Category: No particular place to go

After Bok, a Show of Hands

I am indebted to Troy Southgate for putting up a link to this video, Roots, by folk-rock musicians and, it seems, English cultural heroes Show of Hands ...

As what, I suppose, might be described by our liberal friends - without much love - as a professional Englishman, my reaction to it was a curious mix of mild embarrassment and stubborn pride.  The one was a middle-class sensibility and the other something wholly Anglo-Saxon.  In fairness, this isn’t quite my usual musical stamping ground, and I’m not accustomed to hearing my own English voice shouting so unselfconsciously into the political wind (though I gather from Troy’s frequent references to such music on New Right Forum that there is a thriving sub-culture in statements of this sort).

After a couple of plays stubborness got the upper hand, I’m glad to say.  I was reminded of a moment towards the end of Tolstoy’s War and Peace, which I read thirty-five years ago, where the colours of the defeated French are ceremonially lowered before General Kutouzov, with all his Grand Army, a monument to stubborness, looking on.  I think the real event occurred after the Battle of Maloyaroslavets.  Anyway, Tolstoy has it that as the colours are lowered the company wait in silence for the words of their great chief.  None, however, come.  Instead he, well knowing the spirit of the common soldier, issues an almighty oath and turns his horse away.  The men assembled across the hillsides hear and understand, and they respond in kind with a long and faithful roar.

This crude vigour lives in our people, too.  The elegant flutterings of the intellectual lepidoptera never call it forth.  But music does, and it is here in this song.

Posted by Guessedworker on Sunday, February 18, 2007 at 10:49 AM in No particular place to go
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Sobran on the latest ostrich outrage

Keeping their heads in the sand:

American Airlines had printed a pilot-training manual in which it took candor to the point of insanity. A section of the manual titled “Survival in Latin America” cautions its pilots that Latin American passengers “expect not to depart on time. In fact, it’s rumored that they will call in a false bomb threat to delay a departure if they think they’ll be late.” Furthermore, the guide added, “They like a drink in the plane prior to takeoff. Unruly and/or intoxicated passengers are not infrequent.”

Well, wouldn’t you know. This manual fell into the hands of a lawyer, and moments later it was being broadcast on every radio station in the Western Hemisphere.

Within hours American Airlines issued an apology. “We deeply regret ... American Airlines holds our Latin customers in the highest regard ... demonstrate our commitment ...” et cetera.

Posted by Alex Zeka on Wednesday, November 8, 2006 at 05:47 AM in No particular place to go
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Integrationism, the Pendle arrests and clever people

“There are different kinds of truths for different kinds of people. There are truths appropriate for children; truths that are appropriate for students; truths that are appropriate for educated adults; and truths that are appropriate for highly educated adults, and the notion that there should be one set of truths available to everyone is a modern democratic fallacy. It doesn’t work.”

Irving Krystol

Many watchful MR readers will have come across the following court report.  I say watchful because it appeared initially in the most out of the way and journalistically humble place, the Colne News Column of Pendle Today, date 6th October.

Chemicals Find

TWO Pendle men have appeared before Pennine magistrates accused of having “a master plan” after what is believed to be a record haul of chemicals used in making home-made bombs was found in Colne.

Robert Cottage (49), of Talbot Street, Colne, and David Bolus Jackson (62), of Trent Road, Nelson, made separate appearances before the court charged with being in possession of an explosive substance for an unlawful purpose. The offences are under the Explosive Substances Act 1883.

Continued...

Posted by Guessedworker on Sunday, October 22, 2006 at 06:24 PM in No particular place to go
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An exercise in guilt by association

Did you, perhaps, dream as a youngster of becoming a professional sportsman?  It would only be natural.  Well, I would like you to imagine that the dream came true … at least, if the dream was to be play soccer.  I want you to imagine yourself as a regular team guy in a professional squad - not a star perhaps and not in the top flight.  But you are out there in front of the fans every Saturday afternoon of the season, fighting for another win.

But … wins are becoming harder to come by just lately.  There have been mistakes … mis-hit back passes, poor positioning, a bad penalty-giveaway.  Just dumb stuff, but none of it, as it happens, yours.

Still, points have been lost.  The expected good finish in the table … the possibility of promotion, is slipping away.  Worse, your win bonuses have suffered.  There is pressure on everyone – a lot of it - and especially on the boss.

Then, say, in match preparation at the ground one cold, wet Saturday morning he – let’s call him Stan - sends three of the guys to the gym to do some light weight work.  It doesn’t make sense.  He’s never done that before.

