Ephemeral Isle
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Archives
Tuesday
1 November 2005
Bird Flu Update
As the holiday season approaches, some bird flu outbreak reports are less reliable than others.
Wednesday
2 November 2005
Conviviality
With Ambrose and Maurice it was never a question of whether there was strychnine, but how much.
Thursday
3 November 2005
Serendipity Department
Prof. Milkoff's invention of the Timescope was blemished by his steadfast belief that it was really a cappuccino machine.
Friday
4 November 2005
Happy Guy Fawkes Day
Saturday is Guy Fawkes Day and Ephemeral Isle is celebrating with a good old fashioned bon fire-- though some faint souls have suggested that perhaps the living room of a first-floor flat in Seattle might not be the wisest location for it.
Animal Watch
Hundreds of animals have washed up on the beaches of Sussex, but not to worry; they're cute, cuddly, and wrapped in plastic.
Monday
7 November 2005
Whither Paris?
This is one of my rare serious columns on my one serious topic: the war against Islamofascism. If this sort of thing annoys you, I apologise.
"Don't
mention the war."
This phrase can be seen in one of two ways. It is either a quotation of the funniest line in British television history or it is the standard operating procedure of the mainstream media when it comes to the present battle between civilisation and the forces of Islamofascism.
It's truly amazing to open the daily paper or pull up the web site of a major news service and watch them report on the 7/7 bombings, the attacks on Russian towns, the bombing campaigns in Iraq, the murder of Christian schoolgirls in Indonesia, and, well, the list is much too long to recount here. Suffice it to say, the standard attitude of the press is that each of these is an isolated incident that has absolutely nothing to do with the war for one very simple reason:
The war does not exist.
Take this quote from the Seattle Post-Intelligencer's recent editorial:
The Bush administration is fond of applying the metaphor of war to its attempts to punish and thwart terrorist activities.
Metaphor? When the president of Iran said he wants to see Israel "wiped off the map" he wasn't being metaphorical. Neither was Anjem Choudray of the radical Al-Muhajiroun group in Britain when he declared that "One day the black flag of Islam will be flying over Downing Street," nor was Bin Laden when he said "Every American man is an enemy to us," nor the scores of radical Imams who chant "Death to America, death to the Jews, death to the Christians" at every service. They said exactly what they meant and they made no secret about what they want, which is to kill or enslave as many of us as they can.
There is an old Jewish saying, when someone says he wants to kill you, believe him. Unfortunately, old Jewish sayings don't seem to have much currency with Western news rooms and their political allies. In these journalistic enclaves the poorly-named "War on Terror" is just a catch phrase like "War on Poverty" or "War on Want" or "War on Drugs" and that at the end of the day it's a political football to be kicked around. For them the hunt for Bin Laden and the foiling of Jihadist plans aren't a matter of broad strategies and long-term goals; they are short-term opportunities for scoring points against political adversaries. In this mindset, the doings of Al Qaeda are no more relevant than the details of a farm subsidy bill or a cabinet resignation. It isn't so much a matter of what is happening as what capital can be made out of it. The only problem is that your average farm subsidy bill isn't trying to kill thousands of people at one go and cabinet resignations very rarely have the overthrow of Western civilisation by totalitarian fanatics as the stakes. It is one thing to use a scandal in peacetime to bring down a government you oppose. It is every much another to do so in time of war when a side effect of your politicking is to hand your enemy a victory. It is more another thing to not even admit that you are at war in the first place
That is one of the reasons why the riots that have been spreading across France are so alarming. When the violence first broke out in Clichy-sous-Bois just outside of Paris the press tried to soft-pedal it the same way as they did the recent Birmingham riots and the Danish riots that are going on right now. As far as the fourth estate was concerned, the fighting, vandalism, and car burnings weren't happening-- or if they were, it was just a string of isolated incidents of no consequence. Of course, when these "isolated incidents" went on night after night, spread from town to town, warehouses were torched as were motor cars by the thousands, and ambulances started to get shot at, then the press sat up, took notice, and declared that the whole thing was due to economic deprivation and racism. The fact that these riots were taking place in Muslim, to put it bluntly, ghettos and were perpetrated largely by Muslims was buried far down in the stories or, in the case of the New York Times, not mentioned at all. At any rate, the religious component was regarded as entirely irrelevant.
Now, that little omission might be understandable, even acceptable, if this were still one outbreak confined to one town on one night, but after eleven days and in twenty-one departments of France (not to mention Denmark) with the pattern holding true in each case, that starts to wear pretty thin. It becomes absolutely ludicrous when these nights that have seen car burnings penetrating the very heart of Paris itself occur against the backdrop of over four years of terrorist attacks, violent rhetoric, honour killings, assassinations, death threats, and increasingly strident and petty calls on the part of Muslim groups for greater "sensitivity" involving everything from ice creams to piggy banks that read more like demands for surrender.
