Reflecting Light

The end of Reflecting Light

2012-02-04T03:28:00.004-10:00

Maybe.

Regular readers will have noticed a falling production rate recently and, your blogger fears, quality control lapses.

Most writers sooner or later reach a state when they feel that they no longer have anything worth saying. Verbal semi-paralysis ensues. It used to be called "writer's block," although the term became something of a joke and is no longer used much. But the phenomenon remains.

For my part, I tend to think that I've been recycling ideas here. It is perhaps inevitable after more than six years of blogging.

At least on social and political issues, what more can I tell you that might add value to the discussion, barring an unexpected turn of events? Everything I've been railing about all this time is still with us: out of control immigration, cultural Marxism, the growth of the federal Superstate, Europe's gradual surrender to Muslim domination, and for the past three years an affirmative action president who understands nothing and looks on the U.S. as an "unfair" and "unequal" nation that must be leveled through redistribution of poverty. Even writing that list bores me, which likely means anything further I write on those subjects will bore you.

This was not originally meant to be a largely political blog. That it evolved into one is down to the many dangers pressing on us. It would have been morally wrong to have ignored them, even though in truth I am not much politically inclined and certainly ignorant compared with some other bloggers.

Nevertheless, there is so much more to talk about, much of it good, even in dark times.

So, before treating Reflecting Light to assisted suicide, I am going to experiment with a different format, stepping back from commenting on day-to-day events, even though those are the easiest postings to write in a time-pressured life. The banner says Reflecting Light is about spirituality, psychical research, and the way we live now. I want to concentrate on those; but also arts and entertainment.

This will probably mean fewer postings, since the newly emphasized topics require more research and, possibly, more thought. Some readers may fall away, but aggrandizing readership has never been my goal. If you happen to be among those who visit this blog for the political content and are uninterested in the rest, I don't blame you if you strike Reflecting Light from your list. Thank you for your readership.

To alleviate the problem of relatively sparse serious postings, I will also probably do some very short entries that may be no more than observations, perhaps humorous. Also I may link to other bloggers' or writers' comments if I think they're important or eloquent and likely to pass little-noticed.

Arco Iris

2012-01-29T04:33:00.003-10:00

Amina Alaoui and her fellow musicians on Arco Iris give us enchanting non-Western roots music. The ensemble includes Alaoui as vocalist, accompanied by violin, oud, flamenco guitar, mandolin and percussion players. As far as I can tell they're skilled on their instruments, but no trace of showy virtuosity is evident. This is direct transmission from soul to soul.

The music is traditional, although apparently not slavishly so; Alaoui and the musicians on the album are credited with the lyrics of some songs. (The words to others are by St. Theresa of Avila, the 16th century mystic, and other long-ago sources such as Ibn Zaydun de Cordoba, whose dates are given as 1003-1071.)

The most obvious influences are fado and flamenco, but the spirit of North Africa is rarely far away -- in turn, carrying echoes of campfires in Arabian nights and winds carving the sand. Nothing could be farther from the calculated, synthetic music of the pop charts and Grammy awards.

ECM's guiding light and producer, Manfred Eicher, has always made a point of audiophile recording standards and has done so here. Listening on the AKG 701 headphones, Alaoui and her partners sound almost physically present.

State of the disunion

2012-01-25T04:07:00.006-10:00

"We've come too far to turn back now."

I'm afraid this line from the Failed Messiah's speech is correct, although not in the way he meant it. Too far, yes: toward a government ruling class, a foreign policy of Muslim appeasement, population replacement, a Kafka-esque regulatory system for business, and so much more that recovery of the former letter and spirit of the U.S. that inspired generations may be unrecoverable.

Not that I listened to the speech. He makes me so ill that my constitution, like that of the United States, can't handle him.

However, the NBC Politburo summarizes the teleprompter script.

But Obama also painted a dire scenario of a nation divided into a wealthy elite and a mass of struggling Americans on the verge of insolvency.

Again, mostly true, but not in sense the Failed Messiah implied. We have a wealthy elite of corporate nabobs, but a power elite of lobbyists, politicians, bureaucrats, federal judges, tenured campus Marxists, ethnic grievance pushers, and one-sided mainstream media. But his Tattered Holiness simplifies it down to how much money anyone makes to determine how much they can be bled in taxes, which in any case can't make up for a budget that feeds a bloated welfare state.

Reviving a proposal that the Senate rejected in 2010, Obama made a vigorous pitch for changing the law to allow young illegal immigrants to become American citizens. "Hundreds of thousands of talented, hardworking students in this country," he said, "were brought here as small children, are American through and through, yet they live every day with the threat of deportation."

But his "mass of struggling Americans on the verge of insolvency" are among the very people who are in danger of being, or already have been, replaced by immigrants legal and illegal. Buraq doesn't care about them, for that matter doesn't care about the hundreds of thousands of illegals except as shock troops for a permanent Democratic coalition to overwhelm indigenous Americans.

This is how soft totalitarianism works. First the government ignores its own duty to citizens by encouraging illegal immigration, then insists that there are so many illegals it's a fait accompli and the only thing to do is accept it and make the illegal legal. But it isn't only illegal immigration that's the problem -- they're just a new clientele for the government Social Work Establishment. It's the astonishing number of legal and "green card" immigrants who will finish the job of transforming the country into a multi-culti, polyglot post-American America.

We could still, just possibly, turn back. But it won't be possible much longer.

Apple's un-emancipation proclamation

2012-01-23T09:20:00.003-10:00

Karl Denninger isn't quite sure that the late secular messiah, Steve Jobs, and the company he steered were quite the benefactors of humanity they are widely proclaimed these days. In fact, he suggests that our wonderful World of Cool Technology is largely built on a moral disaster.

First he quotes from a New York Times article:

Apple executives say that going overseas, at this point, is their only option. One former executive described how the company relied upon a Chinese factory to revamp iPhone manufacturing just weeks before the device was due on shelves. Apple had redesigned the iPhone’s screen at the last minute, forcing an assembly line overhaul. New screens began arriving at the plant near midnight.

A foreman immediately roused 8,000 workers inside the company’s dormitories, according to the executive. Each employee was given a biscuit and a cup of tea, guided to a workstation and within half an hour started a 12-hour shift fitting glass screens into beveled frames. Within 96 hours, the plant was producing over 10,000 iPhones a day.

“The speed and flexibility is breathtaking,” the executive said. “There’s no American plant that can match that.”

Denninger homes in on a small consideration that doesn't trouble Apple-bots:

It's easy to be "speedy" and "flexible" when you effectively own your "employees" as slaves!

How many of you caught the paragraph up there? At midnight, without warning, the factory foreman went into dormitories in which the workers were sleeping, roused them and effectively compelled them to work a 12-hour shift with nothing more than a biscuit and cup of tea.

Did you get that? These are not employees, they're slaves.

People on my end of the political pasture are given to hand-wringing about the impoverishment of the American working class by business's use of immigrant labor, legal and illegal. Quite right. But the human cost of unfettered corporatism isn't confined to population replacement at home; the outsourced manufacturing work in countries where it's managed by Inhuman Resources departments is almost beyond imagining.

What Apple (and other companies) want are employees that are housed in dormitories, can be roused at midnight to work a 12-hour shift on demand fueled with only a cup of tea and a ten cent biscuit, paying them $17/day. THAT is what Apple and these other firms demand.

It is absolutely true that America cannot fill that demand, because at one dollar an hour you can't manage to put the food on your table for a family of four, say much less pay rent, electricity or gasoline for your car to get there and back!

Once again, from the Times:

“We sell iPhones in over a hundred countries,” a current Apple executive said. “We don’t have an obligation to solve America’s problems. Our only obligation is making the best product possible.”

Legally, I suppose that is true. But what does it say about America's most revered corporation when its mission excludes any consideration besides its products? Have we -- including all us consumers of Apple's undoubtedly attractive devices -- no other values left? And of course it's not just Apple, it's practically all the companies whose brands are thought essential for our lifestyle.

Sure, they all run ads telling you how "Green" they are, how they "give back," how they "make a difference" (usually with projects on behalf of certified victim groups). Meanwhile, factory labor has reverted to a Dickensian world, far enough away from most of us that we don't need to see or think about it.

De-central time zone

2012-01-17T11:27:00.006-10:00

Brandon Smith at his site Alt-Market.com is more optimistic than much of the financial commentariat. He believes there is hope for recovery -- but only on a local basis, and that economies controlled to one degree or another by central government, which is to say yours, mine, and theirs, are cooked.

"Decentralization Is the Only Plausible Economic Solution Left," he titles his latest posting. (Tip o' the hat to Zero Hedge.)

I've sung a few arias on a similar theme in Reflecting Light, although more about politics than economics. Our federal government, like most of the developed world's national governments, is a lumbering dinosaur with a tiny brain.

Smith -- whose site carries ads such as one for the "Asset Preservation Institute: Preparing Americans for the transformation of America, the collapse of the currency and a prolonged hyperinflationary depression" -- says:

The great lie that drives the fiat global financial locomotive forward is the assumption that there is no other way of doing things. Many in America believe that the U.S. dollar (a paper time-bomb ready to explode) is the only currency we have at our disposal. Many believe that the corporate trickle down dynamic is the only practical method for creating jobs. Numerous others have adopted the notion that global interdependency is a natural extension of “progress”, and that anyone who dares to contradict this fallacy is an “isolationist” or “extremist”. Much of our culture has been conditioned to support and defend centralization as necessary and inevitable primarily because they have never lived under any other system. Globalism has not made the world smaller; it has made our minds smaller.

