows, telling us what we knew and (most important) what we didn't know. And the next, we were back to its being a Wednesday afternoon and "Today, in Alberta..."
Imagine that. There was no Political Powerhouse panel to explain how this might have an impact on the Harper government. There was no aging M.P. representing Yellowknife hollering that this never would have happened if they'd only have built the dang pipeline, and no young opposition M.P. speculating about how this never would have happened if they'd secured the border with Quebec the way he and his ghostwriter had suggested in his recent book. There were no former generals on the dodge, speculating sadly that the shootings may indicate "a new stage" in the war on terror. There was a deplorable lack of political opportunism, and a dreadful dearth of doomsaying. There was no fancy logo. No heroic music adapted from a movie trailer especially for the occasion. There was only Mansbridge, the calmest guy in the hemisphere, who went almost two hours without a break at one point, telling us what we knew and (more important) what we didn't know, adding some historical perspective from his long career, and occasionally tossing it to one of his colleagues, who would do the same. And then, when there clearly was no more news coming, they all signed off.
(According to his official bio, Mansbridge began his career as a radio reporter in Churchill, Manitoba, which is the place where they have the holding pen for polar bears outside of town. I've been there and I can tell you, this may account for Mansbridge's cool. Once you've become accustomed to seeing a polar bear and her cub breezily walking down a downtown alley in the middle of the day -- Churchill is dead on top of the migratory route that the bears use every year -- nothing else about anything anywhere will faze you.) And yet, the late Peter Jennings of ABC got his panties in a wad after he heard Toby Keith's song, "Courtesy of the Red White and Blue". What a difference ten years make!
It used to be that, when there were no further developments, news operations waited until there were. That was when the country looked to the three major networks, and their anchors, for the news, and these were anchors who were trained as reporters, not as television stars. But then there was cable, and CNN, and then the flood of cable news outlets, and news became entertainment, and a big story became an instant miniseries, with special-effects and theme music, and the point became keeping the story on the air, somehow, even if it meant speculating about airliner-gulping black holes, or Ted Cruz's yammering about epidemiology. And, of course, there is another great difference.
The CBC is a Canadian crown corporation. This means it is publicly owned. It runs commercial announcements, but not many, and only to supplement the money from its federal funding. Peter Mansbridge was telling us the news, not selling us Cialis, and that makes all the difference. Mark Steyn once quipped that the old Soviet functionaries would be much amazed at all the effort they went to to bring about a pliant stenographer corps by smashing presses, seizing manuscripts and jailing journalists. Obama and his pro government types don't have to do that.
[JEWISHWORLDREVIEW] Alicia Colon discusses the three most pressing problems the country faces right now. Since I retired I never seem to have time to think, or maybe my thought processes are grinding to a halt. I still have a few turns of the piston left, so I'll expound my own views.
Ebola
According to the CDC, "Ebola is spread through direct contact with blood and body fluids of a person already showing symptoms of Ebola. Ebola is not spread through the air, water, food, or mosquitoes."
They're saying that the disease isn't spread by airborne means. I have my suspicions about the mosquitoes. They suck blood and they don't brush their suckers or siphon tubes after feasting.
Given the numbers, and the infection of people who in theory are wearing gloves and at least a layer of clothing while caring for the victims, my thought is "How much contact is necessary with the precious bodily fluids?"
The nurse who was shrieking about the violation of her basic human rights is in the same category as people who intentionally spread HIV. We (the civilized world) used to have epidemics of typhoid, typhus, cholera, measles, mumps, chicken pox and probably spavins and galls. And don't forget plague--black, bubonic, pneumonic, and other varieties. In 1918 Spanish flu struck a half billion people and killed one out of five. Quarantine during the incubation period of diseases was and remains the thing to do to stop it. Without it you get Typhoid Mary: 53 people infected, of whom three died. They kept her quarantined for thirty years.
Vaccine development looks like it's become a pretty speedy process, at least to people who aren't infected. The death wagons picking up corpses on the streets for mass burial aren't in the national future. Probably we can expect an infection rate comparable to that of the great Swine Flu Epidemic of a few years back.
So what else has ebola done? It's all political. First of all, the World Health Organization has been shown to be about as useful as a brassiere on a steer. Probably I've missed something, but its function seems to be to exist.
The formerly respected CDC doesn't look well. It's got (C. Northcote) Parkinson's disease. The reflected glare of the Obama regime is highlighting all its sluggish and contradictory responses and probably making it look worse than it actually is.
The regime response has been occasionally hilarious, but we all knew it was a mess, from the time B.O. claimed to be the smartest fellow in the room. We don't have a surgeon general because the guy nominated thinks guns are a public health problem. They're lots of things, but they're not a communicable disease. The idea of withdrawing the nomination and settling on someone who's chosen for his medical and administrative knowledge seems to have never occurred to anyone.
