God, Survival, Children

Damn. I made it back. I am suffering from blogophobia which develops in response to Obamanism and Islam, throwing in progressivism as a final fillip of insult.  I mean, good lord in heaven, do we have to write about our rape and pummeling and slaughter as we undergo it?

The answer is apparently, yes. So I must suck it up and return to the front. But I am sick of being distracted by Obama. Islam continues to make huge inroads and will only flourish more under obama’s  nurturing hand and I do wish to get back to concentrating on that topic. But then, Islam is only  part of the disease, a symptom of our demise, as is this plaque of socialism. The root is nihilism and, as my explorations continue to indicate, the nihilism derives from a denial of who we as human beings are. Creations designed by the hand of God. And this is where I have come to take a stand. The God I refer to, for me, is the Christian God. The battle that I witness I have come to believe heralds the final movements in this ancient battle between good and evil, light and dark, life and death.

So, I am going to be exploring God in these pages, as I return to seeking him. And I am going to be talking about the reading I am doing in preparation of, hopefully, home schooling my grandchildren. Reading about this country’s true history, our founding fathers and that amazing constitution, a document  that I have come to believe to be more evidence of the incredible genius of a God intent on empowering man to govern in a fair imitation of a celestial governance. Unfortunately, few of us have taken God seriously on his offer.
And I also am doing some research into survival. Yes, survival. I feel like the damnable grasshopper in that fable warning against indolence. I have played the fiddle all my life instead of methodically building my reserves and resources and using my gifts to secure a life that can withstand the storms. So I scurry to learn about seeds, and gardening, and what staples to stock up on. What do I want on my island of civility should the day come when my family and I must be about sustaining and protecting our own sustenance and survival, bereft of the amazing tools and technology America has afforded us these many decades.

So anyway, I am working on a post and I will go back to doing that now but, I invite you to join in on a conversation that  Ligneus started in this post, Nascent Religion, inquiring as to how one introduces a child to the topic of God.  Especially given the times we live in.

I’ll be back.

Nascent Religion.

This morning my five year old grand daughter Cerys, [Katy is her nickname in case you're wondering if I have another one] asked, ‘What’s the importantest thing around?’ [Reminds me of my son when he was seven while observing the stream of people crossing in front of us while stopped at an intersection, 'Dad, What are people for?] Even so young they are aware of the ‘big’ questions, and unless you’re fully into some ideology or other, in which case the answer would be a form of cheating and therefore cheating them too, what do you say? I tried, ‘the air we breathe, the sun, you’, but those didn’t wash. I was flippant, ‘ice cream’, maybe there was a hint of a smile, more than I deserved. Then, ‘Some people would say God’, which seemed to set her thinking, I left it at that. Anyone have any better ideas as to how you answer these questions without being being too didactic? I think perhaps the system I was brought up under whereby we had religious instruction in school plus some church going also with the school was OK, this was Church of England which is less dogmatic than RC which I understand but maybe not for infants, otherwise we were free to decide for ourselves, but at least we were given the requisite knowledge on which to base such decisions.

Update. The Religious Instruction we received, later changed to Religious Education in an early example of Political Correctness, was mostly the story of Jesus, the Beattitudes, the Good Samaritan, that sort of thing, plus Christmas Carols and Hymns. Those hymns were part of our lives, we lived in a small village surrounded by farmland, We Plow the Fields and Scatter had real meaning. Living on an island as Britain is, the sea is also part of the culture. We lived in Deal in Kent on the East coast for a while, just a couple of miles out from shore lie the Goodwin Sands which rise to a few feet below sea level. Ships would run aground from time to time, specially at night in stormy weather whereupon we’d be woken by distress rockets exploding and the lifeboat, manned by volunteers from the herring boatmen would be launched to the rescue of the ships crew. We would sing ‘For Those in Peril on the Sea’ with a sense of dread, feeling the helplessness of those seamen. Mustn’t forget what is a great song for kids, All Things Bright and Beautiful. It took a while to find the old version we used, found Harry Secombe singing it. Now Harry S was a member of the famous Goons, a fore runner of sorts of Monty Python who did a parody of it, All Things Dull and Ugly , any atheist will find it hilarious, for others, don’t take life so seriously. What makes it funny too are the Cockney urchin voices, compared to the super refined diction of the usual English choirboy. And of course There is a Green Hill Far Away, when I was seven years old this one gave me a sadness I still feel when I hear it. Partly from the words and what they portray and partly from the music. The sophistication of the melody which in my unmusical state I take to be shifts to the minor keys should be compared to the simple songs kids get now from childrens’ tv shows in which by the way they don’t even employ people who can sing. I guess that’s part of the dumbing down so that kids who can’t sing don’t have their little feelings hurt because they can’t sing in tune, the result of that you can see by the thousand on American Idol.

In Passing.

Well this is cool and shows that the English haven’t lost all their old traits of odd ball eccentricity that made them English. The first steam train to be built for almost fifty years made its first trip.

Oh my, because I’d posted this to check if the pic appeared, the other four items I’d just spent 45 mins working on didn’t get saved and so got lost! Ah well, c’est la vie and manana and all that.

Reality Check: ‘No F*!*king Backbone’

Via Ace of Spades

Wouldn’t you just love to have this dude going in front of the Senate and giving them a similar reality check. In fact, I’d pay damn good money to see this man up in Nancy Putrid Pelosi’s face. Actually, that would be priceless.

Cheney Unplugged

This I will enjoy. Not the terror that Obama is ushering in, which is the main thrust of Cheney’s Politico interview. I’m reverting to my old liberal habit of denial for at least a few more days on that one. I mean, I already know that our enemies are circling, smelling fresh meat, licking their lips, watching Obama castrate our defenses while tying America’s hands behind her back, as if preparing to offer us up for rape. My stomach needs to settle a bit more before I contemplate the latest maneuvers by Russia, N Korea, Venezuela, Cuba, Iran, and China, et al, all vying for the most advantageous position from which to violate us.

Cheney Measures Obama

No, the part of the interview that I am focusing on is the part where Cheney is described as “willing and even eager to spar with the new administration and its supporters over the issues he cares most about.” The vision of Cheney unleashed on the House of Marxists is wonderful to contemplate. I.can.not.wait.

The interview, less than two weeks after the Bush administration ceded power to Obama, found the man who is arguably the most controversial — and almost surely the most influential — vice president in U.S. history in a self-vindicating mood.