Good points. Most people today have had no experience of life other than in a country where the government decides what kind of light bulbs may be sold. Since emerging from the womb they have been bombarded with globalist propaganda and told that looking out for their own country is outmoded know-nothingism. And continuation bias is part of human nature: we all expect that the future will be like the present but at a louder volume.

With the latest S&P downgrade of multiple EU nations, including France, Italy, Austria, and Spain, there can be no doubt that interdependency has led to ruin. Despite French president Nicholas Sarkozy’s insistence that the S&P downgrade “changes nothing”, the fact is, the EU has just been dealt a death blow. ...

While some may applaud the fall of the EU as a victory, I would recommend looking a few moves ahead of the game to see where we are really headed. Yes, the EU is a perfect example of the feebleness of centralization, but it is also an expendable piece on the grand globalist chess board, just like the U.S. dollar. Already, IMF mascots like Christine Lagarde and MSM pundits have begun suggesting that the EU is failing not because of centralization, but because the union is not centralized ENOUGH!

Yes, a showdown is looming. Rather than admit that their fantasy of a one-size-fits-all European currency has gone pear-shaped, The Powers will insist that everything will be well if only those fractious former countries quit insisting on setting their own economic policies. Hand over the controls to Brussels/Washington and the joys of an economy managed by the superbrains will be yours forever.

As we have discussed many times over the years, the subversive and sometimes subtle debasement of the dollar is in fact a deliberate program designed by international financiers to force the American public to accept loss of sovereignty and centralize economic authority into the hands of an elite few. The situation in Europe is no different in this regard. Both cultures are being strong-armed through the removal of options and funneled into a waiting net like so much oblivious trout. So, the question must be asked; how do we fight back?

Smith's answer:

The essentials of an independent life are food, water, shelter, property, trade, and safety. The means to attain these essentials have been relegated to instruments which central banks and other elitist entities administer and control. However, that control is and always has been an illusion, an illusion we could walk away from anytime we wish. This is done through localizing the production of essentials. Changing the way we look at trade is the key. A few simple rules, if followed in a determined fashion, make this change a reality ...

His rules may be simple. Implementing them seems to me anything but simple. To wit:

1) Provide Essentials For Yourself Whenever Possible: Some essentials can be covered even when you are alone. If you have access to property, can grow your own food, and have water collection capability, then you are far ahead of the average American in many respects. With modern technology, including space and energy saving methods, self sustainability is possible even in urban surroundings. The goal here is to do for yourself whatever you can, whenever you can, making you less vulnerable to mainstream economic chaos. The more insulated you are, the better equipped you will be to help build or participate in an alternative market.

This "grow your own" lark has been popular in certain circles since the late 1960s, when as a volunteer at the Berkeley Ecology Center I tried hard not to twitch while listening to home-canning bores. Sorry, I just can't see more than a tiny fraction of Americans growing vichysoise in window boxes or raising chickens that roam freely under the bed. But why does the federal government need to have anything to do with food distribution?

2) Network Or Die: Some essentials cannot be provided by one’s self. Organization and networking in order to construct mutually beneficial trade groups is not only necessary, but inevitable in the face of economic collapse. One way or another, every American who wishes to survive will one day have to get up off their couches, leave their houses, and begin working with other people. Either they will see the wisdom in preempting collapse and start networking now, or, they will start networking after collapse out of desperation. Better to start now, and save ourselves the heartache…

Working with other people is a fine idea, and before our political-corporate Politburo started its campaign to de-Americanize America through mass immigration, it might have been feasible. In today's balkanized America, how can anyone "network" with people who press 6 for Urdu on the phone menu?

3) Trade Skills, Not Dollars: Use paper currency while it still has some value, but simultaneously, wean yourself off of it through barter of goods and services. See how many essentials you can fully provide without the use of dollars and without purchases through corporate chains. Think of this as going financially “off-grid”. What systems do you depend on that ultimately harm you? How many of those systems can you decouple from now? Private trade makes independent living attainable by localizing your means of procurement to your own two hands, instead of to a paycheck doled out by a corporation.

Look, the counterculture of the '60s tried this -- it was an article of faith in Berkeley -- but the results were not what the innocents dreamed of. One fine day it was discovered, alas, that the guy who could make your car run again after it went into a coma didn't fancy trading his labor for the turnips you grew in your urban backyard Eden. Of course some individuals can do off-the-books swapping, but what works for certain people in particular situations can't be scaled to a whole economy.

4) Use Commodities, Dump Dollars: Precious metals are the only practical currency exchange available for broad use in a decentralized market. Fiat coupons, digital currencies, sticks and shells, etc., will not work. The inherent rarity of PM’s, combined with their tangibility, and inability to be artificially reproduced, makes them the ideal currency alternative to fiat. Digital currencies, reliant on an internet which may not exist in the manner we know it today, are a tremendous waste of time. Any trade dependent on a system outside of local control is not free trade. Metals place true free trade, at a local level, within reach. Even in a highly developed barter market, currency will play an important role, and PM’s should not be discounted.

Practical currency exchange? There is lots of talk about hoarding gold for the real bad times -- presumably the Asset Protection Institute (see above) would prescribe just that. I've written postings about gold, and think it's not a bad idea to own some if you can -- but as an investment or means of retaining value. It makes no sense to me as a direct medium of exchange, rather than backing for paper currency. Are you going to carry a doubloon to Safeway (if you are so retrograde as not to grow all your own sustenance) and hand it to the checkout clerk, who will slice it using the cash register's buzz saw attachment and hand you a wodge of gold back in change?

5) Become Your Own Industry ... That's fine, if you're the entrepreneurial type. But not everyone is. Very few have what it takes to create a business on their own; I certainly don't. Smith casually overlooks the fact that people vary in their intelligence, temperament, talents and other traits. He apparently believes in human bio-identicalness, otherwise known as the blank slate. He is mistaken.

6) Internalize State Commerce: When enough citizens within each state finally wake up to the dangers of municipal default, federal encroachment on state lands and resources, and the weakness of interdependency on federal subsidies, they will begin to look for ways to plug the fiscal leaks they have ignored for so long. Decentralization truly finds its home within the structure of the states, and the powers afforded them through the 10th Amendment. At bottom, states have the ability legally as well as economically to become the ultimate decentralized systems, being that they are Constitutionally mandated to take such measures anyway. Resource rich states will likely be the first to undertake decentralization in the midst of economic collapse. Oil, minerals, farm capacity, timber, coal, etc, should be the solid ground upon which states and their citizens set foundation, and states should utilize these resources with the intent to enrich their citizens FIRST, through increased employment and local independent business incentives. This would be a far cry from the corporate pirate ship plundering that goes on in states today, and far more financially sound.

Well said. That's one you can take to heart.

Smith concludes, "The path is clear; we decentralize, we localize, and we do it now, or, we lose our country, our cultural identity, and our legacy." If we haven't lost them already.

The Grimshaw redemption

2012-01-15T13:21:00.005-10:00

I thought my fascination with the paintings of John Atkinson Grimshaw (1836-1893) was yet another of my eccentricities. But it looks like, despite his love for picturing the effects of night and twilight, Grimshaw's day has come.

Recently I began noticing CD covers based on Grimshaw's artwork, as well as its appearance in Web sites about art and Victoriana. A little casual research turned up the information that "today his oil paintings fetch up to £500,000," according to a story in The Mail, which adds that -- sadly -- "towards 1876 Grimshaw suffered a mysterious financial disaster forcing him to leave his palatial surroundings and settle with a studio in Chelsea, London."

Grimshaw was contemporaneous with the Impressionists in France and the luminist school in the United States. He shared their attraction to mood and atmosphere, but was particularly drawn to fantastical half-lights, fog, and the gleam of moist surfaces. The draftsmanship is detailed and fine -- for all his dreamlike visionary impulses, there was still enough in him of the commonsense, roast-beef-and-pudding Englishman to insist on the importance of structure, architecture.

If this is anti-revolutionary romanticism or pictorialism aimed at middle class tastes, it is still suffused with the mystery of everyday things. He loves warm gaslight seen through windows, sunset pastels reticulated by winter-shorn branches, "bare ruined choirs, where late the sweet birds sang."

His landscapes are autumnal but not particularly sad. Their renascent popularity is due in part to their evocation for us battered moderns of a civilized 19th century England, confidently serene in its buildings of stone and oak. Idealized, yes; but Grimshaw is a link to an age when the ideal was not yet scorned.

Grimshaw's art is welcomed again; if only we could admire its beauty without a wistful sigh.

Weaselstrike

2012-01-11T09:23:00.003-10:00

Cowardice, by Alfred Stevens

I define weaselstrike as a supposedly conservative argument that concedes the primacy of non-conservative values. The implication is that the opposition isn't wrong, just not living up to politically correct ideals.

For instance, cowardly "conservatives" criticize the Muslim politico-religious world view because it is unfair to women and gays.

But it's in race relations, where even most people who would identify themselves as conservatives or libertarians cower in fear of being called racist, that they especially resort to the weaselstrike.