Instead of asking the hard question of whether or not these riots tie into the larger war with the Islamofascists (and please, God, let it be not), the press sits happily on the sidelines as French politicians use this as an opportunity to jockey for advantage in the 2007 presidential elections by jumping on the interior minister for calling the rioters "rabble" rather than being more like Gilles Kepel, an advisor on Islamic affairs to President Chirac, and talking airily about creating a "new Andalusia" where Muslims and secularist Frenchmen and live in equality and harmony. Though why this point should be brought up in a situation that allegedly has nothing to do with Muslims is not open for discussion.
It is entirely possible that the likes of Newsweek are correct and the whole affair can be explained in Marxist terms of material deprivation tinged with racism as the sole cause of the trouble, though this doesn't do much for the reputation for the much-vaunted French "social model," and I am inclined to believe that these Le Corbusier welfare-state ghettos have played a part in all this, but it cannot be the more than a contributing factor unless you ignore the fact that the rioters come from ten percent of the French population that is first, second, or third generation Muslim immigrant that has neither been encouraged nor has been inclined to assimilate. Worse, this is a Muslim population that since 9/11 has shown a propensity for violence and a remarkable sympathy for terrorists. Surely this massive failure of France's multiculturalist policy must at least be addressed if for no other reason than if these riots have or develop a radical Islamist component, then they pose a threat to the very peace of Europe.
Forty years ago the French and the Japanese were faced with labour shortages in the wake of an economic boom. The Japanese answered this by investing in robotics and automation. The French by bringing in cheap labour from their former African colonies. In 2005, the Japanese are now stuck with a load of robots sitting idle in under-worked factories and the French have five million Muslims, many unemployed, sitting in ghettos around the major cities like a disgruntled army. Similar stories can be told in Germany, Italy, Great Britain, and even Scandinavia. Wave after wave of Muslim immigration have come in with the governments of Europe not only failing to assimilate these new arrivals, but actually encouraging them to hold on to their old ways and beliefs with an iron grasp. In fact, the elites of Europe welcomed the foreignness of the Muslims, as it could be used as a bludgeon to attack Christianity and other traditional institutions. What the Muslims thought of their own beliefs or of Christianity or even secularism was not regarded as relevant, as in the minds of the establishment religion was a dying force and for the immigrants it was merely a harmless form of cultural expression. The thought that the followers of Mohammed might actually take Islam seriously and a small segment of them psychotically so never occurred to them.
As the Muslim population continues to grow there is added the alarming fact that Europeans are refusing to breed and many countries on the continent face if not demographic suicide, then the danger of being supplanted in this century by their immigrant minorities. The upshot is that Christian and even the journalistic conceit known as "Post-Christian" Europe stands a very real chance of being swallowed by an immigrant wave that may well be regarded by history as an invasion.
That in itself is a problem to be addressed in one way or another, but it becomes a powder keg when totalitarian Islamism is thrown into the mix. Our war with the Islamofascists is going to be fought for at least a generation and I believe that there is a very real chance of losing at least one of the smaller Continental states such as Belgium or the Netherlands to Sharia law by 2025 and many other countries will be forced to deal with a growing Muslim population that is feeling its political clout. Already Britain is trying to pass religious anti-hate speech laws that will serve no purpose except to silence the critics of Islam, and with each passing day it is becoming clearer that Chirac's opposition to the invasion of Iraq was based less on principle and more on fear of his own Muslim immigrants and his own weakness in confronting them. It is this fear that emboldens the rioters and if the sort of violence that we are seeing in France is allowed to go unchecked, then the main front of this war will not be in Iraq or Iran, but in Paris or Copenhagen. I don't believe that Europe is going to fall to the Islamofascists, but if the governments of France and the other threatened states do not open their eyes and admit that they are in a real honest to Pete war with an enemy who will exploit any opportunity, then the reaction will only get worse the longer it is delayed.
From where I sit, I can see three possible outcomes to the riots.
First, the French face up to reality and take stern measures against the rioters and they treat the Islamists who are either behind it or are trying to exploit it as traitors, seditionists, or agents of a hostile power. They make must make every effort to physically separate the peaceful, law-abiding Muslims from those infected by hatred of their host country and do everything they can to free the former from the welfare state trap they are in and to imprison or expel the latter while making it clear that immigration will be severely restricted in future until the current batch is assimilated.
