The Moose and Mao

What do Norwegian moose and Chinamen* have in common? By the logic of the Chinese Communists, who regard their subjects as more pawns than people, they are both the cause of global warming and must be eradicated at all costs.

As for Chinese moose, I say we take off and nuke the entire site from orbit. It's the only way to be sure.

*Yes, I know this is politically incorrect, but since I am un-PC and vehemently opposed to Newspeak in all its forms, I prefer to side with proper grammar and unambiguity.

Swedish Cartoon Wars

I haven't commented on the Swedish cartoon war that's brewing over a local paper's publication of cartoons of Mohammad to protest self-censorship by art galleries in the name of abject brown-trouser cowardice cultural sensitivity-- largely because the Muslim permanent outrage brigade was, predictably, outraged and Iran made demands that merely confirmed that they shouldn't be left in charge of a firecracker, much less nuclear weapons. In other word, same old story.

Far more important is how the civilised world reacts to such blather. Whether the Jihadists are greeted with the contempt they deserve or if we cave in to their calls for dhimmitude is the real point of contention. It's refreshing, therefore, to report that the Swedes have at last developed a spine, as shown from this statement from the Swedish Prime Minister in regard for Iran's demand that Sweden impose Sharia-style censorship on the press (translation via Little Green Footballs):

I think it is important to say two things. The first is that we have been very keen on a Sweden that will be a country where muslims and Christians, those that believe in God and those who don’t, can live side by side in mutual respect. We think that we have come very far. I have a responsibility for this to continue and to take initiative to deepen this reciprocity and respect.

At the same time we are very focused on standing up for freedom of expression which is a basic right in the law and which comes natural to us and which ensures that we do not make political decisions about what is published in newspapers. I want to keep it this way.

In diplomatese, this is a polite way of saying "naff off."

Consensus is a Passing Fad

Looks like it's global warming day at Ephemeral Isle. But at least the debate is over and there's scientific consensus on the topic.

Or is there?

Problem, Meet Solution

Meanwhile, the global warming cult is on a roll, blaming all those farting mooses for increases in attacks by cougars, leopards and black bears, who have had enough and decided to take direct action-- though not against the moose, apparently.

No matter, because from Australia comes a humble solution to the kitty/black bear problem that simply requires a bigger pot.

Reeducation on the Green

And now on BBC Three we present a new series from the Ministry of Love (emphasis added):

Joanna, Dan and Andy descend on a household of wasters to assess just how bad they are based on what they see in the house, by 'interrogating' them and from the evidence of a waste diary that the family has compiled.

The family then spends up to five days living at 'the house of correction' - a purpose built eco-camp of large traditional Mongolian yurts (tents) - where they live without creature comforts and have Joanna and Dan teaching how them to waste as little as possible and how to live off the land.

Meanwhile, Andy oversees an eco-makeover at the family's home - designed to challenge their behaviour and inspire them to change their ways - with measures such as solar panels, wind turbines, turf roofing, livestock, compost toilets, recycling systems as well as locking up or removing cars.

Not so much a reality programme as a Greenpeace wet dream.

Climate Paradox

Okay, but how are we going to get rid of those farting mooses, then?

Dr Spacely-Trellis, Call Your Service

Father Anthony Sutch conducts one of his more "innovative" services.

Do you prefer your environmentalism to be more cult than politics? Did you put yard clippings in the dust bin this week? Are you wracked with guilt about this mortal blow to Earth's fragile ecosystem? Then help Save the Planet^TM and run down to the Greenpeace Festival in Waveney, Suffolk, where you will find a "green" confessional made out of recycled materials presided over by a recycled priest in recycled vestments.

Dom Anthony Sutch, the Benedictine monk who resigned as head of Downside School to become a parish priest in Suffolk, will be at the county’s Waveney Greenpeace festival this weekend to hear eco-confessions in what is thought to be the first dedicated confessional booth of its kind.

Vested in a green chasuble-style garment made from recycled curtains, and in a booth constructed of recycled doors, he will hear the sins of of those who have not recycled the things they ought to have done and who have consumed the things they ought not to have done.