Townhall.com offers an extreme example from a columnist named Mike Adams:

Most liberals are racists in the classical sense. You told one of my bosses that I am a racist because I wrote a parable featuring a black character who was a rapist. Alleging that blacks occasionally commit crimes like rape is not racism. Racism is actually a belief in the intellectual inferiority of other races. In this country, it is often a belief held by a white individual and directed at blacks as a group. What you fail to understand is that most of my liberal supervisors and liberal colleagues are racists in the classical sense.

Instead of forthrightly denouncing the slimy tactic of using "racism" as a curse to silence opposition, Adams just insists that he's not a racist. After all, even though Department of Justice statistics show that a hundred black-on-white rapes occur every day, he only said that blacks "occasionally commit crimes like rape." See, he's not tainted. Just to nail the point down, he says racism "is often a belief held by a white individual and directed at blacks as a group." Only whites -- other whites, not our Mr. Adams -- are racists.

The overwhelming majority of my colleagues support using race-based affirmative action here at this university. The form of affirmative action they support ads points directly to the SAT scores and GPAs of black students. The reason they support such an ad-on-point system for blacks (but not Asians) is pretty simple: they consider blacks (but not Asians) to be intellectually inferior and thus incapable of competing on an even playing field. They may say that SATs are “culturally biased.” But they make no similar claim that GPAs are “culturally biased.” It is just a liberal code phrase that means “too hard for black people.”

I disagree with my colleagues and supervisors. I believe that black/white performance differences would go away within a few years of eliminating affirmative action. I guess, I’m one of the few non-racists working here at the university.

Pure weaselstrike. "Racism" is the issue, no argument there with the campus Marxists, but it's his colleagues who are racist. Black-white test scores would "go away within a few years" if only those racist liberals would stop with the affirmative action -- no explanation given of why this would be so. Never mind -- did he mention that he's no racist? You won't catch him breathing a word about human biodiversity.

Liberals believe there are other forms of racism besides individual racism. Like individuals, they think institutions can be racist, too. For example, they think the criminal justice system advances “institutional racism.” Their reasoning is that the justice system incarcerates blacks disproportionately. According to them, that is racist even in the absence of individual intent.

While I don't believe American institutions are racist, it makes no sense to me that only individuals can have qualities, which is what he seems to be saying. But he doesn't argue the point, instead quickly pulling a new rabbit out of his top hat.

Unfortunately, they lose the moral high-ground by supporting abortion, which kills 51% of blacks while they are still in the womb. It really doesn’t make much sense to me when you tell my liberal colleagues I’m a racist. I oppose the one procedure that is responsible for killing over half the black population. They vigorously support it. I think that’s why they are so eager to entertain accusations of racism.

Another weaselstrike. However you feel about abortion, claiming that liberals are racists for supporting abortion rights is beyond nonsensical. Liberals may support the right of women to choose abortion, but they are far more adamant about the "right" of women (especially women "of color") to have babies they can't support and raise them at taxpayer expense.

Mike Adams no doubt thinks he is a fearless scourge of "Marxism":

Today’s lesson on racism, Marxism and morality comes in three parts. I’ll keep it as direct and relevant as possible.

But he is neither direct nor relevant concerning a real blight of our times, the hateful ethnic racketeers who try to get their way by recklessly tossing accusations of racism at anyone who stands in their way. All he can do is protest how un-racist he is and claim it's his opponents who are racist. Racist, racist, racist. Weasel, weasel, weasel.

London's grotesque new skyline

2012-01-08T05:02:00.005-10:00

Chicago? No, London.

It's called "The Shard." Apparently that isn't even a nickname, like "The Gherkin," but the official name chosen by the developer.

Der Spiegel says of London's latest monstrosity:

Once completed, this building will have a total of 72 floors. Including the enormous spire at the top, it will stand 310 meters (1,017 feet) high. Even in its unfinished state, it's the tallest building in Western Europe, jutting toward the sky like a glass wedge with sharp contours. The building is certainly no beauty, and its silhouette seems confident, almost arrogant. Even its name sounds aggressive: the Shard.

... The Shard -- essentially London's first genuine skyscraper, has broken a taboo. It's the first building to alter the city's character, one that shrinks the old Roman city of London down to a picturesque stage set.

Well said. And doubtless the diminishing few of London's population who care about architectural tradition are consumed with futile regret about this blatantly rude, egotistical new building.

Yet their aesthetic sensitivity does them no honor. Most of those whingeing about The Shard weren't bothered about the more important perversion of London's character. What had been an English city was transformed by their rulers into the nest of an international financial plutocracy side by side with millions of ethnic proles hailing from every Third World country from Jamaica to Pakistan. I'd bet many an elite architectural preservationist was, and is, also an ardent champion of cultural Marxism.

What they did not understand was that the traditional look and feel of London derived from a particular culture with its own values, which took pride in English roots. Destroy that culture, as they have so fervently cooperated in doing, and London is no different from Chicago or Lagos.

The Shard is simply the outpicturing of inner changes that have erased English roots in favor of globalism at the top of society and Third World masses at the bottom. It is truly a Tower of Babel.

Heaven and earth in Italy

2012-01-04T04:40:00.000-10:00

Two linked headlines adjacent to one another at Gates of Vienna seem to symbolize the modern status of the City of Man versus the City of God:

Cash-strapped church closes until Easter

A church near Treviso is closing until Easter because of a plunge in offerings due to the economic crisis. Father Stefano Taffarel, parish priest at Fontanelle di Treviso, said his flock's less giving ways meant he could no longer pay to heat and light the church of Sts Peter and Paul.

Italian stores open as long as they want

A new law went into effect Monday allowing Italian stores to open and close whenever they please. Previously the law required that stores close after a certain number of hours per day, as well as some holidays, Sundays and one day during the work week. Bars and restaurants can also stay open non-stop. Intended to boost consumer spending, the relaxed rules are part of the emergency government's package of stimulus and budget measures that aim to raise 30 billion euros and lift hurl the country out of its debt crisis.

Shop, eat, pray? Uh, no. Shop and eat. Shop and eat. We have a new religion, the economy, open 24/7.

A visitor

2011-12-31T13:20:00.005-10:00

Photograph by Allan Murphy

A bird of unrecognized species appeared on the ledge just outside the window. He had a large seed in his beak, which it didn't look like he could swallow, but he probably knew what he was doing. The cat, Cosette, spotted him and went crazy as cats do in the presence of birds. Cosette tried to attack and knocked her head on the window glass, the bird regally ignoring her.

The ancient Romans, clever as they were at engineering, war, and law, attached great importance to divination through birds (among other things). Type of bird; pattern, height, and direction of flight; where the bird would alight to rest; pitch of the bird's call -- the augur, or reader of omens, would take them all into account. Despite the odd skeptic like Lucretius and Cicero, Romans were ridiculously superstitious.

But it's understandable to me that they would find birds to be significant as signs. Birds seem to have an importance that exceeds their size. Especially when there is something unusual about them, like our visitor.

After the bird had strutted around for a bit and left for parts unknown, my wife went online to identify him. It turned out to be a tufted titmouse, described as follows:

A little gray bird with an echoing voice, the Tufted Titmouse is common in eastern deciduous forests and a frequent visitor to feeders. The large black eyes, small, round bill, and brushy crest gives these birds a quiet but eager expression that matches the way they flit through canopies, hang from twig-ends, and drop in to bird feeders. When a titmouse finds a large seed, you’ll see it carry the prize to a perch and crack it with sharp whacks of its stout bill.

Let's take our little avian as a good omen for all of us in 2012.

A happy new year to you.

Post-Euroland: We'll stop your money from leaving, and while we're at it, we'll stop you

2011-12-28T03:36:00.001-10:00

European go home!

"UK prepares emergency measures for euro collapse to prevent an influx of people and money," reports the Daily Mail.

Ministers are considering draconian plans to prevent a flood of money and people heading to Britain from Europe if the ailing single currency collapses.

Welcome -- er, no, you're not welcome if you're well off -- to the United Kingdom in the run-up to the euro's code blue. Her majesty's strange, hybrid Marxist-corporate state happily ushers in so many Third World, especially Muslim, immigrants that no one knows how many are in the country; they qualify for no end of government benefits. But if the prosperous have eyes to re-settle themselves or their wealth, it's "stop in the name of the law!"

Some countries are expected to ground all flights and effectively seal their borders to prevent the flight of people and money. British officials are said to be considering contingency plans to seal the UK’s borders in a worst-case scenario – although any attempt to prevent the free movement of people is illegal under EU law.

U.K. permanent economic refugees enlisted
to turn back temporary economic refugees.

Britain isn't the only country drawing up contingency plans to thwart refugees from the euro.

Other EU countries are also drawing up contingency plans. Earlier this month reports in Portugal said the country’s borders would be temporarily sealed if the country drops out of the single currency. Strict limits would be imposed on cash withdrawals and euro notes would be stamped with an escudo mark until the new currency was printed and distributed.

The EU currency union, installed with great fanfare celebrating Europe as one big happy family (and the undeclared but widely understood purpose of ensuring that Germany's economic success would never again give it undue power and influence), looks like this on its deathbed. The free movement of peoples within the Union ends in borders being defended against immigrants from other EU states. The politicians desperately implore Germany to save the one-currency folly. As irony goes, it doesn't get more delicious than this.

A few good Muslim warriors

2011-12-26T04:18:00.002-10:00

Defense department agrees to allow
Muslim cadets to wear hijabs

The Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) announced today that the Department of Defense will begin allowing Muslim and Sikh students who wear an Islamic head scarf (hijab) or a turban to participate in the Junior Reserve Officers’ Training Corps (JROTC). ...