Also sending a division to Iraq wouldn't hurt to get the message across.
The second possibility is that Chirac et al will ignore the whole thing and hope it will go away, which is pretty much what the French have been doing all along. The result of that is that inevitably the unrest will descend into civil war with Paris looking like Beirut in the '80s and the "Muslim problem" (That sends a chill down the spine!) solved after bloody fighting with mass expulsions of both innocent and guilty that will not be carried out with any sympathy.
The
third is that the French will use their historic way of facing an enemy and
surrender. They may try buying off the rioters, entering into
"dialogues" with Muslim "leaders," and agree to make the ghettos into Islamist
colonies under Sharia. Then the next wave of violence will be
followed by the next wave of demands and so on until the Eiffel Tower
becomes a minaret.
Personally, I find that Vichy water leaves a very bad taste in my mouth but many a Frenchman has swallowed it by the gallon in the past, so I am not optimistic.
Perhaps the most galling thing about this whole mess is that trying to downplay this affair or not to admit the real danger it poses will only harm those the French government are supposedly trying to spare. Claiming to be worried about Muslim sensibilities serves no one's purposes except those of the Islamofascists, who despise their more moderate and peaceful co-religionists as much as they do any Christian, Jew, or Atheist. And it is these respectable Muslims who will be caught in the middle if this is allowed to descend into open war or a shameful peace. In the same way as the rioters destroy the homes, cars, schools, and shops of the very people that they claim to champion, so the government fails by trying to "understand" the rioters rather than defending the republic and those who came to France to become Frenchmen.
And they are certainly not served by pretending that we are not at war.
Tuesday
8 November 2005
Today France, Tomorrow...
Image from the Daily Telegraph
As
Mark Steyn would say, "youths" indeed. Every night the violence
gets worse and the word "intifada" keeps jumping into the frontal lobes.
Bear in mind that this map doesn't cover half of it. Denmark, Belgium, and
Germany are being hit as well. Even Hitler didn't cover this much
ground this fast. Meanwhile, Chirac upholds French tradition and
dithers about hoping that a heavy rain and a cold snap will make it all go
away.
Even the good news does nothing to cheer. From the Groaniad comes this quote:
France's biggest Muslim fundamentalist organization, the Union for Islamic Organizations of France, issued a fatwa, or religious decree, that forbade all those ``who seek divine grace from taking part in any action that blindly strikes private or public property or can harm others.''
This is a hopeful sign, but not one that France should rely on. It would be a fatal mistake to give the impression that the law and order are at the command of the imams. The proper response is to tell the issuers thank you very much, we appreciate the sentiment, however fatwas have no authority whatsoever in the West, so in future please restrict yourself to news releases and leave any edicts to those who have the power to issue them.
Wednesday
9 November 2005
Come Back, Marshall Petain! All is Forgiven!
Get your Vichy water here. The line forms on the left.
In
commenting on the French riots that seem set to run longer than Cats
I said that the French government had one of three choices in handling
the crisis of unassimilated populations infected with radical Islam: Face
facts and deal with it now while it is still relatively easy and peaceful to
do so, ignore the whole thing and deal with it later when it will be
relatively hard and bloody, or surrender. Though I put the third
one in half-jokingly, it looks as though the French are running true to form
and dropping the tricolour in favour of the white flag. Under a fig
leaf of increased police deployments and a twelve-day curfew (Condemned by
the French press as “staggering
brutality”), the prime minister M. Dominique de Villepin offers this
solution to the insurgency (via
Bloomberg):
In a bid to help cool tensions, de Villepin proposed boosting spending on training and education programs in poor neighborhoods and called for the country to step up its fight against discrimination of minorities...
``Youth unemployment reaches almost 40 percent in some areas,'' de Villepin said. He added that the goal of the government will be to give unemployed youth living in France's ``sensitive urban areas'' a work contract, an internship or training in coming months.
De Villepin also said he will restore government subsidies to local associations scrapped by his predecessor and aims to triple scholarships and improve links between universities and students living in poor areas.
The prime minister said in the interview that students must be able to join vocational training programs at the age of 14 instead of 16. Almost 150,000 students drop out of school without a diploma or a skill each year, according to the prime minister.
De Villepin also called for businesses and the population as a whole to fight ethnic discrimination. The government wants to make sure that the riots aren't used by ``radical Islam,'' which is not the ``main'' concern at the moment, he said.
After
twelve days of doing bugger all while the country went up in flames the best
that de Villepin can come up with is a repeat from the 1930's Great Hits
album: When confronted by an enemy who despises you and covets your
land, buy him off and he'll go away.