He expressed confidence that files will some day be publicly accessible offering specific evidence that waterboarding and other policies he promoted — over sharp internal dissent from colleagues and harsh public criticism — were directly responsible for averting new Sept. 11-style attacks.

Not content to wait for a historical verdict, Cheney said he is set to plunge into his own memoirs, feeling liberated to describe behind-the-scenes roles over several decades in government now that the “statute of limitations has expired” on many of the most sensitive episodes.

His comments made unmistakable that Cheney — likely more than former President Bush, who has not yet given post-White House interviews — is willing and even eager to spar with the new administration and its supporters over the issues he cares most about.
(Source)

Raping America Is Wearing the Obamas Out

“We got out! They let us out!” Mrs. Obama said as the kids and their teachers laughed.”
That has stuck in my craw ever since I read it earlier. The Obama’s want out, do they? Well, don’t let the door slam you in the ass on your way, losers.

After hearing that Obama is extending children’s health care to illegals and that Putrid Pelosi is so orgasmic from pondering America’s dire future that she has apparently succumbed to delirium, my craw is about full, so I’ll give you Gunslinger’s deft treatment of this topic. I am presently choking.

I pretty much swore I wasn’t going to use a lot of energy pointing out the thoroughgoing hypocrisy of the Slobbering Media’s relative coverage of Bush and Zero. But this is so reminiscent of the visual on 9/11/01, when Bush was endlessly excoriated and mocked that it’s just too hard to resist.

With his administration floundering, with his cabinet and other appointees a joke among observers to the point that 2 weeks in Zero has to apologize for ‘screwing up’…while leaving his clearly unprepared Press Secretary to fumble even softball questions from the Washington Fan Club, with Pelosi warning about 500 million (!) people losing their jobs every month, and his precious self demanding instantaneous passage of his Smoking Bacon bill or else the apocalypse will be upon us…

…he leaves the seat of power to read stories to school children.

“We were just tired of being in the White House,” –says the guy who has spent 20 years running full-tilt-boogie to get into it…after being it for two whole weeks.

The cognitive dissonance is vibrating my ears off…but the Slobbering Media thinks it’s cute.
Gunslingers Journal

I Have Chosen My God

“Finally bought a bible – at one time I understood it’s power, before I, in anger, put it, and the God therein, aside. But islam has succeeded in converting me back to Christianity. Never has so profound a vision of man been pronounced than that made by the Christian God. allah sneers and berates his “children” while God deigns to make then a little higher than angels. Marxism, communism, socialism seek to render man impotent and beggarly. God seeks to elevate man and offer His power for our use. America was God’s stage to demonstrate the efficacy and genius of a people obedient to and blessed by Him. In that we Americans have failed him miserably.

fresh life

Why did I ever choose the darker vision. Why does the world? My move away from darkness has been a slow turning to the light. Perhaps too slow. But at least I now know the truth. In the end, that is all any of us have. The truth and the freedom to accept it or deny it in our hearts.”

I recently left that comment at the blog The Midnight Sun. The battle of good vs evil has been faithfully recorded there for, well, I do not know how many years. I discovered it about a year ago and, frankly, it was sometimes difficult clicking that link because I knew the writers there would have foraged through the putrefaction bubbling throughout the world and found yet another demonstration of the power that evil exerts when there is none to stand against it.

Because of the Draconian measures to shackle free speech gaining momentum in virtually every nation, Midnight Sun has chosen to cease publication. Not only that, they have removed years of work from online. And those archives are a great loss to those who have not yet seen the light. The darkness that Midnight Sun made their readers examine is sometimes exactly what is necessary to push people towards that light, like a drowning swimmer breaking for the surface. I wish I had cached the many articles once available, but the fact is, I need only read the news on the net to chronicle the same advance of evil that Midnight Sun did so faithfully.

As I say above, my turning around to light is a slow circle, a gradual change of course impeded by my stubbornness and rebellious nature. But turning I am. For I have no power against what approaches, but every bone in my body tells me something evil this way comes. So yes, I have chosen a god and he isn’t Barack Hussein Obama. He is the God described in a book that has yet to be proven false in 2000 years. He is called, or so I understand, Yahweh, Jehovah -and the Jews, God’s chosen – will not even speak His name.

It is a habit of mine to distill things down to a common denominator. No matter all the erudite writings and philosophies that have held sway in the course of man’s progress away from barbarism, they all are in response to a battle first chronicled in that old book, the bible. And all that emerges from men’s mind and heart, all that issues from our breed, is in response to that battle. The billions of words over thousands of years that have labored to scribe the parameters of this endless struggle come down to these few in Deuteronomy which, for me, is the distillation, the gist of what is set before me. A choice, if you will.

I call heaven and earth to record this day against you, that I have set before you life and death, blessing and cursing: therefore choose life, that both thou and thy seed may live.

And so, as we now totter towards collapse, and for all the arcane theories of the demigods who now hold this globe in their grasp – their social engineering, their ridiculous postures of omniscience and omnipotence, for all the deluge of warring words – it still hearkens back, it still boils down to good vs evil, God vs Satan, life vs death.

I feel a very strong urgency to choose the side with whom I will stand. And I will stand with the God of the bible, the God of the Christian and the Jew. I hear He is one that will take this virulent anger that now ravages my soul and bend it to His will for purposes far superior than those my I could conjure. It may well be that I don’t make the grade. I don’t know. Time will tell. Come what may, I’d rather serve a God who has always given me the choice to serve him rather than the man-god obama who can not tolerate a will that is not subservient to the state.

Obama’s Garbage

When I first read the headline below, I thought they had gathered up all of the Obama supporters. Alas, it was just the refuse that they had left behind. Question remains, how are they going to clean up a post Obama America, ’cause it ain’t gonna look much better.

Post Obama America

One Hundred Tons of Garbage Collected After Obama Inauguration

The scene looked more like the leftovers of a massive college frat party.

Heaps of plastic bottles, food wrappers, soda cans, and newspapers, which blanketed the National Mall Wednesday morning, were a stark contrast to the stateliness and splendor of President Barack Obama’s inaugural ceremony a day before.

One hundred tons of trash were collected by city and federal sanitation workers, according to Department of Public Works public information officer Linda Grant.

In comparison, 40 tons of garbage were collected in New York City’s Time Square on New Year’s Day 2009 — after one million people attended the celebration — according to the city’s Department of Sanitation.

Grant said Washington’s massive inaugural cleanup effort began at 6 p.m. Tuesday.