The rest of the players he calls together.

“OK, guys,” Stan says, ”now I want you to listen carefully to me.  Don’t any of you interrupt.  This is important.

Continued...

Posted by Guessedworker on Saturday, September 23, 2006 at 05:08 AM in No particular place to go
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News

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Posted by Svyatoslav Igorevich on Saturday, September 16, 2006 at 04:41 PM in No particular place to go
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Ireland recognizes its diaspora

Her surname must have helped.  It’s about as Irish as you can get.  Having plenty of Irish blood myself, I am delighted by this story.  It does a sentimental Celtic heart good

A trainee teacher from Brisbane has become Ireland’s sweetheart after winning the Rose of Tralee contest.  Millions of Irish TV viewers tuned in to see Kathryn Feeney, 23, become this year’s Rose in a glittering ceremony in County Kerry.

The competition, which celebrates the Rose of Tralee folk song, aims to find the most charming and beautiful women in Ireland and Irish communities around the globe.  Kathryn, whose grandfather was Irish, won the Queensland heat earlier this year.  Her whole family, including some from the US, joined her in Dublin and yesterday they toasted her triumph with a few pints of Guinness.

Noela McCormick, of the Queensland Irish Association, was with them in the audience as Kathryn was declared the 2006 Rose.  “She couldn’t believe she had won, but I’m not surprised. The Irish fell in love with her right from the start,” she said.  “All of the girls in the contest have been treated like movie stars. They’ve been on TV all week and people have been scrambling for their autographs.

Source

Posted by jonjayray on Thursday, August 24, 2006 at 04:59 PM in No particular place to go
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Official: Tom and Jerry can give you lung cancer

The human smoke detectors accuse cartoon of encouraging smoking:

The offending cartoons are Tennis Chumps and Texas Tom. In the former, Tom’s opponent in a match is seen drawing on a large cigar. In the latter, Tom tries to impress a female cat by rolling a cigarette, lighting it and smoking it, all with one hand. It is a skill which, in this country at least, sometimes raises suspicions that the performer picked up the trick while behind bars.

After the complaint Turner conducted a review of its Tom and Jerry library to assess any smoking scenes and the context in which they appear.

If the very thought of Tom and Jerry getting censored isn’t hilarious enough, it should be added that Tom also gets squashed, set on fire and eaten alive, without having any obvious effect on the activities of his adoring public (unless you count the S&M crowd). I also cannot help wondering if the Watchdog realises that, based on the logic of this excrescence of busy-bodiness, almost every single show from before the modern health craze is now liable to get expunged from the imagination of a future generation?

The Left Puritan crowd who are committing this outrage against pixel cheroots and historical roots are acting remarkably similarly to the American fundies obsessing over whether another collection of pixels promotes “gay values” or not. If that isn’t the height of ironical perfection, I don’t know what is. Say what you like, but though the Left might be taking away pleasure after pleasure, it is at least leaving us with the pleasure to be derived from the infinitely hilarious spectacle of itself at work.

Posted by Alex Zeka on Tuesday, August 22, 2006 at 07:10 AM in No particular place to go
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Love versus what’s good for Mr Goldfarb

Hat-tip to Laban for this link to an IHT article originally printed in the NYT.  Michael Goldfarb has profited ethnically from the crime committed in my capital city (which he has the gaul to call his):-

When I first moved to the area in 1989, the park did not have anything like the variety of ethnicities and nationalities using it. What has happened in London since then is possibly the most remarkable peacetime change in the ethnic composition of a European city. Without warning and by increment, a vast influx of people from around the world has changed the city into something like the idealized, happily multiethnic, liberal New York of my childhood.

Even so, he accepts that his Jewish paradise in the goyim’s land won’t actually work.  But hey ho, what’s a Moslem bomber or two when the European Christian has been buried?

That’s not to say it’s all Elysium around here. There have been hate crimes; the local mosque was attended by Richard Reid, the so-called shoe- bomber, and Zacarias Moussaoui. But whenever the hate and violence threatened to boil over, leaders from all faiths spoke out, calling for peace, and the tensions cooled.

Still, as I watch my daughter and listen to the din of a dozen languages, I feel an end-of-summer sadness. Someday soon, someone with an inability to value what is precious about Clissold Park will commit the act that shatters this small world and drives all of us into our corners. Before that happens, I want my daughter to know that there was an alternative.

Continued...