In October, the Washington-based Muslim civil rights and advocacy organization wrote to Defense Secretary Leon Panetta after a 14-year-old Muslim student at Ravenwood High School in Brentwood, Tenn., was forced to transfer out of a JROTC class when her commanding officers told her she could not wear hijab while marching in the September homecoming parade. CAIR requested constitutionally-protected religious accommodations for the girl and for future Muslim JROTC participants.

The DoD has also released artistic renderings of a new officers' dress uniform designed to "stimulate the morale of U.S. Muslim soldiers by recalling their gallantry against the armies of Richard the Lion Heart in the Crusades," said another press release from Allahu Akbar, the newsletter of the American Muslim Military League, the official spokesperson organization for Army Muslim affairs.

"Diversity is our strength," said the League in a statement. "Our struggle is your struggle."

A deep but dazzling darkness

2011-12-24T03:37:00.003-10:00

Dear night! this world's defeat;

The stop to busy fools; care's check and curb;

The day of Spirits; my soul's calm retreat

Which none disturb!

Christ's progress, and his prayer time;

The hours to which high Heaven doth chime.

God's silent, searching flight:

When my Lord's head is filled with dew, and all

His locks are wet with the clear drops of night;

His still, soft call;

His knocking time; the soul's dumb watch,

When Spirits their fair kindred catch.

Were all my loud, evil days

Calm and unhaunted as is thy dark Tent,

Whose peace but by some Angel's wing or voice

Is seldom rent;

Then I in Heaven all the long year

Would keep, and never wander here.

But living where the sun

Doth all things wake, and where all mix and tire

Themselves and others, I consent and run

To every mire,

And by this world's ill-guiding light,

Err more than I can do by night.

There is in God (some say)

A deep, but dazzling darkness; as men here

Say it is late and dusky, because they

See not all clear;

O for that night! where I in him

Might live invisible and dim.

— Henry Vaughan (1621-1695), The Night

Everything but cash is trash?

2011-12-22T10:21:00.003-10:00

James Kostohryz, described as a "proprietary investor/trader," is interviewed at Seeking Alpha on his investment recommendations for 2012. Are you ready for this? His advice is ... go to 100 percent cash. Yes, 100 percent. No stocks or bonds.

One of the first commenters says, "This is the most contrarian article one has encountered." It may be the most contrarian article of investment advice two have encountered, me being the second.

Almost all advisers and financial planners recommend keeping some cash equivalents (money market funds, TIPS, etc.) in a portfolio as a cushion and to take advantage of unexpected opportunities. However, it takes a brave man to advocate selling out of every position. (In response to some of the scoffing comments, he clarifies that he's not saying 100 percent cash forever, just until the financial permacrisis affecting almost every Western nation, as well as some non-Western ones, is resolved or cools off.)

Some of his points:

By studiously avoiding bear markets, investors will be more financially and emotionally equipped to purchase stocks when the herd is selling, valuations are cheap and long-term expected returns are optimal.

... A successful investment strategy for most individuals must place a primary emphasis on avoiding bear markets. This implies being willing to take profits during bull markets and leaving potentially illusory gains “on the table.”

At present time, economic and financial risks are at historic dimensions. I believe that cash is by far the best investment at this time on a reward/risk basis. High cash positions will enable investors to avoid huge risks and potentially take advantage of enormous opportunities in 2012.

... Some might argue that the value of the USD [U.S. dollar] could fall relative to the value of other assets. The overwhelming risks are just the opposite. The world is on the verge of experiencing a severe bout of asset price deflation. The prices of everything from stocks, to real estate to commodities are poised to collapse relative to the value of the USD.

Many people believe that holding cash can only result in a deterioration of wealth. This is false. Holding cash in a time of asset price deflation will make you wealthy. Your net worth will rise when measured in units of productive wealth generating assets.

Kostohryz's recommendation is a useful counterweight to what he correctly perceives as the financial industry's self-serving propaganda in favor of trading or at least being fully invested. Most people do not think of simply holding dollars as a kind of investment, but it is not unreasonable to recognize cash as an asset class, with its own advantages and disadvantages.

It is smart to hold a substantial amount of your potential investment money in reserve to lower the volatility of your overall portfolio and somewhat dull the pain of severe market sell-offs. And you want to have a reserve to deploy when good investments get cheaper.

But I can't go along with his thesis in its extreme form. Here's why:

1. Diversification is the first principle of wise investing. A single position, even if it is cash, is not diversified.

2. If the market fizzles badly, having no open positions will seem like brilliance in retrospect. But as of now, it's no more than betting on a particular future, a turn of the wheel. Sure, there are plenty of reasons to be pessimistic about the world financial picture, but markets aren't rational. They can go up (or down) for no obvious reason and contrary to what common sense would dictate. Today's markets -- unfortunately -- are also heavily influenced by government and central bank interventions.

Finally, lots of corporations are doing very well, even if we, mere citizens or employees, are not. Investment money will still flow to them, and their stockholders will benefit. It's nothing to celebrate that many people who work hard but can't afford to buy equities scrape by while stock owners, especially those with large positions, reap the profits. But in the context of investment strategy, don't confuse across-the-board financial and social health with investment returns.

3. The invisible tax, inflation, gnaws away at cash. Kostohryz believes that deflation is more likely than inflation, which will make cash more valuable. Hell, I don't know, but I think the opposite is more likely and cash will lose at least some value. I don't favor betting the farm on a money loser, even if the losses could be small.

For all that, Kostohryz makes a case worth pondering, and many of his commenters -- as usual at Seeking Alpha and unlike those at, for example, Zero Hedge -- sound sane and can even write decently.

Slurred speech

2011-12-21T07:08:00.004-10:00

How to dress your daughter like a pop star.

"Editor ousted over racial slur against Rhianna," the Associated Press tells us.

The editor of a Dutch fashion magazine has been fired after using a racial slur referring to Barbados-born Rihanna that set off a social media furor and prompted an outraged response from the singer.

Eva Hoeke, editor of "Jackie," and the magazine's publisher said in a joint statement on Facebook that Hoeke's use of a racial slur — "although without malicious intentions" — was cause for her departure after eight years on the job.

Hoeke said she was unaware the word was so loaded because "you hear it all the time on radio and TV." It was used in an article on how to dress your daughter like a pop star.

What was the "racial slur" that led the editor to be sacrificed to appease the anti-racism industry? It was something so terrible that the AP dares not even mention it.

Curious, I did a Google search. Rolling Stone, that pillar of the anti-Establishment Establishment, is a little more forthcoming.

In a brief item that was apparently meant as humorous praise, the magazine Jackie called Rihanna "the ultimate ni**abitch," saying, "She has street cred, she has a ghetto ass and she has a golden throat."

As a footnote to the end of civilization, this will do. It is now ("apparently") humorous praise to describe an entertainer as "the ultimate ni**abitch" who has "a ghetto ass."

Rolling Stone, too, has its sensitivities, unable to spell out "ni**abitch," but it has no qualms about printing Rihanna's rejoinder:

"I hope you can read English, because your magazine is a poor representation of human rights!" Rihanna tweeted in response. "You put two words together, with the intent of abasement, that made no sense . . . Well, with all respect, on behalf of my race, here are my two words for you . . . FUCK YOU!!!"

Rolling Stone adds that "Jackie's publisher says the magazine will invite Rihanna to comment on the incident in its next issue."

Everyday parapsychology

2011-12-18T12:16:00.002-10:00

Hark this. Despite a lifelong interest in psychical research (now, more "respectably," called parapsychology), I am one of the least psychic people I have known. Some shadowed intuition must exist that draws me to that side of the mind that operates according to different laws from the ordinary physical world, that can cancel time and space, occasionally split the difference between the living and what we call the dead.

I can think of a very few times in my life that might -- might -- have been psychic experiences. One occurred just the other day. This blog isn't about me, so I will ask your indulgence if I convey a personal anecdote; the subject is precognition, or clairvoyance, or synchronicity, or coincidence: what you will.

It's simple, really. Just so jolly unlikely.

A tune popped into my mind. There is nothing unusual about that. It happens often, probably to everyone who responds to music. It was the song, "(I Can't Give You) Anything But Love," an old standard.

I learned it in recordings during my childhood, but have rarely heard it since. Even as part of the so-called Great American Songbook, it isn't much favored by vocalists who specialize in that school today. Actually, compared with so many songs of the era of its creation, it strikes me as less than inspired musically and lyrically corny.

No explanation comes to mind as to why the tune presented itself to me. Of course, that is often the case with songs that you find yourself thinking of and hearing in your head.

The next day, driving to work, I reached for one of the compact discs in the stack that I carry with me to divert myself from the commuting tedium, and popped it in the car's player. The CD was The Jimmy Bruno Trio: Live at Birdland II, a jazz album featuring the fine guitarist.

I was driving along, digging the music without paying that much attention to it, when I realized with a start that Jimmy Bruno and his combo had launched into a swinging version of ... yes.

I'm about certain that I grabbed the disc, along with several others, out of the several thousand in my collection after the song presented itself to me in my consciousness. It's possible that I knew the song was on the album, although I don't remember the album well enough to recall its specific contents. It's possible that I unconsciously saw the title on the album cover when I pulled a few CDs from the shelves that morning. But in either case, selecting the CD and hearing the song on it followed hearing it in my mind.