“By 5:30 a.m. Wednesday morning, we collected about 90 tons of the garbage,” she said.

via One Hundred Tons of Garbage Collected After Obama Inauguration .

H/T: Free Republic

A Symbiotic and Dangerous Tryst: Islam and the Left

I have been playing around with different templates and when switching back to this one, I lost the ability to display the comments left on the “About Sassy” page. Thus, G. Singer’s comment was buried, my apologies,  but I do want to respond to it.
G.Singer

Sass: you make the mistake of equating ‘lefty’, ‘liberal’, ‘progressive’, or whatever, with being cozy with Islam. I freely admit that most of my family and friends are progressive, Dem-voting left-leaners. And every one of us supports Israel to the fullest, despises the Islamofascist crap taking over parts of the world, and supports justified wars like the one in Afghanistan. I feel the same anger you feel about Obama whenever another of our great servicemen or women dies in Iraq. I come from a military family (Uncle is 2-star General, dad was in 101st airborne) and I am very educated about what war means. I try not to lump all Republicans into one net of “evil fascist constitution shredders.’ It’s hard, I try. Maybe you should try to see ‘leftists’ as individuals, too.

‘lefty’, ‘liberal’, ‘progressive’

For the sake of this conversation  I’ll use the term leftist.

The left cozy with Islam? If they ain’t cozy, then they sure as hell don’t rub each other the wrong way in the ideological bed that they share. CAIR and other muslim apologists are riding on the coattail of every so-call “social justice” organization that they can hustle, using the same lawsuit intimidation tactics as Jessie Jackson or the ACLU. And their objectives are quite similar; the eradication of Christian influence, the destruction of Israel, censorship under the guise of “hate speech” laws, the end of profiling, a diminished role for America in the world, destruction of capitalism, accommodation to the third world and the middle east – to name just a few items where the left and islamists are in concordance.

The left and islam share the same ideological root system. Call it nihilism, call it post-modern, progressivism, call it anything you wish -  it is a root that produces a virulently anti-human, anti-freedom fruit. You have a selection of totalitarian doctrines that all contend that humans must be collected and herded like cattle, seen as economical units, expendable when too costly to maintain. It all denigrates man into beings less than animals, bereft of individual will and value. Indeed the left elevates animals and reviles man. Muslims and leftists both espouse ideologies that would reduce man to utter misery.

The writer of this post says it quite well. I would add that it is far from an isolated opinion, but the consensus of those who have spent the last several years studying this.

The onset of the 21st Century saw a revival of Leftist radicalism. While the old 1968 hippy generation saw it’s ideals drowned in a cesspool of drugs and experiments in social licentiousness, Post modernism has shed itself of all values: life is futile, man’s efforts are absurd in their presumptuousness and arrogance.

This radical Left movement is just as ready for a scorched earth as radical Islamism is. Whereas the former have nothing left to lose after their ideals collapsed over their ears, the latter are urged to self-sacrifice for a global victory of the collective Ummah. It is a marriage quite literally made in hell: both are negators of the life-force, but for different reasons.

A culture’s implicit sense of life is all-pervasive. Theirs has translated into the negative territory of nihilism and death-worship. For Muslims man is a mere plaything in the hands of a fickle God. To Postmodernists man is a drifter in a purposeless, unknowable universe whose fate is determined by chaos and glandular secretions.

And this is how we got here.
Let’s Get it Right

I try not to lump all Republicans into one net of “evil fascist constitution shredders”.

Certainly you jest. With Obama on record as having taken shots at the constitution throughout his public career, including in his latest overblown speech – surely you do not think the constitution is now safe? And the constitution has been being “shredded” over the course of many decades by all political persuasions – persuasions that all share the same root of antipathy towards the west.

Maybe you should try to see ‘leftists’ as individuals, too.

I do. They are individuals whom I oppose.  I see no grounds for compromise and I care not a whit if a leftist rants  against islam at the top of his lungs if he refuses to see the similarities between it and socialism or Marxism. Of what good are their protests, ala Christopher Hitchens, if they turn around and advocate for a form of government as intrusive and dehumanizing?

Perhaps the left does not recognize their spiritual cousins because they still are carrying around the debunked and discredited Edward Said Orientalism model. Perhaps because they continue to reduce a blood thirsty, beheading jihadist down to the level of an annoying criminal. Maybe, because the left is incapable of naming evil, they are unable to discern the evil in their own and islam’s doctrines. Whatever the reason for the blind spot, the fact remains that, short of divine intervention, the left and islam will lead this world to hell. How they destroy each other along the way will make an interesting, if tragic, sideshow.

And perhaps the collusion between the Hamas jihadists and the world’s leftest communities escaped your attention.  Looks pretty damn cozy to me.

No one shouted “Go Back to the Oven” at the pro-Hamas rallies held in Atlanta in the last few days, but the sentiment was echoed in the messages their organizers promoted. Islamic fundamentalists spouted their hatred at the gatherings far-Left activists called to protest Israel’s self-defense. The unholy alliance met at the CNN Center January 3rd and at the Israeli consulate the previous Tuesday, where CAIR members and Communists blocked traffic, endorsed the annihilation of Israel, dressed in terrorist garb, extolled those plotting a new Holocaust, and equated Jewish self-defense with Nazi genocide.

The tone should be no surprise considering who organized these events. The organizational force behind both was the Atlanta chapter of the International Action Center (IAC). An e-mail from the IAC indicated that Emory Advocates for Justice in Palestine, Athens for Justice in Palestine, and other “peace and justice organizations” would be involved. On site, I discovered these “peace and justice organizations” included the once-laudable Amnesty International – alongside, the International Socialist Organization and the Revolutionary Communist Party. (The RCP publication Revolution were also represented.)
Continue reading….Hate on the Home Front

I’ll end with this piece. It speaks for itself.

Urban radicalism in Europe as portrayed by the recent riots in Athens is a constant worry of the European security services, since there is ample evidence of wider connections between radicals and terrorists.

There are two major themes to be looked upon. Firstly the relationship between the extreme-leftist terrorist groups that operate in the so-called “Mediterranean axis” – France, Italy, Greece and Spain – and secondly, the connection of these groups to Islamic extremists.

The radical – anarchist movement in Europe is pretty strong and well organized with thousands of loyal supporters. Back in 2005, the riots in Paris proved that the radicals and second-generation Muslim immigrants in France were able to form the political agenda of that time, although they were not successful in preventing Sarkozy’s ascendance to power 18 months later.
[...]