Posted by Guessedworker on Friday, August 18, 2006 at 07:08 PM in No particular place to go
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Sympathy for the devil

I’m taking a quick break from pondering WN so I can reply to a very interesting question which Desmond Jones makes something of a habit of raising here, and to which I referred in my “Prelude” post.

Desmond’s question, essentially, is this:-

If the unique and dangerous level of out-group sympathy which European peoples exhibit today is an evolved trait, is it not more powerful and harder-wired than our instinct for group survival?

Continued...

Posted by Guessedworker on Saturday, August 5, 2006 at 05:51 PM in No particular place to go
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Wee thought for the day

As my readers may have gathered, I am no great admirer of the Celtic fringes so rudely thrust onto England. Nonetheless, even I have to admit that the rugged Highlands have produced something of civilizational value:

“Be a philosopher but, amid all your philosophy be still a man” - David Hume, 18th century Scottish philosopher

A fine piece of advice for nihilists such as Peter Singer, the late Ayn Rand’s followers, the neocon coterie, and indeed for all those who would put their abstract nostrums of Human Liberty, Equality, Progress, Post-modernism and Democracy ahead of the evidence of their own eyes and the time-honoured wisdom of their ancestors.

Posted by Alex Zeka on Wednesday, August 2, 2006 at 08:33 AM in No particular place to go
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News

Continued...

Posted by Svyatoslav Igorevich on Saturday, July 22, 2006 at 06:56 PM in No particular place to go
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Tech Tip: Save Streaming Media II

Saving streaming media can be a real pain.  There are some commercial products available that are supposed to do the job but I’ve had mixed results.  My best results have come from using a URL sniffer to find the appropriate URL, then feeding it to a downloading application that can handle the appropriate protocol (many streaming media providers use protocols other than HTTP, e.g. RTSP). 

I have had less than successful results using this combination to download streaming media from some dedicated sites like youtube.com.  After a Google search I discovered a forum dedicated to this sort of thing, and two threads with useful info.  The upshot is that I downloaded and tested a Firefox extension called VideoDownloader.  It’s all of 20k but it did the job for this video I wanted from youtube.com where a series of white racialists heckle Morris Dees about allegations of his pedophilia. (If you want to play the saved file you’ll need something that can play FLV files, like FLV Player)

As for the URL sniffer approach, I recently stumbled onto a free URL sniffer called URL Snooper.  URL Snooper requires WinPcap.  I have not tested it.  I still haven’t found a reliable and free downloader that handles the popular streaming protocols, so I continue to recommend HiDownload as the least crash-prone commercial app for the task.

Posted by Svyatoslav Igorevich on Wednesday, July 19, 2006 at 10:39 PM in No particular place to go
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Finally, the white demographic is taken seriously

A white dating service had to come along sooner or later, and here it is.  Unless, of course, it is a fraud, a parody, or a rip-off!  But then ...

Stanley Womack
ResistingDefamation.org

Posted by Guest Blogger on Friday, July 14, 2006 at 03:42 PM in No particular place to go
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News

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Posted by Svyatoslav Igorevich on Thursday, July 13, 2006 at 08:02 PM in No particular place to go
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News

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Posted by Svyatoslav Igorevich on Wednesday, July 12, 2006 at 10:03 PM in No particular place to go
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News

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Posted by Svyatoslav Igorevich on Monday, July 3, 2006 at 05:19 PM in No particular place to go
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News

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Posted by Svyatoslav Igorevich on Wednesday, June 28, 2006 at 05:10 PM in No particular place to go
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News

Updated

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Posted by Svyatoslav Igorevich on Saturday, June 24, 2006 at 06:46 PM in No particular place to go
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News

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Posted by Svyatoslav Igorevich on Sunday, June 18, 2006 at 03:35 PM in No particular place to go
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News

Friday, June 16th.

Continued...

Posted by Svyatoslav Igorevich on Friday, June 16, 2006 at 02:10 PM in No particular place to go
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Messrs K & H assure the public their production will be second to none!

What if one evening a mole whispered in your ear, saying: “Here’s the decisive refutation of any kind of Kantian ethics”?

Posted by Søren Renner on Tuesday, May 16, 2006 at 08:19 PM in No particular place to go
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Criticism of Muslims Attacked Again

At least among the engineering faculty of Michigan State University,  there seems to be a professor who does not as yet kowtow to Muslims.  When a Muslim student group put on a protest against the famous Mohammed cartoons, Prof Wichman sent them an email protesting against their protest:

“Wichman, 50, wrote that he was protesting their protest and said he was not offended by cartoons but rather Muslims who commit suicide bombings, behead civilians, attack public buildings, burn Christian churches, kill Catholic priests in Turkey, rape Scandinavian girls and riot in France.  Wichman referred to Muslims as “dissatisfied, aggressive, brutal, and uncivilized slave-trading Moslems” and the protests as “infantile” in the e-mail. “If you do not like the values of the West ... you are free to leave. I hope for God’s sake that most of you choose that option.”