That worked splendidly with Hitler, now didn't it? Mind you, they tried it with the Soviets, Saddam Hussein, Khomeni et al, and Arafat with as little success, so I suppose I shouldn't be all that surprised.
I particularly like the last bit about radical Islam not being the "'main' concern." With reports of churches and synagogues being torched by "youths" who pointedly avoid Muslim businesses, rioters shouting "Allah Akhbar," and postings on web sites saying things like "The French won’t do anything and soon, we will be in the majority here" de Villepin's reaction is to do an incredible impression of Claude Rains in Casablanca looking the other way as the Germans run riot over his town.
Not that the prime minister is taking things lying down. With the bold, decisive action of the Napoleon he idolises, de Villepin squarely read the riot act to the rioters by offering them vocational training, jobs, a rebuilt neighbourhood, and a promise to come down hard on anyone who looks at them funny-- all courtesy of the French taxpayer. Heaven knows what he'll give the little Jihadists when they start planting bombs on the Metro.
There is a word for this sort of thing. Several, actually, but I try to keep it clean on Ephemeral Isle, so I'll use the one that fits most aptly: jizya. That is an Arab word for the tax paid by infidels to their Islamic masters in return for having their existence tolerated-- for the moment.
I think it is one that the French are going to come to know all too well.
Thursday
10 November 2005
France Out of France!
No Blood for Cheese
With the patriotic insurgency against France's illegal occupation of the banlieus now reaching the grim milestone™ of a fortnight it is time for Chirac to come clean and admit that the entire war against the Freedom Fighters, for which his government is solely responsible and was launched without UN approval, is an unwinnable quagmire fought for a lie. What that lie was we're not sure, but there had to be a lie somewhere.
Ephemeral Isle is in agreement with the media and the intelligentsia that this purely defensive uprising has nothing to do with Islam. Absolutely nothing at all. Not a thing. No planning. No bomb factories anywhere. Move along now. Nothing to see here. Nix. Nada. Not a sausage. No Islamic terrorist group called France "enemy number one". Never happened.
We therefore call upon the so-called "French" who lay illegitimate claim to the country to break the cycle of violence and move the peace process forward by entering into negotiations with local emirs; withdrawing their forces of oppression from the occupied lands around Paris, the other major cities, all territories occupied after the Battle of Tours, and whatever other departments or provinces the Freedom Fighters claim as theirs; and to recognise them as legitimate, sovereign, and eternal colonies of the New Caliphate to be funded by a special tax to be collected from all infidels residing inside the illegitimate war-mongering Zionist Crusader Entity aka "France".
In addition, we call upon the French government to cease co-operating with the Bush and Blair Crusader regimes' war against the champions of the Muslim people such as Al Qaeda, Syria, Iran, and that all French forces to be withdrawn from Iraq and Afghanistan and that... What? Hang on. Never mind.
As a further gesture of peace, we demand, sorry, got carried away there, "call upon" Paris to be declared an international city policed by a peacekeeping force drawn from neutral countries such as Iran, Syria, and Saudi Arabia, and that the nuclear Force de Frappe be handed over to the New Caliphate colonies so that they will be able to defend their legitimate, incontestable, and expanding borders against Zionist Crusader attacks.
Only then can there be peace.
Friday
11 November 2005
Remembrance Sunday, Veteran's Day
This Remembrance Sunday is a bittersweet one. Iraq is that much closer to full democracy, the Lebanon is free, Boy Assad looks like he's for the chop, and the United States has yet to see another attack on its soil. However, the war still goes on. The terrorists still maim and kill in Iraq, Iran is that much closer to getting the bomb, death came to the streets of London, Jordan has been struck, and France now has its own intifada on its hands.
We have a long way to go in this fight and the men and women in the armed forces need all our thanks, our prayers, and our support; especially in these days when the front line is often right outside our doors.
Monday
14 November 2005
The New France
Oh, to be in Paris...
Even
though the French riots have gone on for nearly three weeks and last weekend
saw "youths" having bloody clashes in the streets of
Lyon,
ramming a burning car into an old people's home,
and
torching a school, the French government
continues to claim that the violence is "dying down" because fewer cars are
being burned each night. True, this might be because the rioters are
moving on to other targets, but it does provide Chirac with an
inevitable victory on the day not long in the future when France runs out of
Citroens. Besides, the mainstream media are ready to drop the story
like a live hand grenade at the first opportunity and have made it clear
that they would rather report a Coalition victory in Iraq rather than use
the "M" word, so no pressure from that quarter.