Quoting Father Anthony,

It is not, I hope, blasphemous to do this.

Blasphemous, perhaps. Dotty, absolutely. It's so refreshing to see a priest, and a Roman Catholic at that, being unconstrained by little details such as dogma, scripture or even personal dignity while prostituting his office in pursuit of go-ahead causes that Our Lord, being the product of unenlightened times, seems to have overlooked, such as making failure to recycle, purchasing non-macrobiotic lentils or voting Conservative a sin.

Not that this is a one off. If you feel uncomfortable about having a Christian (pardon my language) priest intervening with Blessed Mother Gaia on your behalf, there is a secular alternative.

The Waveney Greenpeace confessional concept is based on the Earthly Sins booth which has appeared at the Glastonbury festival and in the lobby of theatre performancs (sic) by the comic Rob Newman. A secular construct, Earthly Sins asks penitents to sign a pledge that they will switch to renewable energy or ethical banking.

When donations for next year's wicker man will be solicited has yet to be determined.

Warning Sign

The British government is now running a pilot scheme for slapping warning labels on cafe menus advertising foods that fail to toe the Party line are unhealthy. Hopefully, the labels will look something like this:
Rumour is that if the "voluntary" pilot scheme is a success it will be followed by special squads of black-clad nutrition enforcers being sent 'round to restaurants to scream at patrons to sit up straight and eat all their greens or there won't be any pudding.

Voyage to the Planet of Prehistoric Women

We're babysitting both our neighbour's pooches this week-- One of whom is a silky terrier mix who wrestles with Carl the Cattle Dog 24/7 and the other is a golden lab who is bottomless pit of need for attention, so you can imagine what life is like at Chez Szondy at the moment. Having one dog is relaxing. Having two dogs is stimulating. Having three dogs is pandemonium. Besides this, I'm also getting my daughter ready to start Kindergarten next week and I have an important meeting with a potential client this afternoon.

In a nutshell, this means that posting may be a tad light today, so I'm filling the gap with that Roger Corman epic, Voyage to the Planet of Prehistoric Women.

The cheesy goodness just oozes out.

The Final Solution

From the New York Times comes this helpful bit of advice on how to combat global warming that would make the most dedicated misanthrope blanch (emphasis added):

At a panel on climate change at the University of Cambridge this summer, Mr. (James E.) Lovelock was asked what would be the most effective action people could take. Because humans and their pets and livestock produce about a quarter of the carbon dioxide in the atmosphere, he said, “just stop breathing.”

Okay, everyone; get out those sleeping pills and plastic bags. We've got to Save the Planet^TM!

Outrage Football

The US military handed out footballs festooned with flags of all nations to Afghan children as goodwill gift and received heartfelt thanks in return. No, actually the kids' elders were (all together now) outraged because one of the flags in question was the Saudi Arabian flag, which has the ward "Allah" written on it.

Did the elders take the footballs away from the kids and put them in a place of veneration and leave it at that? Was the "outrage" aimed at the Saudis for the presumption and poor foresight of putting a supposedly inviolable holy word on a flag, given that flags tend to end up on footballs and other things that get kicked, thumped, bashed, sloshed and shot depending on circumstances? Of course not. It was focused like a gun sight at those wicked Americans for distributing something that they almost certainly did not manufacture themselves and was intended to be used in a way that no one who has a sense of proportion and was not constantly looking for a new grievance would regard as unreasonable. After all, the Union Jack, to give one example, has not one but four Christian crosses on it and no one howls sacrilege when a pair of Reeboks gets scuffed.

This is one of those situations where a strong "get a life" statement is the only one appropriate. For propaganda reasons the Pentagon can't do it, so let's leave it to the more general observations of Pat Condell via Theo Spark.

The Intruder

I don't think NASA realises half the trouble they cause mucking about with space probes in other people's backyards.

Reading the Obvious

BBC headline:

Great 'cosmic nothingness' found

They must have seen this year's Booker Prize list.