C.D. Broad, the Cambridge philosophy professor and twice president of the Society for Psychical Research, wrote:

If paranormal cognition and paranormal causation are facts, then it is quite likely that they are not confined to those very rare occasions on which they either manifest themselves sporadically in a spectacular way, or those very special conditions in which their presence can be experimentally established. They may well be continually operating in the background of our normal lives. Our understandings of, and our misunderstandings with, our fellow men; our general emotional mood on certain occasions; the ideas which suddenly arise in our minds without any obvious introspectable cause; our unaccountable immediate emotional reactions toward certain persons; ... and so on; all these may be in part determined by paranormal cognition and paranormal causal influences.

Similarly, H.H. Price, a professor of logic at Oxford and president of the Aristotelian Society, had this to say:

It is a plausible guess that many of our everyday thoughts and emotions are telepathic in origin, but are not recognised to be so because they are so much distorted and mixed with other mental contents in crossing the threshold of consciousness.

Telepathy doesn't seem to have been a factor here, barring the unlikely possibility that another person happened to be thinking of the song and I was "tuned in" for some reason. But the same principle might well apply to precognition, or whatever. I can't give you anything but wonder, and that's the thing I've plenty of.

Good luck, British Freedom Party. Write when you get work.

2011-12-15T09:31:00.004-10:00

I was initially favorably impressed with what I read about the British Freedom Party at Lawrence Auster's View From the Right. I sent Lawrence Auster a comment, which he did not publish:

This is a heartening development, and there have been few enough of those lately.

The policies look to have been carefully crafted, not just in matter but in expression. I don’t agree that Britain’s immigration problems are about “space, not race” – they’re about both – but presenting the immigration question as an economic and cultural issue might keep Weston out of prison in the U.K.’s multi-cultural theocracy.

“Freedom” is a much better word to use in their name than National or Defence – no disrespect meant to the BNP or EDL, but shadings like that matter if they’re going to appeal to a middle class constituency. It’s too bad the O in “FREEDOM” looks like the Pepsi-Cola logo, but the Web site is otherwise well designed. They were smart not to have Union Jacks and dragons all over the place, images which many people associate with skinheads and hooligans.

Paul Weston comes across in the interview as reasonable, intellectual, maybe a little too formal. But when you consider the kinds of attacks he’ll be subjected to, that’s not a bad starting point. With experience he’ll probably loosen up and become more forceful.

Mmmm, now I'm not so sure.

True, some of the positions in what the party rather pretentiously calls its Manifesto are strong and unhedged, for instance: "There will be only one law in Britain, British law. There will be no toleration of alternative law systems such as Sharia Law." And: "The British Freedom Party will return democracy to Britain by: 1. Withdrawing from the European Union. 2. Devolving decision-making power down to the lowest practicable level. 3. Abolishing restrictions on free speech."

But the more you look into Weston's positions, the less sturdy they seem. Just when absolute candor and steadiness are called for, he starts doing the shimmy.

In an interview with Weston published at Gates of Vienna, his nerves get the better of him. He wants to oppose what he continually calls "political correctness" -- itself a wimpy term for anti-white discrimination and population replacement -- but still be respectable: impossible in present-day Britain.

PW:

We’re getting our name out into the mainstream media. We had a piece in The Independent on us. It wasn’t very friendly of course, but it still gets your name out there. People are gradually starting to hear about us, so it’s not bad.

Spoken like a corporate brand manager, not a leader the Resistance can rally around.

ES:		I guess one complaint might be that there are just a lot of these parties out there. So, how is British Freedom different from say UKIP, the Conservatives, the BNP, etc.?
PW:		Well, let’s start with the BNP. The BNP are still ethno-nationalists. The world has moved on. I don’t think they’re going to get anywhere with that sort of attitude. England, Britain is as it is; you are never going to turn it back to 1950. You can of course say ‘alright, we are going to be a multiracial country but we don’t have to be a multi-cultural country.’ And, of course you can’t have both of those; that’s a recipe for a disaster. Multiracial and British culture; that can work. So that’s the difference between us and the BNP.

It sounds like the same old assimilationist rubbish that hasn't worked and can't work. Immigrants from anywhere in the world and any race are fine as long as they adopt "British culture"? What British culture is left to assimilate to in places like London, where half the population is from Timbuktu and Pakistan?

With a sprinkling of immigrants from anywhere it doesn't matter that much if they don't assimilate into what is a foreign culture to them; when you have instead mass immigration, you get colonies. Colonies don't assimilate. And that isn't being insulting to colonists, it's just recognizing human nature. Colonies of Americans in Mexico and Panama don't become Mexicans and Panamanians.

I seem to remember years ago writing a blog post poking fun at an official scheme to make immigrants take some kind of test of "Britishness." ("Which of the following is meant by 'Queen'? A. A football club. B. A seventies rock band. C. A traditional British dessert. D. A flamboyant homosexual. Choose three.")

PW:

We want to counteract the spread of fundamentalist Islam. We want to stop immigration for a period of years. We want to repair the damage done to the education system. Tackle crime. And we want to promote British values and culture, and introduce a US style first amendment guaranteeing Free Speech.

Ah, yes. Britain needs moderate Muslims, extremists not so much. The politician's favorite crutch, Tough on crime.

I think for a five year period you have to say ‘listen, there is no immigration into this country.’ And the reason for that is we are in such a terrible state over here. We don’t know how many people come in a year; how many people leave a year; how many people are illegal immigrants; how many people are genuine [foreign] students. So, we need a period of time to really sort out exactly who’s here, and who shouldn’t be here.

Paul, old chap, your politicians and bureaucracy have had 30 years to sort out how many people arrive every year, how many illegal immigrants, who are the genuine students. You don't need a time out for that; you need the motivation to do it. A five-year moratorium won't make the ruling multi-cultural theocracy do something it has never wanted to do.

It's too late for mushy "we need to have a conversation" talk. You and many of your fellow British know perfectly well who shouldn't be there. Your oppressors believe they don't need to bother having a conversation with you.

* * *

Weston and members of his party have their hearts in the right place. But they're trying to square the circle. They want to accommodate themselves to a system that is essentially tyrannical while pretending to be part of a mainstream that is about anything but freedom. As they say over there, "Best of British luck to you."

Brother, can you spare $7.7 trillion?

2011-12-12T11:19:00.007-10:00

You think the widely publicized $700 million bailout for the Troubled Asset Relief Program (TARP) was a big deal? Hah. It turns out the U.S. Federal Reserve secretly gave banks a payday loan. Payday for the banks.

The Fed dealt out, apparently, a total of $7.7 trillion.

Such generosity enabled the banks to earn $13 billion. Not just U.S. banks. You, taxpayer, helped save "too big to fail" banks such as Royal Bank of Scotland (you gave them the dosh on which they made $1.2 billion), Barclay's ($641 million), and Credit Suisse (a paltry $284 million). Thanks, suckers.

Congress didn't know about it. Even a Federal Reserve governor didn't know the full extent of it.

Bloomberg reports:

The Federal Reserve and the big banks fought for more than two years to keep details of the largest bailout in U.S. history a secret. Now, the rest of the world can see what it was missing.

The Fed didn’t tell anyone which banks were in trouble so deep they required a combined $1.2 trillion on Dec. 5, 2008, their single neediest day. Bankers didn’t mention that they took tens of billions of dollars in emergency loans at the same time they were assuring investors their firms were healthy. And no one calculated until now that banks reaped an estimated $13 billion of income by taking advantage of the Fed’s below-market rates ... .

Did someone say it's time to shut down the Fed? Well, if not, I just did. A central bank may be a good idea in theory, but it has become one more unelected institution with power over us, like federal and state bureaucracies. It's an oligarchy of crony capitalists responsible only to each other. It didn't prevent the 1930s depression, and it didn't prevent the second depression that we're enjoying now.

The multi-cultural theocracy

2011-12-05T06:05:00.284-10:00

I'm going to leave this posting on the front lines for a few days because I think it's about one of those potentially game-changing moments when subsurface issues and feelings appear dramatically in the open.

The posting was a product of some labor on my part, revised several times to try to convey the right tone. There is a little picture and a big picture in Emma West's story. The little picture is that she acted boorishly, and could legitimately be charged with disturbing the peace -- but no more than countless young people spilling into the streets all up and down the U.K. when the pubs close, making noise and mischief. I gather they are rarely collared by the police.

The big picture is that she was driven to do what she did, driven mad in a sense, by a government that is her enemy, who hates what she is and stands for, and wants to nullify her race and social class through population replacement. According to latest reports, she is in jail and her child taken away ... something that we can be confident would never happen in Britain to a black, a Muslim, or probably even to an upper-class Labourite white person.

Comments, please!

At the current count, 11,126,279 people have watched a video called "My Tram Experience" on YouTube. It is "horrible," according to the headline for Jenny McCartney's column in The Telegraph. McCartney writes:

The viral video “My Tram Experience” – of a white woman engaging in a racist rant on a crowded Croydon tram, a scene already viewed by millions – is deeply uncomfortable to watch. The woman, her face snarled in hatred, has an impassive little blond boy on her knee, whose expression never once changes as his mother escalates her invective against “black people” and “Polish” whose presence has resulted in her estimation that “my Britain is f--- all now”.

(Croydon, incidentally, is the south London suburb that was trashed by rioters a few months ago.)