In fact, the government is so confident that their policy of appeasement plus sticking their heads in the sand is such a success that a new initiative will shortly go into effect whereby the unpleasantness will no longer be referred to as "riots," but as "le nouveau ambience." The fires, the vandalism, the fighting-- these are not the symptoms of a disintegrating society, or Jihadist ambitions,; they are all just part of that wonderful, ever-enriching tapestry of life that is France. Ignore them. Or better yet, embrace them. Just, for the love of God, don't do anything about them. Worked at Munich, N'est Pas?
Failed socialist policies? An economy frozen in time? A soul-destroying welfare state? Racism? Suicidal multiculturalism? A Muslim minority that isn't quite so minor? One that can't be assimilated? Indeed, won't be? Those pesky Islamofascists waging a war against civilisation? Or Le Pin fascists waiting to exploit the situation? No need to worry about any of that. Just get used to it and it will all magically fade away without anything fundamental needing to be done.
Soon Parisians will adapt and will forget any time previous when they enjoyed their Gallois and coffee without the smell of burning motor cars wafting across the road as French women shuffled home in their modest burkas, nor when a pleasant spring afternoon did not include the calling of the faithful to prayers wafting gently from the Tannoys on the Eiffel Tower and the Great Mosque that was once called Notre Dame.
If not that, then it'll be a quiet stroll on the Champ Elysee to forget about the military coup, the civil war, and those bloody anti-Muslim pogroms. Unsophisticated, but who cares? Just give the old Gallic shrug and it'll be fine.
Tuesday
15 November 2005
Without a Clue
You
just can't make this stuff up. Last Friday there was a sit-in at the
Eiffel
Tower to protest le nouveau ambience (AKA rioting) now set to
carry on until Christmas. What's remarkable is not the protest, but
the manner in which the participants chose to express their feelings:
"Stop the Violence," read one banner draped on the Wall of Peace near the Eiffel Tower. Some of the 200 demonstrators a small turnout in protest-friendly France waved white flags (emphasis added).
I know that some people regard it as a low blow to refer to the French as "cheese-eating surrender monkeys," but when their strategy for dealing with Jihadist street violence is to sit down and wave the emblem of defeat, it's the only description that seems appropriate.
Wednesday
16 November 2005
And Now for Something Completely Unnerving
For
those of you who think that the mass murder of 9/11 was a one-off and that
the Jihadist threat is now confined to torching Peugeots in France and blowing up
hotel weddings in Jordan, there is this chilling bit of news from
Down Under
regarding the arrest of eighteen terrorist suspects that shows what's at
stake:
A police fact sheet released on the 18 suspects in custody shows that at least three of them may have been casing the Lucas Heights nuclear facility (Australia's only nuclear reactor) on the outskirts of Sydney. In documents, police say the men were stopped and questioned near the plant last December.
This little incident shows that while the suitcase nuke is certainly a myth, that doesn't mean that the more genocidally-inclined followers of the Religion of Peace aren't exploring their options for taking out an entire city at one go. If a suitcase bomb isn't practical and if the Iranians don't yet have a more conventional warhead handy that can be smuggled into Sydney Harbour aboard a container ship, then there's always the Chernobyl-in-Australia gambit, the giant chemical weapon ploy, the airliner knock-down tactic. and the ever-popular dirty-bomb strategy.
And if that isn't enough to give you the heebie jeebies, just try to sleep tonight while considering that if things keep going the way they are the nuclear ballistic submarine Le Triomphant and the rest of the Force de Frappe may well end up sailing under a crescent rather than the tricolour when France becomes the third Muslim nuclear power.
Thursday
17 November 2005
It's Not a Bug, It's a Feature
Whenever
I think that the French intifada is tapped out for material they just keep
throwing things at me again. So what is it this time? That Chirac has
taken a page out of Jimmy Carter's book and blamed France for suffering from
"malaise?" That
his government is going to come down like a ton of bricks on the rioters by
offering them
50,000 job training slots? That they are proving that the riots
have nothing to do with Islam by
asking
the local imams to restore order?
No, it is that with the riots going into their fourth week France has hit upon a distinctly Gallic solution to the problem; claiming car burning is a French tradition. When I read this I had to stand up and give a round of spontaneous applause. Who but the French would have the chutzpah to answer a violent insurrection by embracing it as part of their national heritage.
Ah, la belle France! The land of such picturesque traditions as onion sellers, berets, stripy tee-shirts, runny cheese, boring cinema, exquisite cuisine, fine wines, rude waiters, military defeats, Post-Impressionists, Gallois, inadequate personal hygiene, and now blazing Citroens lighting up the night to the ululations of the Faithful.
Magnifique!