A Hard Day's Night

And now your moment of high culture: Peter Sellers doing Lord Olivier doing Richard III doing A Hard Day's Night.

Introduced by a couple of blokes who did tunes.

The Lazy Road to Oceania

This should come as a surprise to no one (emphasis added):

Despite a ban on handguns introduced in 1997 after 16 children and their teacher were shot dead in the Dunblane massacre the previous year, their use in crimes has almost doubled to reach 4,671 in 2005-06. Official figures show that although Britain has some of the toughest anti-gun laws in the world, firearm use in crime has risen steadily. This year eight young people have been killed in gun attacks: six in London and one each in Manchester and Liverpool.

“Illegal firearms have become increasingly accessible to younger offenders who appear more likely to use these firearms recklessly,” a report on gun crime commissioned by the Home Office cautioned last year.

One of the reasons that I am so vehemently opposed to the sort of police state measures that have crept into Britain over the years isn't just that they are oppressive, but that they don't even accomplish what they set out to do in the first place. In fact, they have exactly to opposite effect. Draconian gun bans result in more gun crimes, treating terrorism as a civil offence rather than a tactic of a military enemy results in Jihadists and IRA killers walking Scot free, the more CCTV cameras are put up the worse our town centres become, and every attempt to control illegal immigrants by implementing ID cards and similar database schemes makes the borders look like a more than usually battered about sieve.

This isn't surprising. Authoritarian measures are self-defeating because they spring from a mind-set born of pure sloth. They are not meant to actually solve a problem, but to go after the softest target available-- and that is almost invariably the respectable, the law-abiding and the peaceful (who are always the ones really to blame in the minds of the authoritarian, anyway). Their purpose is not to protect but to control. To the nascent Thoughpoliceman, having a failed gun ban resulting in a tiny criminal element preying on the majority is an acceptable price to pay if it means that the majority are now disarmed and easier to control. To such minds, the problem is not gunmen or Jihadists or hoodies; it's liberty.

Don't believe me? Consider the counter example from Mark Steyn:

I live in northern New England, which has a very low crime rate, in part because it has a high rate of gun ownership. We do have the occasional murder, however. A few years back, a couple of alienated loser teens from a small Vermont town decided they were going to kill somebody, steal his ATM cards, and go to Australia. So they went to a remote house in the woods a couple of towns away, knocked on the door, and said their car had broken down. The guy thought their story smelled funny so he picked up his Glock and told 'em to get lost. So they concocted a better story, and pretended to be students doing an environmental survey. Unfortunately, the next old coot in the woods was sick of environmentalists and chased 'em away. Eventually they figured they could spend months knocking on doors in rural Vermont and New Hampshire and seeing nothing for their pains but cranky guys in plaid leveling both barrels through the screen door. So even these idiots worked it out: Where's the nearest place around here where you're most likely to encounter gullible defenseless types who have foresworn all means of resistance? Answer: Dartmouth College. So they drove over the Connecticut River, rang the doorbell, and brutally murdered a couple of well-meaning liberal professors. Two depraved misfits of crushing stupidity (to judge from their diaries) had nevertheless identified precisely the easiest murder victims in the twin-state area. To promote vulnerability as a moral virtue is not merely foolish. Like the new Yale props department policy, it signals to everyone that you're not in the real world.

If you went to the Home Secretary and suggested that perhaps the proper way to handle the violent crime problem would be to come back to reality, lift the various bans and allow ordinary subjects of the Crown to keep a loaded shotgun over the mantelpiece again, what do you think his answer would be?

I rest my case.

Cartoon Dhimmitude

America's media outlets have demonstrated that they have spines of pure linguine by censoring Berke Breathed's Opus strip for this week because it might might spark a homicidal Jihadist attack it's "insensitive." Not that it's any big deal. I mean, it's not like it's a hard news story about the FBI looking for two men caught casing Seattle ferries, right?

The outcome of the Danish Cartoon Wars is now clear.

We lost.