In Italy, the local press revealed in 2006 that the remains of the Red Brigades were forming a strategy of collaboration with Islamists in order to create a common front against Western capitalism. The information came after the Italian intelligence services tapped the phones of the Italian terrorist group shortly before the group was about to launch new attacks.

In the same country, popular youth radical magazines such as “Voce” propagate with great enthusiasm the works of Hizballah and Hamas. It is also public knowledge that radical NGOs across continental Europe support illegal immigration into Europe and express a great interest in attacking any traditional aspects of contemporary Western civilization and culture.

Lorenzo Vidino, an Italian writer and security analyst describes a “flirt between the radical Left and the Islamists in Europe that tends to become an open cooperation in the streets of every main European metropolis….” Continue reading….Urban Radicalism in Europe & Terrorism

Kissing Obama Ass: No Term Limits and Limitless SS Protection

Did you know that the weaselly traitor Harry Reid made recommendations that grant Obama secret service protection for his entire miserable life. Why? Because America is such a racist nation.

When the US Secret Service first extended protection to Barack Obama on May 3, 2007, an unusual exception was made.

Kissing Obama's Special Ass

Under a law enacted by the US Congress in 1997, Secret Service protection for former presidents would henceforth e be limited to 10 years; previously the protection had been for life.
Mr Obama will be the exception.

He will have protection for life according to a decision by the Secret Service last year following a recommendation by Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid.

Chances are that Mr Obama will forever be dogged by racially motivated threats from homegrown terrorists or bigots. Racist threats were never far away during last year’s electoral campaign.

Owing to Mr Obama’s special circumstances, his security within the United States will almost certainly be at another level.(Source)

Yes, Obama is just so damn special. In fact, he is so precious that Rep. José Serrano [D, NY-16] is already attempting to make it possible for Obama to desecrate the White House beyond the possible eight years his sorry ass is likely to be in it.

On January 6, 2009 – the first day in session by the 111th Congress — a joint resolution was introduced into the House of Representatives by Mr. Jose’ E. Serrano of New York (D) which was referred to the Committee on the Judiciary
[...]
An amendment to the Constitution of the United States has been proposed to repeal the twenty-second article of amendment, thereby removing the limitation on the number of terms an individual may serve as President.

Resolved by the Senate and House of Representatives of the United States of America in Congress assembled (two-thirds of each House concurring therein), That the following article is proposed as an amendment to the Constitution of the United States, which shall be valid to all intents and purposes as part of the Constitution when ratified by the legislatures of three-fourths of the several States within seven years after the date of its submission for ratification:

–Article–

“The twenty-second article of amendment to the Constitution of the United States is hereby repealed.” (source)

HR RES 5

Now please. Isn’t this what the left accused Bush of planning? Projection is thy middle name, libtards.

Dance and Dust

Ok, Ligneus. This is the video I mentioned to you and , truth be told, I’m not all that certain why I am so taken with it.  I understand it was released a few years ago, but I have been in limbo musically for quite a long time, not listening to any, so I missed it.

However,  of late I’ve taken a liking to Fatboy Slim and in pursuing the tune “Praise”, I came across the video above. I know nothing about dance and I don’t much care if these dancers are “real”. Given that dance seems to have become reduced to gyrating gelatinous-like buttocks and thrusting pelvises, I find their seemingly awkward exuberance cleansing. Because it isn’t all about sex, this human experience – but you’d have a hard time deducting that from our genitalia obsessed, and , in my mind, exceedingly boring pop culture.
It occurs to me that such preposterous good fun, such benign irreverence will become extinct.  Already is, actually. One can not flatten the world and expect creativity to thrive. And multiculturalism – this soulless devotion to what is deemed “correct” -  flattens the world, bleaches it dry of color, rives it of vital creativity. In a world where authentic excellence is feared, brilliance in any medium will not be tolerated.  Iconoclasts, unscripted story tellers, truth – all will become rare.  Is rare.

So I love this piece. It is arrogant and playful, graceless and eloquent and American, very very American – also soon to be  deemed rare as the dreary machinations of collectivist control shreds us all to dust and grit.

I best listen to it again. It always manages to make me smile.

Update from Ligneus

The video I mentioned in my comment wouldn’t embed there, so here it is. See my comment first!

I’m not a big fan of……..

…..automobiles, I’d nearly go as far as to say I don’t like them very much, I mean as objects, they are very useful and I wouldn’t want to be without one but I don’t like them in the way I like plants and trees, things made of silver, musical instruments, non quartz watches, fine books, Tang Dynasty horses….
But here is one , a Bugatti 57S, discovered after fifty years sittine in a garage in England that is as fine looking as a Stradivarius violin or a piece of furniture by Chippendale. Take a look at it and then think Hummer, it will demonstrate how ugly most cars are. I want one!

What do you think Zee? Can you imagine tooling around Cincinnati it it?

Update. Another article in the Daily Mail with more pics. Here’s an idea, how about GM making a car like this? Beats the hell out of their current models.

This and That.

So much for my ‘post a day’ I promised. By the time I’m able to do something I’m too tired to concentrate and when you consider I was out before seven this morning shoveling snow it isn’t too surprising. It was -18C too, I shoulda emigrated to Australia. Too bad we only have one life to try things out with.

Something amusing. I got one of those Panettone cakes at Christmas with actual instructions!

Serve the Panettone with ambient temperature.
Before cutting remove the paper that winds it.
To cut the Panettone use classical bread knife.
You cut the slices and gently serve.

These instructions came with an LED flashlight.

Instruction for power operation.
1. Press once, 3LEDs light’s on.
2. Press twice, 3LEDs light’s off.
3. Repeat the above steps for the function you wish to operate.

Well I thought it was quite funny.

This came with a calendar from the real estate person who will be finding us a house.

The Mayonnaise Jar and 2 Cups of Coffee.

When things in your life seem almost too much to handle, when 24 hours in a day are not enough, remember the mayonnaise jar and the 2 cups of coffee…..

A professor stood before his philosophy class and had some items in front of him. When the class began, wordlessly, he picked up a very large and empty mayonnaise jar and proceeded to fill it wiht golf balls. He then asked the students if the jar was full. They agreed that it was.

The professor then picked up a box of pebbles and poured them into the jar. He shook hte jar lightly. The pebbles rolled into the open areas between the golf balls. He then asked the students again if the jar was full. They agreed it was.

The professor next picked up a box of sand and poured it inot the ar. Of course, the sand filled up every thing else. He asked once more if the jar was full. The students responded with a unanimous yes.