Friday
18 November 2005
Pour le Weekend
We
would like to commemerate the return of "peace" to France (by referring to Jihadists setting a hundred cars alight over the evening as a "tradition")
with this post-impressionist gem, Le Tradition Française au la Moulin
Rouge.
Monday
21 November 2005
Je Suis la Loi!
It
never stops. No matter how much the mainstream media tries to ignore
it, the stories just keep coming out of France unbidden. First we had
three weeks of Muslim riots that have only "ended" because they're burning
less than a hundred cars a night (which apparently doesn't count) and now we
have over two thousand "students" in violent clashes with police over the
arrival of the
Beaujolais
Nouveau.
France has gone from civil unrest to self-parody without even touching the ground. The way things are going, if the Republic doesn't cave in to the imams first, I wouldn't be surprised if Chirac is replaced by Judge Dredd.
Zarqawi Dead?
In
happier news, Al Qaeda's regional manager in Iraq, Abu Musab al-Zarqawi may
have been
killed in a fire fight Sunday. U. S. forces are still trying to
determine if Zarqawi is among the dead, but even if he isn't, at least eight
of his Al Qaeda colleagues have reverted to room temperature thanks to the
Coalition.
Tuesday
22 November 2005
In a Fog
I'm beginning to feel as if I've taken up residence in a ball of wool. Sitting at my desk I normally I have a rather nice view of the neighbourhood; the houses, the trees with leaves turning bright colours and the lazy traffic in the road below, but at the moment all I can see is a grey expanse dotted with the odd light here and there accenting the indistinct outlines of what are presumably the aforementioned houses and trees. It's rather as if the world's brightness and contrast settings have gone off kilter. Not exactly night, not exactly day, and all rather on the blurry side. The more uncharitable among you will probably put down this phenomenon to inexpert or long-overdue window cleaning, but the actual cause is more meteorological in nature. It seems that Chez Szondy has been fogbound for three days straight.
Fogs are no stranger to the Szondy home. My palatial flat is situated on a point in Puget Sound, so I get weather the way some people get mice. And by "weather" I do not mean wafting trade winds and sunny days in the low eighties. It's more along the lines of whatever is wet and cold that's on offer at the moment. When Autumn starts to assert itself the Sun vanishes behind the clouds for days or even weeks at a stretch and we get some quite spectacular fogs rolling in off the water. Indeed, it's a rare winter's morning when we don't start off with the environs looking like the set of a Boris Karloff movie. Even when the fog lifts the day is left grey and overcast. This is probably just as well, as I have a southern exposure that lets the Sun blast straight in when it rides low in the sky and a clear winter's day makes having the blinds up like living in a hundred-watt bulb.
Some people don't like fogs. They think that they're damp, gloomy, and inhabited by denizen's of some of Scott Carpenter's less successful efforts. As for me, I enjoy fog. Some people say it's because I always walk around as if I'm lost in a fog anyway. Maybe so, but I also see some of the unique qualities of fog, mist, vapours, and other ground-level cumulus.
For one thing, fogs, like all inclement weather, dissuades people from wanting me to Do Things, so they leave me alone to get on with my writing. For another, fogs have a wonderful way of slowing things down as if the world was packed in a woolly jumper. Waking up on a foggy morning is to be transported to a world that is both confined, yet infinite. Everywhere is covered with a dull bowl that seems to define a radius of space, yet its boundaries are indefinite and extend who knows how far. This is particularly true when you're walking on the beach in the winter when it's as if you're being followed by your own bubble of privacy on a stretch of sand that seems yours alone. You might be smack in the middle of a city park, but from your point of view you could just as well be on the far side of the Moon and all of it your personal estate.
I suppose another reason I like fogs is because they are bound up in so many episodes of my life such as my early boyhood memories of walking across cow pastures that suddenly seemed as broad as the Gobi Desert, or boating on rivers that had captured the summer mists and seemed suspended in time, or sailing up an estuary unable to see ten feet off the bow and dropping anchor for the night only to discover the next morning that we'd glided over a barb wire fence in spring tide and were now stranded in a meadow, or the day I first arrived in Seattle in a fog so thick that I couldn't see anything either side of the road and just drove straight through town without even realising it.
But my favourite fog was one over twenty years ago when I as living in Oxford and a heavy fog came down one December morning. The Sun had still not come up as I walked to work. Everything was silent and the few sounds there were muffled and seemed to come from everywhere and nowhere. The night before had been freezing cold and the moisture was condensing into frost on the buildings, the lamp posts, the trees, and the roads. Especially the roads. The street lights turned all of the ancient colleges into a glittery, ethereal fairy land-- a fairy land with black ice on the roads that made the distant WHUMP of colliding motor cars a counterpoint to the morning and pavements so slippery that I only got to work because it was downhill all the way, but what is safety compared to a beautiful æsthetic moment?