Scooby Doo, Call Your Service

Cuban Foreign Minister Felipe Perez Roque says that Fidel Castro is in "permanent" contact with leaders of the Communist party and the government.

Translation: Run for your lives, the Havana Capitol Building is haunted.

Update: Maximum Leader's condition may be "stable", but the rumours about his death are alive and kicking.

Sleeper

Lufthana's new Airbus 380 sleeper plane service. The good news is that you can now lie down to sleep on long-haul flights. The bad news is that you've swapped "cattle car" for "cord wood."

Headline: "'Thought police' to target drinkers"

British police now have the power to ban people from the town centre for two days and take their fingerprints and DNA samples.

A stern measure against those who go on drunken rampages? No, a stern measure against those who are stone-cold sober, but look like they might get drunk.

Tea & Infinite Regression

Suck UK is marketing a colour-matching tea mug so your cuppa will have just the right amount of milk in it.

Great, first thing in the morning and I have to look at swatches before I can have my tea. Or at least, I'll need a cup of tea before I can have my tea.

I sense a disturbance in the Force.

Yes, I Want a Doggie Bag, Dammit!

And while we're on the subject of the mind-bogglingly pointless and expensive, here are eleven more things you don't need and can't afford anyway-- like a $1000 pizza.

Diamond Bikini

Made out of flawless diamonds and costing $30 million, we present the world's most expensive bikini. This example of the collision of the sexual objectification of the female body and the excesses of our the capitalist consumer culture demonstrates that....

Oy! Pay attention and stop getting drool all over the keyboard. It's unhealthy.

Bullwinkle Must Die!

The Norwegians have discovered the true cause of global warming: Moose farts.

Get out the rifle, Olaf. We've got to Save the Planet^TM.

The Changes

Post-apocalyptic children's fantasy from 1975

The curious thing is, that in '75 they had to invoke a mysterious "noise" to cause people to fly into an insane rage and smash up all the technology. Today we call that "Windows."

Part One.

Part Two

Part Three

Well, That Makes... WHAT?!?

From Newsweek:

In one of history's more absurd acts of totalitarianism, China has banned Buddhist monks in Tibet from reincarnating without government permission. According to a statement issued by the State Administration for Religious Affairs, the law, which goes into effect next month and strictly stipulates the procedures by which one is to reincarnate, is "an important move to institutionalize management of reincarnation."

And I thought needing a building permit for a garden shed was going too far.

When Oysters Go Bad

From the Guardian:

Up to a million people on income support will be eligible for half fares on London's buses under Ken Livingstone's oil deal with Hugo Chávez, Venezuela's president.

Single parents, carers, the long-term sick and disabled people will benefit from the plan, first mooted during Mr Chávez's visit to the UK last year, paying 50p for a single journey if they use an Oystercard.

It doesn't surprise me at all that Red Ken has done a deal with the likes of Chavez. but I sincerely hope that freeborn Englishmen will prefer to walk from Whitechapel to Richmond rather than accept largess from a tin-pot Latin American dictator.

Pointing Out the Bleeding Obvious

In a massive waste of funding, scientists have discovered that girls prefer pink.

For the price of a packet of Skittles they could have spent an hour with my five-year old daughter and figured that out in no time.

War is Peace

Bruce Bawer over at City Journal has an uncompromising look at the so-called Peace Movement and sums up its more unbalanced fringe once stripped of its Marxist double talk:

In other words, if you want to ensure peace, worry less about freedom. Appease tyranny, accept it, embrace it—and there’ll be no more war.

This reminds me of something I read in one of Robert Conquest's books where he points out that this attitude is rank nonsense even on its own terms. Using the Communists as his example, Conquest notes that once a tyranny becomes secure in itself the result is not a perpetual albeit repressive peace, but that the tyrants instantly split into competing factions ala the Bolsheviks and the Menesheviks, Hitler and Stalin, or the Soviets and the Maoists and war against one another forever.

Want to find the road to Oceania? Start at your local Peace Institute.