The professor then produced two cups of coffee from under the table and poured the entire contents into the jar, effectively filling the empty space between the sand. The students laughed. ‘Now’ said the professor, as the laughter subsided, ‘I want you to recognize that this jar represents your life.’

‘The golf balls are the important things – your God, your family, your children, your health, your friend, and your favourite passions – things that if everything else was lost and only they remained, your life would still be full. The pebbles are the other things that matter like your job, your house and your car. The sand is everything else, the small stuff.’

‘If you put the sand into the jar first,’ he continued, ‘there is no room for the pebbles or the golf balls. The same goes for life. If you spend all your time and energy on the small stuff, you will never have room for the things that are important to you.’

‘Pay attention to the things that are critical to your happiness. Play with your children. Take time to get medical checkups. Take your partner out to dinner. Play another 18. There will always be time to clean the house and fix the disposal. Take care of the golf ballls first, the things that really matter. Set your priorities. The rest is just sand.’

One of the students raised her hand and inquired what the coffee represented. The professor smiled. ‘I’m glad you asked. It just goes to show you that no matter how full your life may seem, there’s always room for a couple of cups of coffee with a friend.’

So it’s a bit ‘Oprah-ish’ but it’s good to be reminded once in a while.

For any opera fans out there, I found this battle of the sopranos singing The Bell Song from Delibes’ Lakme.

The high note in this is E natural, but in this next one, Ingeborg Hallstein goes to high G, just get any dogs out of earshot.

So that’s a bit what I’m up to at present, I wanted to comment on the Gaza ‘war’, but so much is being said and written, it seems superfluous for me to comment, I just can’t believe that so many don’t ‘get it’, that there will be no peace until Hamas and Hezbollah and all the other Hell’s Agents in the middle east are destroyed, the way the US Military did Al Qaida in Iraq. There is an interesting take on it from Wretchard at Belmont Club commenting on one of his own posts:

Maybe the root of this conflict isn’t “land” or “statehood” or even religion. Maybe its about preserving fighting and terrorism as a way of life; as a business. Palestine is an alibi for anything, but mostly it is the justification for a mode of employment, a whole series of professions, a whole raft of contractors, a self-sustaining funding network that could not exist without continuous and never-ending war. This monster has already consumed the Palestinians; stolen their future, made a mockery of their hopes.

But sometimes I wonder if the West is any better off. How much “aid”, how many diplomatic jobs, how many tenured positions in universities, how many activist’s careers, how much research and development, weapons manufacturing, military training programs — how many jobs depend on keeping this abomination going.

This is too much of a good thing for everyone except the ordinary Israeli and Arab for the music to stop. Sometimes I wonder whether it is any more feasible to finish this war than it is to stop illegal immigration. Maybe nobody really wants either a fence or victory to happen. That would be too simple. One thing seems certain: whatever the UN or the diplomats propose isn’t going to make a dime’s worth of difference. One can’t read the drivel coming from the UN without wondering whether they are joking, mad or moronic. And no, Obama’s not going to fix it. We are in the real world equivalent of Groundhog Day. What worries me is the suspicion that some people want us to stay there.

There is something worse than war. It is war without end masquerading as a “peace process”.

H/T American Digest.

Happy New Year everyone!

Jane Siberry.

Jane Siberry is a Canadian singer/songwriter who achieved a fair measure of popularity in the 80′s with her first few albums but then evolved into a more jazz like mode and became much less visible though she has a very loyal band of followers, among which is me! I met her about a year ago and she is just as sweet and gentle in person as she appears on stage. She is also one of those rare artists who cannot be pigeon holed, she travels her own road and a strange one it is at times.

Love is Everything.

maybe it was to learn how to love
maybe it was to learn how to leave
maybe it was for the games we played
maybe it was to learn how to choose
maybe it was to learn how to lose
maybe it was for the love we made

love is everything they said it would be
love made sweet and sad the same
but love forgot to make me too blind to see
you’re chickening out aren’t you?
you’re bangin’ on the beach like an old tin drum
i can’t wait ’til you make the whole kingdom come
so i’m leaving

maybe it was to learn how to fight
maybe it was for the lesson in pride
maybe it was the cowboys’ ways
maybe it was to learn not to lie
maybe it was to learn how to cry
maybe it was for the love we made

love is everything they said it would be
love did not hold back the reins
but love forgot to make me too blind to see
you’re chickening out aren’t you?
you’re bangin’ on the beach like an old tin drum
i can’t wait til you make the whole kingdom come
so i’m leaving

*first he turns to you*
*then he turns to her*
*so you try to hurt him back*
*but it breaks your body down*
*so you try to love bigger*
*bigger still*
*but it…it’s too late*

so take a lesson from the strangeness you feel
and know you’ll never be the same
and find it in your heart to kneel down and say
i gave my love didn’t i?
and i gave it big…sometimes
and i gave it in my own sweet time
i’m just leaving

Unlike the very famous also Canadian Joni Mitchell whose banal lyrics such as ‘ something’s lost and something’s gained’, JS tells, albeit tentatively, what you gain from loss and in such a way as to make it heartbreaking but also with a mature acceptance that says, as they say, ‘shit happens’. There is also a sense of an amused detachment, a looking on from the outside. Sometimes lines seem a bit ‘non-sequitur-ish’ but there can be mystery in that too, not everything can be explained away. Reminds me of the poet Philip Larkin on being shocked at seeing his father’s name on his tombstone which was the same as his, “reeling away and there came the image of vomiting into a homburger hat”. Try to figure that one out. Maybe it’s part of the attribute of being a poet that these images come unbidden as do words and phrases that make sense on a sub-conscious level.

Then there is the strange music and harmonies she produces, it may take a little getting used to, as does her voice which seems to be one of those people either like or don’t like, just one of those peculiar things about music, or more about the musical tastes of people.

So try this one, see what you think.

I also like to mention that without a decent sound system on the computer it doesn’t do justice to music.

Sarah Palin v Conservative Snobs.

The Wall Street Journal has this article on why the conservative snobs are wrong about Palin and relates how she compares to Margaret Thatcher. I’ll post a couple of quotes, but if someone could let me know if the link works and if not I’ll post the whole thing. Oh hell, why don’t I just post it but would still like to to know if the link works, it works on my computer but then I have a subscription. So here it is:

I know Maggie Thatcher. The two women have a lot in common.

By JOHN O’SULLIVAN

Being listed in fourth place for Time magazine’s “Person of the Year,” as Sarah Palin was for 2008, sounds a little like being awarded the Order of Purity (Fourth Class). But it testifies to something important.