McCartney again:

Whatever else these snapshots of fury indicate, I don’t think it is that Britain is an especially racist country. The ranters draw glances of unease, and in two of the three cases white fellow-passengers attempt to silence them. But what the videos do indicate, in the women concerned, is a deep and toxic well of pent-up rage. Buried in their rambling rhetoric is a sense that whatever “my Britain” is has disappeared, that their very Englishness is threatened, and that foreigners are to blame. At the same time, their verbal attacks – inarticulate and indiscriminate – point to a cultural degradation that has nothing whatsoever to do with foreigners.

Here, FYI, is the video in question:

The woman, Emma West, has been arrested -- excuse me, "remanded in custody" (that must be a lot more pleasant than being arrested) -- for "racially aggravated harassment." She has been subjected to death threats. She is reportedly being subjected to psychiatric evaluation.

The incident, as recorded on the video (we don't know what happened before her explosion), is ugly. I can't stand people venting their anger and obsessions in public places, especially enclosed spaces like a tram car where there's no immediate way to leave. West's language is vulgar and some of the blacks and immigrants around her she lashes out at are doubtless decent people who haven't earned her insults.

We can agree that the woman expressed her feelings inappropriately.

But she had no appropriate way to express them. The U.K.'s rulers and their media order-takers have seen to that.

Emma West may lack the education or verbal skills to articulate what she's upset about, but that doesn't mean she's stupid. She understands the daily reality she lives in, which is modern Britain, a multi-cultural theocracy in which "diversity" is the state religion, enforced by the complete power of the State, including its subservient media and its educational establishment. It's a society whose elite deliberately practice population replacement -- particularly, replacement of the white working class.

The country's political muscle wants them gone. White Britons (other than the Marxist cadre) are an obstacle to State control, like the kulaks in Stalin's Russia that Uncle Joe regretfully had to exterminate for their own good. Thanks to some vestigial traces of civil liberties, the U.K. multi-culti commissars can't dispose of indigenous whites as expeditiously as they might prefer to. So they do the next best (from their viewpoint) thing: throw the U.K. wide open to Third World migration, provide the migrants with welfare to live the good life, and make whites foreigners in their own country.

From a gloating "open letter" to Emma West:

So now you’re on remand, charged with a racially aggravated public order offence. No doubt your cause will be championed by the National Front and the EDL. You’ll be a martyr in their eyes when you’re convicted, even if the sentence is little more than a fine. You’ll achieve a degree of fame within a very narrow circle, and notoriety in the wider community. You’ll be reviled, possibly attacked, and you’ll never find work with that kind of offence on your criminal record. Who wants to employ a convicted racist? ...

We have laws against your actions, and laws against your views, precisely because they are unacceptable in a civilised, multicultural, multi-ethnic, multi-racial society. The law sanctions them because they cannot and will not be tolerated in Britain.

This is the Britain you live in, Emma.

Welcome.

Yes, the Britain she lives in that criminalizes opposition to the multi-cultural theocracy. What will it be for Emma: prison, the psychiatric ward, or private vengeance?

According to Spiked-Online, a great many "civilized, multi-cultural, multi-ethnic, multi-racial" Twitterers have been baying for blood.

... Tweeters called on the police to ‘lock her up and throw away the key’ and ‘save her child’. Literally hundreds of people, with no indication that they were joking, tweeted that the woman should be sterilised, deported, punched, kicked and shot. Some suggested she should be shot between the eyes, others that she should be shot in her ovaries. Other Twitterers expressed a preference for hanging her or said she should be ‘put down’ like a dog. Fittingly for Twitch Hunters, there were also demands that she be drowned or burnt at the stake.

Tell me this. If the situation had been reversed, and a black immigrant cursed out all the "white racists" in the tram, would she be under arrest, undergoing psychiatric examination, and charged under Section 4A of the Public Order Act of 1986? I'll bet you a stick of gum the answer is no.

The Telegraph being a "conservative" paper -- by British standards -- Jenny McCartney puts in a token "moderate" take on the theocracy:

We needed to separate the immigration debate from racism, but instead the two became tightly fused. The topic became virtually untouchable, even by the BBC, as its director general, Mark Thompson, recently admitted. Politicians and journalists should have talked openly about the number and nature of immigrants that would be most beneficial to the economy and society without putting an unsustainable strain on public services: but they didn’t, or couldn’t.

No, they didn't because they couldn't. Standing against the state religion would be a career killer if it didn't land you in the dock on thought crime charges. McCartney now timidly suggests -- long after the fact -- talking about which and how many immigrants "would be most beneficial to the economy and society." That sets out of bounds the possibility that virtually no immigrants were needed, that almost none of them are "beneficial" to society as a whole; it's also a way of sweeping the issue into the realm of theory and abstraction.

Emma West, despite her scarcity of self-control, at least understands what McCartney does not: that debate is irrelevant because the British ruling class couldn't care less what people like West want, and no argument, no letters to the editor or to members of Parliament, will bring the slightest change of course.

West behaved obnoxiously in a public conveyance. She should be fined for breach of the peace. And that's it. The law should have no more to do with her, except (fat chance) to protect her from those who would take her child or her life for not worshiping at the multi-cultural altar. Unless she threatens anyone with violence, her mental equilibrium is no business of the State.

She is braver, or more foolhardy, by a long stroll than "let's have a discussion" types like Jenny McCartney.

A young British man comments on YouTube. If you're American, don't be thrown off by his accent (north of England? Scottish?); he seems to have a natural flair for oratory and a rough eloquence:

The Kennedys

2011-12-04T06:48:00.005-10:00

No admirer of the Kennedy clan, I doubt I would have donated any time to watching the TV mini-series The Kennedys, except that the Kennedy family reportedly managed to cow every major network into refusing to run it. That persuaded me to see the program (now released on DVD and available from Netflix) just to get back at them. So there.

The technical skills that went into making The Kennedys -- a Canadian production -- are impressive; so much so that this would be something of a modern classic if only ... well, if only the Kennedys were more interesting.

To start with the creditable aspects of the mini-series, Greg Kinnear is JFK to the life. He has it all spot on: the accent, the cadences of speech, the half-conscious gestures, the smooth, not quite human persona that the TV cameras loved. But he gives us more than just a clever imitation. In the domestic scenes, Kinnear conveys without obvious mannerisms the president's constant physical pain; suggests a depth of thought that may or may not have been present in the real JFK, but rewards the viewer and justifies so much screen time. Kinnear deserves other roles worthy of his immense talent.

Just as impressive is Barry Pepper as Bobby, almost as prominent in the script as John. Kinnear and Pepper seem to have coordinated their performances -- not only are they individually convincing, but believable as brothers who were raised in the same nest. It almost goes without saying that Tom Wilkinson dramatizes the Old Man splendidly. Kristin Booth, playing Ethel Kennedy, Bobby's wife, is also good, as are several of the actors in supporting roles (but there are also a few duds, like the player who caricatures the general in Cabinet meetings).

As for Katie Holmes as Jacqueline ... I don't want to be snide. She obviously works hard at the characterization, but that's part of the trouble: you're conscious of her effort, which you wouldn't be with acting of a higher caliber. She can't replicate Jackie's distinctive voice: managing the silkiness all right, but the accent is Park Avenue, not aristocratic Virginia horse country. To give her her due, though, she creates affecting moments now and then.

The scriptwriter faced a no-win situation. If the screenplay had stuck to the private lives of the characters, it would understandably have been derided as high-class soap opera. But including all the famous events of the Kennedy presidency and beyond -- the 1960 campaign, the Bay of Pigs debacle, the Cuban missile standoff, Dallas, Bobby's run for president and his appointment with fate -- flirts with dramatic nullity. We, the audience, either remember the actual events or have seen them on film. Recreating relatively recent historical events only results in wax museum scenes.

As for the family drama, we learn pretty much all there is to know early: Joe Kennedy Senior is shrewd but cold; invests his ambitions in Joe Junior, who is killed in the war; John inherits his father's ambitions but not his respect; John's rise to glory is overshadowed by Joe Senior's authority.What follows is variations on the theme, and not especially effective ones.

Actually, it's hard to see why the remaining Kennedy family would have gone to the bother of trying to suppress this program. It's soft on everyone but Dad, and even he has been steam cleaned. Unless I missed it there is nary a mention that he made the family fortune by bootlegging and cooperation with organized crime during Prohibition; that he was recalled as ambassador to Britain because of his pro-German sympathies (the script implies that he was double-crossed by a vicious Roosevelt). Some of the few compelling scenes take place with the presidential election as background, with Joe and Frank Sinatra conniving with mobster Sam Giancana -- if anyone protested The Kennedys, the Sinatra estate should have; it presents Sinatra (whom Joe patronizingly calls "Francis") as a low-order criminal lackey. But Joe's role in buying his son the election through the Chicago Democratic machine, while alluded to, is played down.

What about all JFK's now-famous dalliances? They, too, are perfunctory. Judith Exner is onscreen for half a minute; another playmate struts and frets her seconds on stage and is gone. Marilyn appears only in seducing Bobby.

Even in eight episodes, there isn't time to peer too closely into all the sordid doings of this riff-raff family elevated to the presidency through money, connections, and a fawning press. Teddy never appears or is mentioned. Can we hope that someone will make an honest biographical film about that black sheep, the full-time drunk and satyr who co-sponsored the bill that enabled mass Third World immigration? Well, we can hope.