Mission Stardust

And now a bit of cheese to brighten your Monday. This 1967 space epic based on Germany's insanely prolific Perry Rhodan pulp series has been compared favourably to 2001... shots to the groin.

Winston Smith, Report for Duty

The Guardian also has this little gem of BBC logic on display (emphasis added):

A source close to next month's new series of Casualty, the long-running BBC1 hospital drama, said that it was to start with a two-part special in which a young Muslim runs into a bus station and blows himself up. Another Muslim is wearing a suicide vest but fails to detonate it; instead he is injured and the vest has to be carefully removed. The source said that senior figures in the drama department supported the idea but were blocked by editorial guideline staff, who oversee the corporation's editorial and ethical standards. The drama staff were overruled because of concerns that the story would perpetuate stereotypes of young Muslims in Britain.

In the substitute story, a double episode to be shown over a weekend, a bomb explodes on a bus after being planted by animal rights militants, leaving the Holby City Hospital's Emergency Department to deal with the bloody aftermath.

So let's get this straight. Doing a story about a Muslim suicide bombing in Britain, which actually has happened, is axed because it "perpetuates stereotypes", but one about an animal rights "militant" planting a bomb on a bus is okay even though that is the one sort of nastiness out of a very long list that animal rights terrorists militants have yet to stoop to.

Good to see the Memory hole is getting a good workout.

Jesus, ITV & Dhimmitiude

From the Guardian:

There was no manger, Christ is not the Messiah, and the crucifixion never happened. A forthcoming ITV documentary will portray Jesus as Muslims see him.

With the Koran as a main source and drawing on interviews with scholars and historians, the Muslim Jesus explores how Islam honours Christ as a prophet but not as the son of God. According to the Koran the crucifixion was a divine illusion. Instead of dying on the cross, Jesus was rescued by angels and raised to heaven.

If this was 1975, I wouldn't have any quarrel with Lord Bragg et al for putting this film out. I would merely file it away as a study in comparative religion of no more or less importance than a discussion of the Arian heresy and leave it at that. However, when it comes at a time when we are in a war for our lives with a load of suicidal Jihadists who use the Koran for their marching orders and when Her Majesty's government allows a most prominent and vocal Islamofascist to walk free and active on British soil, this comes perilously close to carrying the enemy's water for him.

A rule of thumb for the media: If the Allied press wouldn't do something that would aid the Axis cause in 1943, don't do it for the Jihadists today.

Sex Kittens Go to College

Elektro, once the world's most famous robot, reduced to this at the nadir of his career.

Ah, well. Lord Olivier went through the same thing.

Family Time

Off to my wife's family reunion today in the wilds beyond the Cascades.

Back tomorrow.

History Corner

And now, courtesy of Modern Mechanix, we present the King Tut's tomb of cutlery: The Ur spork of 1935.

The excitement is palpable.

Dictatorship Plain & Simple

I am shocked, shocked that Hugo Chavez has made himself president for life.

Optional Extras

The US President's limousine may be built like a tank, but it's the SUV behind him that you have to look out for.

Without a Leg to Stand On

I've had auditions like this.

Some producers are so bloody picky.

For Allah's Sake!

And now from the Raving Mad Department comes a Dutch Roman Catholic Bishop who, with a perfectly straight face, has said that people of all faiths should refer to God as "Allah" to "foster understanding."

I don't know what is more breathtaking; the sheer theological imbecility coming from a man of the cloth that cannot recognise that God and Allah are fundamentally different ideas or the blinkered multiculturalism that is indistinguishable from craven cowardice. I never thought I'd see the day when the land of Calvin and Erasmus was in danger of falling under the sway of sharia law or that a Bishop of Rome would help fit the shackles.

Calling a Terrorist a Terrorist

The United States is about to officially declare Iran's Revolutionary Guard a terrorist organisation. This announcement came on the same day Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad said at Iran's embassy in Afghanistan (emphasis added),

There is no truth on earth but monotheism and following tenets of Islam and there is no way for salvation of mankind but rule of Islam over mankind.

"Overreaction" by the US bows to "about time" on this one.