Though regularly pronounced sick, dying, dead, cremated and scattered at sea, Mrs. Palin is still amazingly around. She has survived more media assassination attempts than Fidel Castro has survived real ones (Cuban official figure: 638). In her case, one particular method of assassination is especially popular — namely, the desperate assertion that, in addition to her other handicaps, she is “no Margaret Thatcher.”

Very few express this view in a calm or considered manner. Some employ profanity. Most claim to be conservative admirers of Mrs. Thatcher. Others admit they had always disliked the former British prime minister until someone compared her to “Sarracuda” — at which point they suddenly realized Mrs. Thatcher must have been absolutely brilliant (at least by comparison).

Inevitably, Lloyd Bentsen’s famous put-down of Dan Quayle in the 1988 vice-presidential debate is resurrected, such as by Paul Waugh (in the London Evening Standard) and Marie Cocco (in the Washington Post): “Newsflash! Governor, You’re No Maggie Thatcher,” sneered Mr. Waugh. Added Ms. Coco, “now we know Sarah Palin is no Margaret Thatcher — and no Dan Quayle either!”

Jolly, rib-tickling stuff. But, as it happens, I know Margaret Thatcher. Margaret Thatcher is a friend of mine. And as a matter of fact, Margaret Thatcher and Sarah Palin have a great deal in common.

They are far from identical; they rose in different political systems requiring different skills. As a parliamentarian, Mrs. Thatcher needed forensic and debating skills which her training in Oxford politics and as a tax lawyer gave her. Mrs. Palin is a good speaker, but she needs to hone her debating tactics if she is to match those of the Iron Lady.

On the other hand, Mrs. Palin rose in state politics to jobs requiring executive ability. Her successful conduct of the negotiations with Canada, Canadian provinces and American states over the Alaska pipeline was a larger executive task than anything handled by Mrs. Thatcher until she entered the Cabinet and, arguably, until she became prime minister.

Mrs. Thatcher’s most senior position until then had been education secretary in the government of Edward Heath where, as she conceded in her memoirs, she lacked real executive power. Her political influence within that government was so small that it took 17 months for her to get an interview with him. Even then, a considerate civil servant assured Heath that others would be present to make the meeting less “boring.” Her main political legacy from that job was the vitriolic slogan, “Margaret Thatcher, Milk-Snatcher,” thrown at her by the left because of a budgetary decision she had opposed to charge some children for school meals and milk. It was the single most famous thing about her when she defeated Heath for the Tory leadership in 1975.

At this point she became almost as “controversial” as Sarah Palin. Heath, for example, made it plain privately that he would not serve under her. And Sir Ian Gilmour, an intellectual leader of the Tory “wets,” privately dismissed her as a “Daily Telegraph woman.” There is no precise equivalent in American English, but “narrow, repressed suburbanite” catches the sense.

Mrs. Thatcher attracted such abuse for two reasons. First, she was seen by the chattering classes as representing a blend of provincial conservative values and market economics — Middle England as it has come to be called — against their own metropolitan liberalism. They thought this blend was an economic dead-end in a modern complex society and a political retreat into futile nostalgia. Of course, they failed to notice that their modern complex society was splintering under their statist burdens even as they denounced her extremism.

Second, Margaret Thatcher was not yet Margaret Thatcher. She had not won the 1979 election, recovered the Falklands, reformed trade union law, defeated the miners, and helped destroy Soviet communism peacefully.

Things like that change your mind about a girl. But they also take time, during which she had to turn her instinctive beliefs into intellectually coherent policies against opposition inside and outside her own party. Like Mrs. Palin this year, Mrs. Thatcher knew there were serious gaps in her knowledge, especially of foreign affairs. She recruited experts who shared her general outlook (such as Robert Conquest and Hugh Thomas) to tutor her on these things. Even so she often seemed very alone in the Tory high command.

As a parliamentary sketch writer for the Daily Telegraph (and a not very repressed suburbanite), I watched Mrs. Thatcher’s progress as opposition leader. She had been a good performer in less exalted positions. But initially she faltered. Against the smooth, condescending Prime Minister James Callaghan in particular she had a hard time. In contrast to his chuckling baritone she sounded shrill when she attacked. But she lowered her tone (vocally not morally), took lessons in presentation from (among others) Laurence Olivier, and prepared diligently for every debate and Question Time.

I can still recall her breakthrough performance in a July 1977 debate on the Labour government’s collapsing economy. She dominated the House of Commons so wittily that the next day the Daily Mail’s acerbic correspondent, Andrew Alexander, began his report: “If Mrs. Thatcher were a racehorse, she would have been tested for drugs yesterday.” She was now on the way to becoming the world-historical figure who today is the gold standard of conservative statesmanship.

Mrs. Palin has a long way to go to match this. Circumstances may never give her the chance to do so. Even if she gets that chance, she may lack Mrs. Thatcher’s depths of courage, firmness and stamina — we only ever know such things in retrospect.

But she has plenty of time, probably eight years, to analyze America’s problems, recruit her own expert advice, and develop conservative solutions to them. She has obvious intelligence, drive, serious moral character, and a Reaganesque likability. Her likely Republican rivals such as Bobby Jindal and Mitt Romney, not to mention Barack Obama, have most of these same qualities too. But she shares with Mrs. Thatcher a very rare charisma. As Ronnie Millar, the latter’s speechwriter and a successful playwright, used to say in theatrical tones: She may be depressed, ill-dressed and having a bad hair day, but when the curtain rises, out onto the stage she steps looking like a billion dollars. That’s the mark of a star, dear boy. They rise to the big occasions.

Mrs. Palin had four big occasions in the late, doomed Republican campaign: her introduction by John McCain in Ohio, her speech at the GOP convention, her vice-presidential debate with Sen. Joe Biden, and her appearance on Saturday Night Live. With minimal preparation, she rose to all four of them. That’s the mark of a star.

If conservative intellectuals, Republican operatives and McCain “handlers” can’t see it, then so much the worse for them.

I wonder just what these snobs and the media idiots think they’re up to trashing a woman like this because they can’t see that there is more to being a leader than a degree from Harvard on your CV. Honesty and integrity go a long way, something they are no doubt unfamiliar with.

As a little follow up to my comments on Obama last night, and knowing Zee hasn’t been fooled by his move to the middle, another who thinks likewise is Evan Sayet, he of the famous lecture on ‘How Modern Liberals Think’. If you haven’t seen that yet, you’re in for a treat.