Intelligence and belief in the paranormal

2011-12-01T06:08:00.005-10:00

Orthodox scientists and academics like to imply that people who believe in the paranormal are lightweight thinkers. In a paper in the Handbook for Teaching Introductory Psychology, Wayne S. Messer and Richard A. Griggs of the University of Florida say:

Several researchers have found a relation between paranormal belief and reasoning deficiencies. Alcock and Otis (1980) reported that, compared to skeptics, believers showed a relative lack of ability to evaluate evidence and a tendency to be more dogmatic in their approach to new situations. Blackmore and Troscianko (1985) observed greater shortcomings in probability judgments among believers, including the consistent underestimation of the likelihood of chance events. Wierzbicki (1985) found that believers performed less well on a syllogistic reasoning test ...

The authors of the paper conclude that psychology lectures "can be reworked to provide examples of faulty critical thinking ... . We believe that such efforts would lead to greater skepticism about paranormal claims and to more critical assessments of scientific, consumer and other claims. ... Paraphenomena provide natural subject matter for exercises to develop these skills in the introductory psychology class. By taking this approach, psychology teachers may also help to decrease student belief in paraphenomena."

I don't have access to the publications cited, so I can't comment on the methods used to determine that believers in paranormal phenomena are more dogmatic and unable to properly evaluate evidence, make accurate probability judgments, or perform syllogistic reasoning. Messer and Griggs take it for granted that "critical thinking" equals rejection of the paranormal, and that it is the job of teachers to reduce student belief in it. Dogmatic? Who, them?

Michael Shermer, in an excerpt from his book Why Smart People Believe Weird Things, is at least honest enough to admit that some non-skeptics are "smart." "Weird" is a pretty odd term for a scientist to use, but he tries to clarify weirdness:

a claim unaccepted by most people in that particular field of study,
a claim that is either logically impossible or highly unlikely, and/or
a claim for which the evidence is largely anecdotal and uncorroborated.

Except for "logically impossible," none of these attributes offers face value evidence that the claims are wrong. They are roundabout ways of saying, "beliefs most people don't believe."

Shermer adds:

“Smart people” suffers from a similar problem in operational definition, but at least here our task is aided by achievement criteria that most would agree, and the research shows, requires a minimum level of intelligence. Graduate degrees (especially the Ph.D.), university positions (especially at recognized and reputable institutions), peer-reviewed publications, and the like, allow us to concur that, while we might quibble over how smart some of these people are, the problem of smart people believing weird things is a genuine one that is quantifiable through measurable data.

We also might quibble over how smart this is as a definition of smart people. Today's educational establishment being what it is, graduate degrees can be awarded in Queer Theory, Feminist Studies, and other politically correct twaddle. Besides, many smart people do not have advanced academic degrees, or any at all.

Still, give the man credit. He admits that lots of those who accept the reality of what he calls "weird" stuff aren't dopes and there is a paradox here given what he would expect.

Shermer offers various tentative explanations of why "smart" people take the paranormal seriously, mostly having to do with what he would probably call mistaken uses of the intellect, such as confirmation bias -- noticing what seems to confirm beliefs, remaining unconscious of what doesn't. To sum it up: " ... Smart people believe weird things because they are skilled at defending beliefs they arrived at for non-smart reasons."

Shermer is fair-minded as materialist skeptics go, but his is a minority report. The larger number of scientists, engineers, intellectuals, and others who take pride in scoffing at the paranormal are more like Messer and Griggs. Those textbook writers, you will recall, believe psychology students must be inoculated against thinkers who exhibit "reasoning deficiencies," such as these past presidents of the Society for Psychical Research who in many cases also wrote books and articles on psychical research:

❏ Henry Sidgwick, philosophy professor, Cambridge University.

❏ Balfour Stewart, physics professor, University of Manchester.

❏ Arthur Earl of Balfour, later U.K. prime minister, foreign secretary, president of the British Association.

❏ William James, psychology and philosophy professor, Harvard.

❏ Sir William Crookes, discoverer of thallium.

❏ Frederic W.H. Myers, classical scholar, Cambridge University.

❏ Sir Oliver Lodge, fellow of the Royal Society.

❏ Sir William Barrett, physics professor, Dublin University.

❏ Charles Richet, professor of medicine, Nobel Prize winner, 1913.

❏ Gerald Balfour, fellow of Trinity College, Cambridge; chief secretary for Ireland.

❏ Henri Bergson, philosopher, professor at the Sorbonne, Nobel Prize winner, 1927.

❏ Gilbert Murray, professor of Greek, Oxford University.

❏ Lord Reyleigh, professor of experimental physics, Cambridge University; co-discoverer of argon; president of the Royal Society; Nobel Prize winner, 1904.

❏ William McDougall, psychology professor at Harvard and Duke University.

❏ T.W. Mitchell, M.D., editor, British Journal of Medical Psychology.

❏ Camille Flammarion, astronomer, founder and director of Juvisy Observatory.

❏ Hans Driesch, philosophy professor, University of Heidelberg.

❏ C.D. Broad, Knightsbridge Professor of Moral Philosophy, Cambridge University.

❏ H.H. Price, Wykeham Professor of Logic, Oxford University.

❏ R.H. Thouless, psychologist, Cambridge University.

❏ G.N.M. Tyrrell, physicist and mathematician, worked with Marconi on the development of radio.

❏ Gardner Murphy, psychology professor, Harvard.

❏ F.J.M. Stratton, president of the Royal Astronomical Association; professor of astrophysics, Cambridge University; director, Solar Physics Observatory, Cambridge.

❏ G.W. Lambert, U.K. assistant secretary of state.

❏ E.R. Dodds, Regius Professor of Greek, Oxford University.

❏ D.J. West, M.D., psychiatrist.

❏ Sir Alister Hardy, Linacre Professor of Zoology, Oxford University.

❏ W.A.H. Rushton, director of medical studies, Trinity College, Cambridge.

The list is taken from Arthur Koestler's brief study of parapsychology, The Roots of Coincidence. Koestler adds, "If one included the vice-presidents and officers of the Society's Council, the list would become even more formidable (e.g., Sir J.J. Thomson, discoverer of the electron). But even in this sketchy form, it ought to be sufficient to demonstrate that extra-sensory perception research is not a playground for superstitious cranks."

Toys are us

2011-11-27T07:18:00.007-10:00

"Black Friday": the name itself has a sinister ring.

I don't remember even hearing anyone use the term before three or four years ago. In the early '90s, when I was a salesman at a place called Santa Fe Sight and Sound (and confided to anyone who was interested, or not, that retail would be a wonderful job if it weren't for the customers), we expected that we would be very busy the Friday after Thanksgiving. And we always were. But it wasn't, you understand, a big thing. Not a make-or-break day. Not an event that people planned their lives around.

The notion that shoppers would have pitched tents outside stores for days before the Friday, gotten into brawls with other buyhounds, used pepper spray on each other, and even caused the odd fatality would have sounded absurd in those relatively calm years.

Thanksgiving in my childhood was a time when, at least ideally and sometimes in practice, we stopped to remember how fortunate we were; how many non-material gifts we enjoyed thanks to the benevolence of -- depending on one's convictions -- God, American prosperity, or both. Now it would seem to be, for many, just a day to catch our breath before plunging into the big box maelstrom. Black Friday is a spike on our cultural fever chart.

Lewis Carroll wrote of a "mythical island, whose inhabitants earned a precarious living by taking in each other's washing." Black Friday is the reductio ad absurdum of a hollowed-out capitalism that now consists largely of selling to each other goods made in other countries, bought with money government must create out of nothing and which the customers must borrow.

Generations of moralists have preached against materialism, but I think what we are seeing here goes beyond the mere craving for goods, which is not bad if kept within reasonable limits. It is the death of belief in country, community, delayed gratification. And the death of hope for a people who elected as their president a smooth-talking Marxist who ran on a platform of hope.

How did we reach this impasse? In large part, it's the fruit of a decade-long story of foolish, ideological responses to 9/11. They are well summarized in an article by Angelo Codevilla of the Claremont Institute.

He writes:

Again and again, the American people are forced to confront the fact that its ruling class is not on its side. After 9/11 President George W. Bush told the American people to go shopping and behave normally. In short: forget that you will never again be free to live as before. Think about money. ...

[The Bush administration] sought to satisfy the American people with the pretend-safety of "homeland security," with images of U.S. troops in combat, and perhaps above all with domestic prosperity fueled by record-low interest rates and massive deficit-spending.

This pretend-prosperity aimed not only to anesthetize criticism of endless war, but also to feed both political parties' many constituencies—the ruling class's standard procedure. Both parties joined in expanding federal guarantees for sub-prime mortgages, subsidies for education, alternative fuels, and countless activities dear to well-connected players. Both parties congratulated themselves for establishing new entitlements for prescription drugs and for medical care for children. When the "great recession" began in 2007 Democrats blamed Republicans' excessive spending on "the wars," while Republicans blamed it on Democrats' excessive spending on everything else. Both are correct, and both are responsible.

Spend, spend, spend. If the government knows no other way to meet life's challenges, why should we be surprised if large numbers of citizens get the message?

Far-left-wing U.K. paper scared of Englishmen

2011-11-25T04:38:00.000-10:00

The United Kingdom -- even less united than the United States -- is having a spot of bother with its race replacement army. Here is one minor example (minor to the trendy leftists who call the tune, not so minor to the poor chap driven out of his home). The "migration" continues.