Depends on whether or not you're adequately insured, I suppose.
Wednesday
23 November 2005
Elementary
It was at this exact moment that Holmes realised that he'd trodden in it.
Thursday
24 November 2005
Thanksgiving Day
Here at Chez Szondy it is Thanksgiving, so I am off for a long weekend of consuming large amounts of poultry and enjoying some quality family time. If you're in North America, then a happy Thanksgiving to you, and if you're not, then have a happy weekend.
See you all Monday.
Monday
28 November 2005
I, For One, Welcome Our Jihadist Masters...
Having
spent many years in the theatre I have long ago come to the conclusion that
while artists imagine themselves to be enlightened progressives and
society's moral standard bearers, most of them have spines made of
over-cooked linguini. Ask your average artistic director why he has
just put on a play that is so offensive to anyone not in a padded cell that
it makes an evening at the theatre less desirable than having a monkey
flinging poo at you for three hours and he will explain that the purpose of
art is to be "dangerous" and to "speak Truth to Power." Then
wait until his show offends the wrong group and watch him close his show
faster than a Chinese takeaway slapped with a botulism outbreak.
Such was my thought as I read about the recent production of Christopher Marlowe's Tamburlaine the Great at the Barbican in London. Directed by David Farr, this version of the circa 1587 play was notable in that after 7/7 Mr. Farr took a bold stance against the threat that Jihad posed to British culture by censoring the script because in its original form it "would have unnecessarily raised the hackles of one of the world's great religions." And get the Barbican firebombed as well, no doubt. Therefore, all lines where Tamburlaine spoke out against Mohammed were cut and the scene where he burned the Koran was "smoothed over" in Mr. Farr's words so that Tamburlaine was just burning "a load of books."
In his defence, Mr. Farr said,
"(T)he choices I made in the adaptation were personal abut the focus I wanted to put on the main character and had nothing to do with modern politics."
Right. He just happened to censor his production of all anti-Islamic lines after an Islamofascist attack on London because of "personal" choices. Translated out of Newspeak that means Mr. Farr got the message, decided he didn't want to end up like Theo Gogh, and caved in. Either that, or he is guilty of an accommodation that goes by a word even less savoury than "coward."
In the news reports about this incident a couple of the articles pointed out that controversial plays about religion that raised protests are not uncommon and a number of examples were listed such as,
- Behzti, which featured a sexual assault in a Sikh temple.
- Paul, which suggested that Jesus was not the son of God.
- Jerry Springer the Opera, which had Jesus in a diaper.
- Messiah, where Jesus was a foul-mouthed social reformer.
- The Merchant of Venice; Al Pacino's deliberately anti-Semetic take as a reflection on Shakespeare's times.
Of course, this isn't much of a defence, in that what made these plays controversial is that they went out of their way to offend Christians, Jews, and Sikhs while Mr. Farr went of his way to censor a classic to appease the religion of an enemy we are at war with (note: I did not say an enemy religion, which is entirely different). The other difference is that Christians, Jews, and Sikhs haven't shown a tendency to express their dissatisfaction by blowing up underground trains nor have they declared war against the whole of civilisation-- including Muslims who don't believe in Bin Laden's caliphate.
One can't even treat what Mr. Farr did as an isolated incident, because it is not. It is another in a long line appeasements made to the Religion of Peace such as,
- Piglet banned by a local council because one Muslim complained.
- Ice cream lids recalled by Burger King because the artwork seemed to resemble the word "Allah" in Arabic script
- His Highness the Prince of Wales pleading Islam's case to President Bush.
- Art at the Tate banned-- Not because the Bible was desecrated, which it was, but because the Koran was as well.
- The Religious Hatred Bill, which would effectively make it impossible to criticise Islam without risking gaol.
- The Archbishop for Canterbury apologising for the Crusades-- which is rather like Britain apologising for the Normandy Invasion.
And that is just the most recent tip of the iceberg.
The hypocrisy and cowardice of British society in this war in general and the artistic community in particular is the worst the country has seen since the Oxford Student Union passed the resolution "This house will not fight for King and country" in 1933. Artists are always banging on about "pushing the envelope," being "transgressive," "challenging audiences," and "asking the hard questions." But all that goes by the board if the the envelope they're pushing belongs to someone who is willing to cut their head off. Then it's heat up the Memory hole, 'cause it's "Oceania as never been at war with Pacifica" time. It was sickening when Salmon Rushdie was forced into hiding for fear of his life and the "artists" did nothing and it's inexcusable now.