Arrest Republic Windows Workers, Don’t Support Them

These workers need, at least, to be arrested for trespassing or something. They certainly would be if they were “occupying” my factory. I’m reading about Republic Windows, a company who apparently won’t even be permitted to go out of business in peace. No the “workers” are staging some kind of sit-in. I really do not give a a flying f***k about these workers. Companies go out of business everyday. People lose jobs. It is not some rare affliction to lose pensions, benefits, lose it all. It’s called life.

The company I worked for a few years back closed it’s doors for far more frivolous reasons than failure to meet their financial commitments. A dispute between partners left 25 people without a job with little notice, a few of which were very close to retirement. It would never have occurred to any of us to occupy the premises until we got what we thought we were owed.

One aspect of this socialist drama that I find ironic is that apparently most of the workers currently trespassing on private property over at Republic are “Latinos”. I think they should give Bank of America the same kind of latitude Bank of America gave their illegal compatriots. (That’s another thing. I would love to see how many of these protesting workers need be rounded up and deported.) But I digress. Bank of America has acted as some sort of benevolent surrogate Uncle Sam to illegals for years now, issuing them credit cards and giving them mortgages that they had neither the right nor qualifications to obtain. Now they want them to underwrite a failing business too?

Then Obama’s bloviating buddy Rod Blagojevich dares to challenge Bank of America? I wonder if he made his threats before or after they handcuffed him.

Today Obama’s ally, Illinois Governor Rod Blagojevich, ordered all state agencies to stop doing business with Bank of America to pressure the company to make the loans. (Say, do any state employees have Bank of America accounts or lines of credit?)

Suppose that Bank of America knuckles under to the threat, and makes a loan to cover the severance pay. The workers get that pay and… Republic Windows and Doors’ plant is still out of business. The workers got what they were owed, but how is Bank of America going to get its loan paid back? The workers ought to get what their contract guarantees, but that’s the responsibility of Republic Windows, not Bank of America.

Now, we got into this mess when banks started making loans that defaulted. Bank of America finds the economic prospects for Republic Windows and Doors dire. Blagojevich and the protesting workers are arguing that because they took government assistance, Bank of America ought to ignore their judgment of the company’s prospects and make the loan, even though the company is likely to default on that loan… putting Bank of America back into the situation that started the mess and creating the reason they needed the government help in the first place.

The union rep on CNN says, “you have a choice, Bank of America, you can either go in and liquidate, sell off the equipment inside, or you can do the right thing.” The “right thing,” apparently, is to gamble with the taxpayer’s bail out money on a company with lousy prospects.

She says “the workers are not going to go quietly.” Great. Thuggery and threats.(source)

No they won’t go quietly, and if this commenter on a socialist site is typical, this sit-in will not be the last we witness as America continues walking over the socialist cliff.

I think these folks need to take a page from the Argentine playbook, where more than 200 companies were taken over by workers (often with goverment approval) and run successfully.

Yes, the Obama government would no doubt approve. After all, the unions bought Obama with 450 million in campaign contributions. They expect “change”.

Sanity Strikes Great Britain

Perhaps there is hope in the world. How rare to see a Western nation acting in it’s own self interest, instead of kowtowing to the multi-culti dictates of the race fetish crowd.

Migrants to Earn Dole and House

IMMIGRANTS will have to EARN the right to UK benefits and council housing under a tough crackdown.

Some will have to wait TEN YEARS before they get a penny in the toughest shake-up of the rules in a generation.

Immigration minister Phil Woolas revealed details in an exclusive interview with The Sun.

All legal economic migrants will first have to win the right to a passport by serving a five-year “probationary citizenship”.

Those who keep out of trouble and do voluntary work will become eligible for benefits one or two years after that.

But any who fail to commit to Britain can be denied handouts for a second five years.

Mr Woolas said: “Entitlement to benefits should be for citizens of our country, not other people.

“If you are a citizen you have earned the right to benefits. People must show they are here to work.”

The bombshell measure will put an end to scandals like the housing of a jobless Afghan family in a £1.2million West London mansion while on £13,000-a-month benefits.

It is included in the new Borders, Immigration and Citizenship Bill, published in January.

Mr Woolas intends to use the system to make it tougher for migrant workers to come here during the recession, safeguarding jobs for Britons.

Mr Woolas said: “We only need foreign workers if there is a clear skill shortage.”

Continue reading….

Food, Land, and Power

America's Land, Not Government Land

Totalitarianism devours the singular, shears off differences, lays low free will, eviscerates individuality. All must now bow down before the collective, to engage in the excruciatingly tedious worship of the amorphous whole. Independent thought is not tolerated, free enterprise is to be destroyed, the right to private property eliminated and our children born into the collective in service to the state.Like cattle, we are to be herded into the collective, weakened, branded and dependent. Given the election results, I’d say that half the country has indicated that they are willing to take their alloted place in the slaughter and slop pens.

But what about those of us who – no how, no way – refuse to submit to the constraints of Obama’s communist rule? I know for damn sure that my extended family is willing to pool our money, buy some land, build our own homes and raise our own food, home school the kids and fight for the return of America. But that very self-sufficiency is what socialism seeks to destroy. Leaving aside the anticipated heightend thrust against parental rights and home schooling, what if, through a variety of prohibitive restrictions, you will not be permitted to grow your own food, what then?

Perhaps that does indeed sound paranoid, but food production is a topic that keeps nagging at me. I have been intrigued by Soros’ interest in food production, which I posted on in Soros, Famine, Energy, and the End of Sovereign Nations.

We also have Obama on record with this idiocy:

“As a consequence, our agriculture sector actually is contributing more greenhouse gases than our transportation sector … and are partly responsible for the explosion in our health care costs because they’re contributing to Type 2 diabetes, stroke and heart disease, obesity, all the things that are driving our huge explosion in health care costs.” ( Source)

In the same post, I lay out the “food dots” that I have collected so far, looking for connections. The rather disturbing article I post below would seem to supply several more dots.