Meanwhile, The Independent Views With Alarm the problems created by marginalizing the indigenous population. The problems are, in its view, troublemakers who protest the mass immigration from the Third World.

It would seem that The Independent had a contest among its reporters to see who could inject the words "far-right" and similar epithets most often into a story. This was the winning entrant, with my own emphasis:

English Defence League prepares to storm local elections

The English Defence League plans to field candidates for the first time in local elections after an alliance is finalised between the far-right group and the British Freedom Party, which was set up by disgruntled members of the British National Party.

Senior figures said that the EDL, which has become known for its protests in English towns with Muslim populations, needed to "detoxify" its name by moving into politics with an existing party. Their new partners hope to capitalise on the EDL's ability to mobilise a large number of supporters. Both groups will retain a measure of independence but will support each other. EDL members will be invited to join the newly affiliated political wing and stand as candidates under its name.

"There is a gentleman's agreement in place, we are looking at the EDL becoming political early next year," said Stephen Yaxley-Lennon, the leader of the far-right group. Mr Yaxley-Lennon, who also goes by the name Tommy Robinson, confirmed he had met the British Freedom Party leader Paul Weston and that discussions were at an advanced stage.

Mr Weston confirmed the plans and revealed he would offer Mr Yaxley-Lennon a place on the party's executive committee. He added: "We are going to say we support the principles of the EDL. We will get a lot of people who can stand in local constituencies and they will get a genuine political party in return."
The move is likely to meet with some resistance from those EDL members who want to see the group remain a "street movement". Mr Yaxley-Lennon acknowledged the issue, saying he will consult the leaders of the group's local divisions.

Dr Matthew Goodwin, a specialist on far-right politics, thought the move would receive significant support within the EDL "simply because Mr Yaxley-Lennon is the main face of the movement". He said: "It's difficult to tell at this point as the EDL has a very fluid membership structure. It is not the case, for example, that you ever really join the EDL. There are no official entrance mechanisms."

Babs Davis, an EDL member, backed the move if the leadership thought it was in the best interests of the group. "A lot of people have said that we should go political but the movement never really wanted to do it," she said.

"If that is what Tommy Robinson thinks is the right thing to do, then I agree with him. I think he has done a brilliant job. The whole point of being in the EDL is to follow what the leadership says."

Dr Goodwin, who is a professor at the University of Nottingham, said: "Since the widespread defeat for the BNP in last year's general election, the far right-wing landscape of British politics has seen the emergence of several small political parties and movements, all attempting to fill the gaps left by Nick Griffin's party and exploit wider public concerns about immigration."

He said at least 45 per cent of voters refused to back any of the main parties on immigration, leaving "clear potential" for a far-right group.

Dr Goodwin added: "Having passed through its embryonic stage, the EDL is now very much at a crossroads: it can either remain as a confrontational streets-based social movement, or it can attempt to transform itself into a radical right-wing political party. This shift will require members and money.

"It has also developed links with far more successful radical right parties in other European states, that may pass on successful strategies and tips."

So speaks the voice of the U.K.'s Leftist Establishment.

Leonidas Kavakos in concert at the Kennedy Center

2011-11-21T05:46:00.001-10:00

This weekend I was fortunate enough to be in the audience for Leonidas Kavakos's performance of the Brahms Violin Concerto. Kavakos is one of the world's top classical violinists, as well as one of a very few Greeks currently earning a good living.

Row C -- yes, three rows from the stage -- was a cracking location for seeing as well as hearing him. Kavakos didn't have the somber appearance I expected from his publicity photos, including several on covers of CDs in my collection. He looked quite the middle-aged hippie: shoulder-length hair and a dark silk jacket embossed with what I think were Chinese designs. He made a strange contrast with the conductor on the podium next to him, Christoph Eschenbach, whose head is shaved bald.

Comparisons with other violinists or recorded performances of the Brahms would be pointless; anyway, a live performance is a whole different experience to a recorded one, especially if you're close to the action as my wife and I like to be. I will say this: almost from the moment Kavakos touched his bow to the strings, I was confident this would be extraordinary.

Honestly, I don't know how any human being can play with such virtuosity. You know you are in the presence of greatness with a performer in any field if you can't take your eyes off him. During the first movement cadenza (it seemed familiar, so I guess it was the usual one by Joachim) I literally held my breath for long moments, as if the magic might be dispelled by any action on my part.

Kavakos has been panned in several American Record Guide reviews on the grounds that he is technically brilliant but cold and abstract. It's true this wasn't a gushing, heart-on-sleeve reading. He didn't go in for much vibrato. There is no doubt that he could have applied a richer tone if he'd wanted to, so his style in this piece was clearly a considered decision, and a defensible one: Brahms was German, after all, not Italian. Anyway, Kavakos gave us moments of great delicacy and colorful shadings.

Bravissimo!

It was also the first concert I've attended when its music director, Eschenbach, conducted the National Symphony Orchestra. I had had a vague prejudice against him. The shaved head, the black smock he apparently always wears on stage seemed very downtown New York, I'm-too-cool-for-this-planet.

I didn't pay much attention to the orchestra during the concerto, being so mesmerized by Kavakos. It was a little surprising that Eschenbach had a score in front of him: this guy has been conducting for decades and needs a score for the warhorse Brahms concerto? But he conducted the second half of the concert from memory, and I concluded that Eschenbach had used the sheet music only where he'd marked it for orchestral effects Kavakos had asked for, or that conductor and soloists had agreed on.

The other item on the program was Beethoven's Pastoral Symphony, which I hadn't been particularly looking forward to -- overly familiar, and not one of my favorites (3, 5, and 7) among the Beethoven nine.

The opening allegro ma non troppo was pleasant but didn't quite work -- maybe it was just a letdown after the intensity of Kavakos's Brahms. The same for the brookside scene, fine playing from the orchestra but it didn't register the way it should have. (In fairness, sitting in the third row means you're not getting an ideal instrumental blend; the strings, being downstage, are more prominent than they might at another location in the hall. It's a price I'm willing to pay to feel in the presence of the soloist.)

With the peasants' merrymaking, things picked up. The hints of the oncoming storm were beautifully realized, and the storm itself was thrilling without going all crazy about it. The song of thanksgiving after the storm and the coda were moving. I ended up with a new appreciation of the symphony and Beethoven -- amazing the emotional mileage he got out of variations on a few simple themes.

Eschenbach's conducting gestures were animated at times and restrained at others, sensitive to the mood of the music at each moment. He seemed wrapped up in the sound, and not showing off to the audience. There was nothing of the poseur in his manner, and much that suggested keen musicianship. I think the NSO is in good hands.

EU to UK: Get over yourself

2011-11-19T08:40:00.009-10:00

The Brussels Supreme Soviet, commonly and laughably known as the European Union, is feeling the heat. The seemingly insoluble crisis over PIIGS debt and looming reassertion of national interests have turned the Eurocrats fearful. Their need to hang onto power has made them desperate to counteract centrifugal force and created a new urgency in eroding EU countries' cultural identity as quickly as possible. Typically, the EU is playing the immigration card.

The EU's European Commission -- which according to its Web site "represents and upholds the interests of the EU as a whole" -- wants European countries, including Britain, to admit more non-European "migrants."

The EC press release says:

The EU needs to boost its relationships with non-EU States to better reap the mutual benefits migration can bring. Although migration is high on the European Union’s political agenda [that's for sure!], the Arab spring and events in the Southern Mediterranean in 2011 further highlighted the need for a coherent and comprehensive migration policy for the EU. That is why today the European Commission proposes to strengthen dialogue and operational cooperation with non-EU partner countries in the area of migration and mobility, deepening the proposals contained in the Communication on a Partnership and Shared Prosperity with the Southern Mediterranean, of 8 May.

The new approach is detailed in a renewed 'Global Approach to Migration and Mobility' which places mobility of third country nationals at its centre and which makes partnerships more sustainable and forward-looking. Mobility of third country nationals across the external EU borders is important as it applies to a wide range of people, such as short-term visitors, tourists, students, researchers, business people or visiting family members and linked to visa policy.

Translated from Eurocratese, that can be summed up as, "the rights of migrants come before the rights of the citizens of any vestigial 'country' under the EU boot heel."

A Google search shows that as of now, the lowbrow Daily Express is the only U.K. newspaper that has delved into the murky recesses of EU schemes to discover this "migration strategy." Or the respectable papers don't consider it newsworthy.

The Express story says:

The document is bound to trigger concerns in Whitehall that the EU is ready to wreck the Coalition’s drive to curb immigration to Britain. Ministers have pledged to cut annual net immigration from around 200,000 a year at present to “tens of thousands” a year. But campaigners are warning that Britain’s population will exceed 70million within 16 years if current trends continue.

More than nine out of 10 immigrants living in the UK have settled in England, according to a MigrationWatch report published yesterday. Only seven per cent of newcomers to Britain head for Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland.

The huge influx has contributed to England’s status as the sixth most-crowded country in the world. In a league table of population density included in the report, England came behind Bangladesh, Taiwan, South Korea , Lebanon and Rwanda.

A crowded house, right enough. But really, how can the U.K. object? It is the Western world's multi-culturalism typhoid carrier, which persecutes the BNP and the English Defence League and has made it virtually a crime to protest immigration, particularly Muslim immigration. Its politicians have bent the knee to the EU for decades, consenting to be a vassal state in everything but the euro currency.

The end of the EU can't come soon enough, but when it does, it won't be thanks to Britain.