Hillary Clinton
The Clintons are a cross between old southern county court house politix and Saul Alinksy. Obama's the smartest person in the room; Hillary's the smartest woman in the world. Where does the difference lie?
Clinton's record as a senator was lackluster. Her time as secretary of state was lackluster until Benghazi. She's given to outlandish claims: She's named after Sir Edmund Hillary, who climbed Mount Everest a couple years after she was born (her middle name's not Norgay, either); they were flat broke when they left the White House; she was under sniper fire when she went to Bosnia.
Rumor has it she's got a bad heart, or she's had a stroke. Other rumor has it that Chelsea's thinking about going into the family business.
The final analysis: She's a politician. She hasn't yet been turned into a pillar of salt. She might run in 2016 if she thinks she has a chance. That's two years from now. There are other things more important--next week's elections if you're into politix over all other things.
Islamic State
I'm probably prejudiced in the matter, but this is the most important subject of the three. Al-Qaeda is anemic as a result of dronezaps. Zawahiri isn't as much of a leader as the late Osama was. When was the last time you saw a Zawahiri tee shirt? All the "cool" Qaeda branches are pledging their undying devotion to Caliph al-Baghdadi.
The Caliphate is what all those Qaeda-affiliated terror groups were supposed to be working toward. No one wanted an Ottoman restoration (except for Erdogan) but everybody with a turban thought the Abbasids were pretty nifty and they were going to be palace guards or grand viziers or something in the chain of command, while the peasantry would remain peasants only they'll be required to be devout.
Long-term, this sort of stupidity is self-limiting. Nigeria is infested with Boko Haram, which translates as "Western Education is Forbidden." They're driving trucks right now and shooting guns and that sort of fun thing. Next generation, with their education firmly rooted in the Koran as taught in the right madrassas, will regard the guns and rockets and trucks as magick because it takes something more than being able to recite the Koran from memory to keep them going.
In Libya's Derna, where Ansar al-Shariah has pledged to the Caliphate, the turbans have banned the teaching of foreign languages, mathematics and science.
In Mosul, which we might consider IS's heartland, they've implemented a shariah school curriculum that bans art, music, national history, literature and Christianity. Just shut up, tighten your turban, and wave your weaponry.
In the short run, IS is a danger. They're the Abu Musab al-Zarqawi wing of Qaeda writ large. Terror is a tool, though we sometimes forget it's not the only one in the box. We're not looking at the junior varsity, but at the hard core. They're waging war to the death against "crusaders." Meanwhile, back in Crusaderland, the regime is piddling along doing community organizing and trying to suppress the growth of the Tea Party. Contrary to published reports, "right wing extremism" isn't the world's most pressing problem.
The longest-term danger isn't from IS, which will fall because of its own brutality, but colonization. Streams of Moslems and Africans are showing up in Europe and living in enclaves of their own culture. The Ostrogoths used to do that. Eventually there was a Visigoth kingdom in Spain, or maybe it was Vandals. North Africa, prior to the Moslem colonization, was ruled by the Empire, then by more recent Germanic conquerors (Vandals, if I recall). Turkey used to be chock full of Greek speaking Christians. Those later Romans were all for diversity. Warfare is so expensive, and it can be dangerous.
Posted by: Fred ||
10/27/2014 14:25 ||
Comments ||
Link ||
[7 views]
Top|| File under:
#3
Africa has plenty of mosquitoes and there is no evidence of mosquitoes as a vector for infesting people w Ebola.
To do this the virus would have to survive the digestion cycle of the female mosquito (only the female draws blood) for the three or four hours between bites. Malaria, for example, has evolved to be able to do this. Ebola probably hasn't yet.
Posted by: lord garth ||
10/27/2014 19:09 Comments ||
Top||
[IsraelTimes] The chain of attacks Friday in the northeast Sinai Peninsula which saw more than 30 Egyptian soldiers killed is a slap in the face to the administration in Cairo and its leader, Abdel-Fattah el-Sissi. Even after the army seemed to have stabilized the security situation in the Sinai, even after soldiers rooted out hundreds of Egyptian jihadists and were able to considerably reduce the number of smuggling tunnels from the Gazoo Strip into Egypt, these terrorist bombings demonstrated that the battle with radical Islamists in the country is far from over.
It is not as if anyone in Cairo thought that within a matter of days or weeks, terror bases in the peninsula would cease to exist. On the contrary, many security officials in Egypt have assessed that in order to restore stability and peace to the Sinai, the army will need to operate in the area for at least another three years. And yet, the partial calm experienced in the peninsula over the past months has led many to believe that Sissi could now focus his efforts on the security and political threats posed by local Lions of Islam deep inside the country, and on the suppression of Moslem Brüderbund protests in Cairo, along the Nile Delta, and elsewhere.