Source

The Muslim students did, of course, kick up a big ruckus about the email and demanded that MSU discipline Wichman.  MSU refused to do so, however, on the rather surprising grounds that the email was “private”. 

“Wichman” sounds like an Ashkenazi (Jewish) name to me so that may be why Wichman got off so lightly.  When one minority is pitted against another, that does tend to give the commissars of political correctness a headache.

Posted by jonjayray on Wednesday, April 26, 2006 at 11:39 PM in No particular place to go
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The Flight 93 tape

This is the full transcript:-

09:35:33 — No, no, no. Unintelligible.
09:35:35 — Down in the airport.
09:35:39 — Down, down.
09:35:40 — I don’t want to die.
09:35:41 — No, no. Down, down.
09:35:42 — I don’t want to die. I don’t want to die.
09:35:44 — No, no. Down, down, down, down, down, down.
09:35:47 — No, no, please.
09:35:57 — No.
09:37:06 — (That’s it. Go back.)
09:37:06 — (That’s it.) Sit down.
09:37:36 —(Everthing is fine. I finished.)
09:38:36 — (Yes.)
09:39:11 — Ah. Here’s the captain. I would like to tell you all to remain seated. We have a bomb aboard, and we are going back to the airport, and we have our demands. So, please remain quiet.
... 09:45:19 — (How about we let them in? We let the guys in now.)
09:45:23 — (OK.)
09:45:24 — (Should we let the guys in?)
09:45:25 — (Inform them, and tell him to talk to the pilot. Bring the pilot back.)
09:45:57 — (In the name of Allah. In the name of Allah. I bear witness that there is no other God, but Allah.)
09:47:31 — Unintelligible.
09:47:40 — (Allah knows.)
09:48:15 — Unintelligible.
09:48:38 — Set course.
... 09:53:20 — (The best thing: The guys will go in, lift up the) ... Unintelligible ... (and they put the axe into it. So, everyone will be scared.)
09:53:27 — (Yes.)
09:53:28 — (The axe.)
...
09:58:44 — (Oh Allah. Oh Allah. Oh the most gracious.)
09:58:47 — Ugh. Ugh.09:58:52 — Stay back.
09:58:55 — In the cockpit.
09:58:57 — In the cockpit.
09:58:57 — (They want to get in here. Hold, hold from the inside. Hold from the inside. Hold).
09:59:04 — Hold the door.
09:59:09 — Stop him.
09:59:11 — Sit down.
09:59:13 — Sit down.
09:59:15 — Sit down.
09:59:16 — Unintelligible.
09:59:17 — (What?)
09:59:18 — (There are some guys. All those guys.)
09:59:20 — Lets get them.
... 10:00:07 — (Is that it? Shall we finish it off?)
10:00:08 — (No. Not yet.)
10:00:09 — (When they all come, we finish it off.)
10:00:11 — (There is nothing.)
10:00:13 — Unintelligible.
10:00:14 — Ahh.
10:00:15 — I’m injured.
10:00:16 — Unintelligible.
10:00:21 — Ahh.
10:00:22 — (Oh Allah. Oh Allah. Oh gracious.)
10:00:25 — In the cockpit. If we don’t, we’ll die.
10:00:29 — (Up, down. Up, down, in the) cockpit.
10:00:33 — (The) cockpit.
10:00:37 — (Up, down. Saeed, up, down.)
10:00:42 — Roll it.
10:00:55 — Unintelligible.
10:00:59 — (Allah is the greatest. Allah is the greatest.)
10:01:01 — Unintelligible.
10:01:08 — (Is that it? I mean, shall we pull it down?)
10:01:09 — (Yes, put it in it, and pull it down.)
10:01:10 — Unintelligible.
10:01:11 — (Saeed.)
10:01:12 — ... engine ...
10:01:13 — Unintelligible.
10:01:16 — (Cut off the oxygen.)
10:01:18 — (Cut off the oxygen. Cut off the oxygen. Cut off the oxygen.)
10:01:34 — Unintelligible.
10:01:37 — Unintelligible.
10:01:41 — (Up, down. Up, down.)
10:01:41 — (What?)
10:01:42 — (Up, down.)
10:01:42 — Ahh.
10:01:53 — Ahh.
10:01:54 — Unintelligible.
10:01:55 — Ahh.
10:01:59 — Shut them off.
10:02:03 — Shut them off.
10:02:14 — Go.
10:02:14 — Go.
10:02:15 — Move.
10:02:16 — Move.
10:02:17 — Turn it up.
10:02:18 — (Down, down.)
10:02:23 — (Pull it down. Pull it down.)
10:02:25 — Down. Push, push, push, push, push.
10:02:33 — (Hey. Hey. Give it to me. Give it to me.)
10:02:35 — (Give it to me. Give it to me. Give it to me.)
10:02:37 — (Give it to me. Give it to me. Give it to me.)
10:02:40 — Unintelligible.
10:03:02 — (Allah is the greatest.)
10:03:03 — (Allah is the greatest.)
10:03:04 — (Allah is the greatest.)
10:03:06 — (Allah is the greatest.)
10:03:06 — (Allah is the greatest.)
10:03:07 — No.
10:03:09 — (Allah is the greatest. Allah is the greatest.)
10:03:09 — (Allah is the greatest. Allah is the greatest.)