The usual response these days to this sort of cravenness is to roll the eyes heavenward, declare that this is political correctness gone mad, and then forget the whole thing until the next outrage. We don't have that luxury anymore. This is not an isolated incident, it is part of a pattern of behaviour which is appalling in times of peace is slow suicide in time of war. If you censor yourself with the excuse that you don't want to offend Muslims, but when it's real effect is to kowtow to the Islamofascists, then screw yourself to the sticking place and remember what a BBC controller once said: "Some people deserve to be offended."
Especially the ones we're at war with.
Tuesday
29 November 2005
Holmes & Watson
"Sorry, Watson old man, but if we're to stand a chance of catching the Cudworth Strangler this is the best place for you."
Wednesday
30 November 2005
Room 101
Alain Finkielkraut: Learning to love Big Brother
The
war on the home front against the Islamofascists is starting to look like
something out of 1984 and I'm beginning to wonder if the early days
of Oceania didn't look like this as Big Brother wormed his way into power.
On 17 November 2005
Haaretz.com
published an interview with the French-Jewish philosopher Alain Finkeilkraut
in which he said some very un-PC, Un-French things about the Muslim riots
and the Establishment that tried to make excuses for them. For a
veteran of le Soixante-Huitards Finkielkraut said some rather
shocking things such as,
In France, they would like very much to reduce these riots to their social dimension, to see them as a revolt of youths from the suburbs against their situation, against the discrimination they suffer from, against the unemployment. The problem is that most of these youths are blacks or Arabs, with a Muslim identity. Look, in France there are also other immigrants whose situation is difficult - Chinese, Vietnamese, Portuguese - and they're not taking part in the riots. Therefore, it is clear that this is a revolt with an ethno-religious character.
And,
The question isn't what is the best model of integration, but just what sort of integration can be achieved with people who hate you.
This sort of talk is enough to give your average left-wing French news editor a firm case of the vapours and sure enough Le Monde published extracts of the interview selected to make Finkeilkraut look like someone to the right of Le Pen. Then, as the morning follows the dawn, the left-wing pressure group MRAP (Mouvement contre le Racisme et pour l'Amitié entre les Peuples) started a lawsuit against Finkeilkraut and others filed police complaints against him under France's draconian anti-racism laws.
But things finally came to a head when Finkielkraut began to receive death threats and on Thursday he caved in and recanted all that he said in such an abject display of grovelling that one could only feel sorry for him as he echoed the Soviet show trials of the '30s by saying,
The person which emerged from this patchwork of quotes, I hate him. I do not recognize myself in this degrading individual. It is a nightmare.
The MRAP secretary general accepted Finkielkraut's recantation by saying that he "doubted" Finkielfkraut's sincerity.
Clearly M. Finkeilkraut has not yet learned to love Big Brother.
Olympic Folly
London: 2012
Meanwhile,
across the Channel, the Religion of Peace made clear whose culture was going
to assimilate whose by announcing that the biggest house of worship in the
British Isles would be a mosque. The
Tablighi Jamaat, an Islamic
"missionary" organisation with ties to terrorist groups says that it intends
to build a
mosque capable of holding 40,000 worshippers next to the future Olympic
stadium in London. According to Abdul Khalique, a senior member of
Tablighi Jamaat,
It will be something never seen before in this country. It is a mosque for the future as part of the British landscape.
Right. A group with Islamofascist links want to build a giant mosque in London. Part of the landscape. Like a landing stage.
Not that the Church of England seems exercised about this next move in a religious turf war, what with being too busy expunging all that Christian nonsense from the creed. As always, it is Mark Steyn who spots the bull,
I was slightly surprised by the number of e-mails I've received in the past 48 hours from Britons aggrieved about the new mega-mosque. To be sure, it would be heartening if the Archbishop of Canterbury announced plans to mark the Olympics by constructing a 70,000-seat state-of-the-art Anglican cathedral, but what would you put in it? Even an all-star double bill comprising a joint Service of Apology to Saddam Hussein followed by Ordination of Multiple Gay Bishops in Long-Term Committed Relationships (Non-Practising or Otherwise, According to Taste) seems unlikely to fill the pews. Whatever one feels about it, the London Markaz will be a more accurate symbol of Britain in 2012 than Her Majesty pulling up next door with the Household Cavalry.
Hopefully she won't be wearing a burka when she does
Good God!
Be
warned before reading
this one.
It has high spit take potential.
Meddling cricket chiefs could ban the anthem Jerusalem from England’s home Test series against Pakistan next year in case it offends Muslims.
Pardon me while I clean my monitor.