It seems Sissi now realizes that he must make great efforts on several fronts simultaneously. He will have to allocate elite military units to operate not only inside Egypt, in order to allow for parliamentary elections to take place as promised, but he will also need to deal with jihadists in northeastern Sinai cities such as Sheikh Zuweid, el-Arish and Rafah. To that end, Sissi began Saturday to bolster the 12 battalions of the Egyptian army deployed in the peninsula with additional forces.
Continued on Page 49
[DAWN] IS removal of Nawaz Sharif ... served two non-consecutive terms as prime minister, heads the Pakistain Moslem League (Nawaz). Noted for his spectacular corruption, the 1998 Pak nuclear test, border war with India, and for being tossed by General Musharraf... the means or the end for Imran Khan ... aka Taliban Khan, who who convinced himself that playing cricket qualified him to lead a nuclear-armed nation with severe personality problems... ? Even if Khan's argument is that the ouster of Sharif is a prerequisite for the change he champions, should he squander other means to promote his agenda if Sharif isn't going anywhere for now? PTI's insistence that it won't return to parliament is now counterproductive. If PTI withdraws its resignations, there will be some jeering. But PTI will only hurt itself by resigning its National Assembly seats if Khan lets his ego trump other rational considerations.
Continued on Page 49
Posted by: Fred ||
10/27/2014 00:00 ||
Comments ||
Link ||
[9 views]
Top|| File under: Govt of Pakistan
The U.S. State Department is producing anti-Islamic State propaganda to persuade American and other would-be jihadis not to join the extremist group. It’s ham-handed, and often sarcastic, and unlikely to have the intended effect.
Islamic State [IS] propaganda pulls no punches. Beheading videos, boasts about enslaving women, promises of austere Sharia-led lives, it’s all there. You want what it offers? Come along, because IS wants people who make a positive commitment to join.
The State Department’s propaganda uses a negative message to counter the attraction of IS media. The content is seemingly written more to appeal to Washington than potential jihadis. A lot of the messaging mocks potential recruits, claiming, for example, they read “Islam for Dummies” before heading to Syria.
Oddly, State’s and IS’s messaging are not all that different, at least in the topics covered. Both stress that recruits are unlikely to survive fighting. State paints that as a terrible choice, while IS categorizes it as a positive one leading to martyrdom. Both feature photos of Christian churches Islamic State destroyed, with obviously different judgments of the act. Both talk about Western life, with IS emphasizing its spiritual emptiness.
Both sides agree that Muslims are killing Muslims. But the view expressed in State’s messaging is that all Muslims are the same, while IS says some so-called Muslims are not genuine and it is thus not a violation of the Koranic injunction against Muslim-on-Muslim violence to kill them. A core audience agrees; one report says 92 percent of Saudi Sunnis see IS activities as religiously legal.
State’s messaging says IS recruits will die and go to hell. IS messaging says they will die and go to heaven. Both are literally propaganda to die for. Who is winning in that match-up?
#1
Isis should be branded devil worshippers and bring out the war posters like the 30 and 40s, put doubt on the fence sitters. I haven't much attempt yet to persuade anyone on any crisis.
[DailyCaller] Conservative activist Phyllis Schlafly has risen to the forefront in the immigration debate and strongly believes that America's increasing levels of immigration is not just bad for the economy, but also is harming the American family.
At 90 years old, Schlafly shows no sign of stopping her advocacy of conservative ideas. Her latest book, "Who Killed The American Family?", addresses the various causes that, in her opinion, have hurt the family unit in the U.S.
According to Schlafly, one of the most overlooked factors behind the death of the American family is mass immigration. "Death of the American family" is a goal of the advocates of a one party system.
"I think it's [immigration] enormous," the conservative activist told The Daily Caller in reference to mass immigration's impact on the family.
Schlafly has noticed a blinding flash of the obvious disturbing trend among immigrants from Latin American countries that further erodes the traditional family unit. "They try to tell you they're very pro-family, but they have a tremendously high illegitimacy rate," she said. High illegitimacy rates are certainly not limited to Latin American immigrants.
According to the author, this illegitimacy rate leads many to depend on the government for their needs, rather than the family. This makes for weak families in Schlafly's opinion and diminishes the core values that underlie America. "Leads many"...? Yes, by some estimates 45 million food stamp recipients. I suppose 45 million might qualify as "many."
"When a woman has children without a husband to provide for her, she runs to 'Big Brother' government to support her," she insisted. "There are people who think that they will profit by giving us big government to run our lives. That's not the American way. That's not what we wanted. When we started out, we were a country of intact families and we expanded to build the greatest middle-class in the world — prosperous and happy." "Happy"....Now we have the pill and Planned Parenthood services. We reduce birth and repopulation rates and increase immigration among people who do not practice birth control. What could possibly go wrong ?