Swat Team conducts food raid in rural Ohio

On Monday, December 1, a SWAT team with semi-automatic rifles entered the private home of the Stowers family in LaGrange, Ohio, herded the family onto the couches in the living room, and kept guns trained on parents, children, infants and toddlers, from approximately 11 AM to 8 PM. The team was aggressive and belligerent. The children were quite traumatized. At some point, the “bad cop” SWAT team was relieved by another team, a “good cop” team that tried to befriend the family. The Stowers family has run a very large, well-known food cooperative called Manna Storehouse on the western side of the greater Cleveland area for many years. [Update]

There were agents from the Department of Agriculture present, one of them identified as Bill Lesho. The search warrant is reportedly suspicious-looking. Agents began rifling through all of the family’s possessions, a task that lasted hours and resulted in a complete upheaval of every private area in the home. Many items were taken that were not listed on the search warrant. The family was not permitted a phone call, and they were not told what crime they were being charged with. They were not read their rights. Over ten thousand dollars worth of food was taken, including the family’s personal stock of food for the coming year. All of their computers, and all of their cell phones were taken, as well as phone and contact records. The food cooperative was virtually shut down. There was no rational explanation, nor justification, for this extreme violation of Constitutional rights.

Presumably Manna Storehouse might eventually be charged with running a retail establishment without a license. Why then the Gestapo-type interrogation for a 3rd degree misdemeanor charge? This incident has raised the ominous specter of a restrictive new era in State regulation and enforcement over the nation’s private food supply.
Continue reading….

A little more reading reveals that this isn’t an isolated incident but prevalent enough that a non-profit, Farm-to-Consumer Legal Defense Fund, has been organized “To defend the freedoms and to broaden the rights of sustainable farmers and their consumers to produce and consume local, nutrient-dense food.” You’ll find advice on “How to Survive a Farm Raid”, or how to recognize government regulators and how to prepare for their strategies. I’ll refer you to The Bovine for more links and far more insight.

It bodes ill for those of us who will seek to move ourselves as far as possible from the claustrophobic and invasive reach of Obammunism.

Part II next post.

Related:
Manna Storehouse
Manna Storehouse Family Update

No Thanksgiving for for America’s Teachers

Along with the sad sacks known as journalists, teachers are on my list of the top 5 most reviled “professionals” for whom I harbor the utmost contempt. In a fine essay that you will relish should you, like I, have contempt for all things politically correct,the inimitable Victor Davis Hanson distills into one paragraph the gist of my disdain.

10. The K-12 public education system is essentially wrecked. No longer can any professor expect an incoming college freshman to know what Okinawa, John Quincy Adams, Shiloh, the Parthenon, the Reformation, John Locke, the Second Amendment, or the Pythagorean Theorem is. An entire American culture, the West itself, its ideas and experiences, have simply vanished on the altar of therapy. This upcoming generation knows instead not to judge anyone by absolute standards but not why so; to remember to say that its own Western culture is no different from, or indeed far worse than, the alternatives; that race, class, and gender are, well, important in some vague sense; that global warming is manmade and very soon will kill us all; that we must have hope and change of some undefined sort; that AIDs is no more a homosexual- than a heterosexual-prone disease; and that the following things and people for some reason must be bad, or at least must in public company be said to be bad in no particular order: Wal-Mart, cowboys, the Vietnam War, oil companies, coal plants, nuclear power, George Bush, chemicals, leather, guns, states like Utah and Kansas, Sarah Palin, vans and SUVs.

Works and Days » Ten Random, Politically Incorrect Thoughts

Obama’s adoring electorate is proof positive of the enervating corrosive affect of “liberal” education in this country. The unraveling of America’s strength can be directly attributed to the dumbing down indoctrination delivered at the behest of the public school system.

And, trust me, the Obamanites want to make damn sure your kid is one of the indoctrinated. Along with speech and gun rights, another extremely critical battle that will have to be waged over the coming years is protecting the sanctity of the family and the inviolate rights of parents to determine their childrens education and belief systems.

A recent incident in California serves as one small illustration of why this battle has to be engaged.

“Racist” children celebrate Thanksgiving by “dehumanizing” American Indians

In yet another case of political correctness run amok, a forty year history of kindergartners dressed as pilgrims and native Americans celebrating Thanksgiving at school has been quashed in Claremont, California, due to four people who complained the celebration used “racist stereotypes” which were “dehumanizing”.
[...]

“It’s demeaning,” Michelle Raheja, the mother of a kindergartner at Condit Elementary School, wrote to her daughter’s teacher. “I’m sure you can appreciate the inappropriateness of asking children to dress up like slaves (and kind slave masters), or Jews (and friendly Nazis), or members of any other racial minority group who has struggled in our nation’s history.” Continue reading….

No, Michelle, you PC addled miscreant, what is inappropriate is teaching a kindergartner that homosexuality is a lifestyle chice. What is inappropriate is denigrating this county’s heritage with your revisionist lies while actively promoting communism to American children. Funny thing is, communism has historically been no friend of homosexuality.

Ironic, isn’t it? In fact,the resurgent communists in Russia are dusting off some old laws that were on the books before the Soviet Union’s fall that would send the pink crowd back into their closets.

No, I don’t think I’ll be extending any thanks or kind wishes towards the multiculturalist zombies presently herding the sheeple through the halls of academia. In my mind, Thanksgiving can not truly be celebrated in this country until they and their progressive comrades recede back to the obscurity that shrouded their ugly presence in this country 100 years ago.

The Tide is Turning.

Just as America takes a step backwards with a re-cycled Clinton administration, [just be thankful it might after all not be a Carter one] a court in Texas has convicted the county’s largest Muslim charity of funneling funds to Hamas.
From an editorial in Investor’s Business Daily.

Jurors read guilty verdicts on all 108 felony charges in the conspiracy — a clean sweep for the Justice Department, which streamlined its case against the Dallas-based Holy Land Foundation after a mistrial last year. It also got a new judge, who allowed previously banned evidence.

Related to this in stating the real ‘root causes’ of Arabic hatred and lefty sympathy for the cause, a must read from Bookwormroom.

Arabs gorge on hate, they roll in it, they breathe it. Jews top the hate list, but any foreigners are hateful enough. Arabs also hate each other, separately and en masse. Their politicians change the direction of their hate as they would change their shirts. Their press is vulgarly base with hate-filled cartoons; their reporting describes whatever hate is now uppermost and convenient. Their radio is a long scream of hate, a call to hate. They teach their children hate in school. They must love the taste of hate; it is their daily bread. And what good has it done them?

There is no future in spending UN money to breed hate. There is no future in nagging or bullying Israel to commit suicide by the admission of a fatal locust swarm of enemies. There is no future in Nasser’s solution, the Holy War against Israel; and we had better make this very clear, very quickly.

That is a quote from a 1961 Atlantic article by Martha Gellhorn which is in part the subject of Bwr’s post.