Well, the passengers will be remembered as heroes one and all.  And their heroism was instructive.  Seeing that there was no self-preservation to be had from sitting quietly as the hijackers demanded, they chose the only course open to them.  They were, therefore, clear-sighted before they were brave.

Quite obviously, the Administration’s decision to remove Saddam and democratise Iraq does not belong to the same class of human action.  But the presence of the Minutemen on the border certainly does.  Here, too, there is no advantage for patriotic Euro-Americans to be had from sitting quietly at home, as the Administration demands.  The clear-sighted understand that the Mexicanisation of the south-west is fatal to the life they know and love.  Out of clear-sightedness flows the courage to act.

The heroes of Flight 93 will at least have a memorial by which future Americans may, if they choose, remember them.  But who will those future Americans be?  And how many of them will care to remember the courage of the men who travelled south to defend the way of life they had always known.

Posted by Guessedworker on Wednesday, April 12, 2006 at 06:18 PM in No particular place to go
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Baltic Ferry Disaster

http://www.balticsworldwide.com/news/features/msestonia.htm

Discuss among yourselves.

Posted by Søren Renner on Saturday, April 8, 2006 at 01:28 PM in No particular place to go
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Some word fun

Readers may have gathered that language and languages is one of my great interests and entertainments.  In a recent email to me, Scottish blogger Neil Craig (who writes lots of letters to Scottish newspapers) said:  “A very short letter in the Herald today.  I am glad of this since I was somewhat scunnered that they hadn’t published anything of mine since Christmas”

I was delighted to see the word “scunnered”.  I don’t know where I remember it from.  Maybe my mother used it.  Maybe my Scottish wife used it.  It is not really translatable but it means something like disgusted, emptied-out or defeated.  Neil was in fact being a little reserved in his use of the word.  A more common construction would be “fair scunnered”.  An Australian would probably say “really shat” under the same circumstances.

There are a lot of foreign words that are not really translatable into English—which is why English has adopted so many foreign words.  Two German words that we have lost from English seem particularly useful to me:  Reich and Volk.  I discuss the meaning of Volk here.  I sometimes use both words in my postings here (I am the only one who dares!) —where they are fairly likely to be understood.  The reason why they are rarely used in English these days is probably that Hitler used both words a lot, and used them prominently (“Tausendjahr Reich”, “Volksgenossene” etc).  So part of the reason why I use them is to   “stir the possum”:  I have been waiting for some Leftist to pounce on me and accuse me of being a Nazi for using them.  But, sadly, nobody has given me that pleasure.  So I have given up waiting and will outline here the crushing reply that I had ready:

On all the products exported from the old Communist East Germany, there was a “brand name”—which was “VEB”.  And what does “VEB” stand for?  It stands for “Volkseigene Betrieb”, which translates as “The People’s own Enterprise” (though that translation could be argued about too).  So if Communist East Germany put the word “Volk” on everything it produced, how come it is a Nazi word?  The truth, of course, is that it is an ordinary German word that was in common use for at least 2,000 years before the Nazis came along.

And as for “Reich”:  For starters, the East German State Railway was known as the “Reichsbahn”.

Posted by jonjayray on Wednesday, April 5, 2006 at 08:24 PM in No particular place to go
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