"That seems to be gone now." Schlafly gets it, but she always has. Ninety years of American perspective should not be ignored.
#2
Very often if the situation is explored more deeply, it will be discovered that the man has a perfectly legal wife and children back home, which is why he has no interest in marrying any of his baby-mamas up here.
#3
While working in the Reston, VA area, I was at first amazed at the number of Western Union counters located next to grocery store check-out lanes. I was soon to learn that the EBT card was for the check-out lane. USD's went to the Western Union queue. What a wonderful system.
A long piece about where the news business is.
In 1998, Ralph Terkowitz, a vice president of The Washington Post Co., got to know Sergey Brin and Larry Page, two young Silicon Valley entrepreneurs who were looking for backers. Terkowitz remembers paying a visit to the garage where they were working and keeping his car and driver waiting outside while he had a meeting with them about the idea that eventually became Google. An early investment in Google might have transformed the Post's financial condition, which became dire a dozen years later, by which time Google was a multi-billion dollar company. But nothing happened. "We kicked it around," Terkowitz recalled, but the then-fat Post Co. had other irons in other fires.
Such missteps are not surprising. People living through a time of revolutionary change usually fail to grasp what is going on around them. The American news business would get a C minus or worse from any fair-minded professor evaluating its performance in the first phase of the Digital Age. Big, slow-moving organizations steeped in their traditional ways of doing business could not accurately foresee the next stages of a technological whirlwind.
Obviously, new technologies are radically altering the ways in which we learn, teach, communicate, and are entertained. It is impossible to know today where these upheavals may lead, but where they take us matters profoundly. How the digital revolution plays out over time will be particularly important for journalism, and therefore to the United States, because journalism is the craft that provides the lifeblood of a free, democratic society.
The Founding Fathers knew this. They believed that their experiment in self-governance would require active participation by an informed public, which could only be possible if people had unfettered access to information. James Madison, author of the First Amendment guaranteeing freedom of speech and of the press, summarized the proposition succinctly: "The advancement and diffusion of knowledge is the only guardian of true liberty." Thomas Jefferson explained to his French friend, the Marquis de Lafayette, "The only security of all is in a free press. The force of public opinion cannot be resisted when permitted freely to be expressed." American journalists cherish another of Jefferson's remarks: "Were it left to me to decide whether we should have a government without newspapers or newspapers without a government, I should not hesitate a moment to prefer the latter."
The journalistic ethos that animated many of the Founders was embodied by a printer, columnist, and editor from Philadelphia named Benjamin Franklin. The printing press, which afforded Franklin his livelihood, remained the engine of American democracy for more than two centuries. But then, in the second half of the 20th century, new technologies began to undermine long-established means of sharing information. First television and then the computer and the Internet transformed the way people got their news. Nonetheless, even at the end of the century, the business of providing news and analysis was still a profitable enough undertaking that it could support large organizations of professional reporters and editors in print and broadcast media.
Now, however, in the first years of the 21st century, accelerating technological transformation has undermined the business models that kept American news media afloat, raising the possibility that the great institutions on which we have depended for news of the world around us may not survive. More at the link...
#1
In the 21st century, accelerating technological transformation has undermined the business models that kept American news media afloat, raising the possibility that the great institutions on which we have depended for news of the world around us may not survive.
#2
Funny how this "decline" happens along side the extreme tilt toward "progressivism" by the reporters and editors. The further they have pushed a progressive agenda by repressing some news, and fabricating other news, and spinning the rest to support their progressive causes, the worse and worse they become. Correlation is not causation, per se, but it can be at times -- and there's definitely fire under all this progressive press smoke, going back to "fake but accurate" and beyond.
#3
It's not so much the technology which is killing the 'great institutions'. Even they are adapting to the new tech by having great websites and media sites. Just look at CNN.com, ABC.com, etc... they are very well made and user-friendly sites. It's not the tech, platform, or medium - its the content!
What is killing the 'great institutions' isn't the tech - it's the infiltration by socialists and statists.
The same thing is happening on Universities and Collages - socialist infiltration. Harvard did once earned it's reputation as a top-notch university. now it, and other once-great universities, are little more than indoctrination centers.
Not to mention K-12 education with the Teachers Union influence.
A multi-volume chronology and reference guide set detailing three years of the Mexican Drug War between 2010 and 2012.
Rantburg.com and borderlandbeat.com correspondent and author Chris Covert presents his first non-fiction work detailing
the drug and gang related violence in Mexico.
Chris gives us Mexican press dispatches of drug and gang war violence
over three years, presented in a multi volume set intended to chronicle the death, violence and mayhem which has
dominated Mexico for six years.
Rantburg was assembled from recycled algorithms in the United States of America. No
trees were destroyed in the production of this weblog. We did hurt some, though. Sorry.
