Freedom porn

Thanks to Lone Star Parson, shivering in Texas's snows, another fun gun site for us poor sods who can't even own realistic toys any more here in the Mother of Parliaments.

Give it to me, big boy.



Post headline pic from here.

Now...accursed

Shakespeare put a speech into the mouth of Henry V at the battle of Agincourt on the 25 October 1415.

That particular war was one of dynastic pride and conquest for personal gain – the kind of warfare that our civilisation has come rightly to despise. Now we expect out just wars to be of self-defence, or survival, or liberation. Conquerors are beyond the pale – but their kinder successors are not (or shouldn’t be.)

The Saint Crispin’s Day speech plays another part in our national culture: to express not only pride in martial skill and to recognise courage and service, but to glorify ideas of nationhood: of continuity; of people and institutions coming from somewhere and being made by people to suit their present needs and the results bequeathed to us as treasures – our true heritage.

Shakespeare wrote - and his plays were performed - at a time when the idea of Englishness had emerged from two forms of government: mediaeval inernationalism (the conscious thought and political ideal of a united Christendom in Europe) and the private dominions of the landed magnates. Shakespeare was aware of something that was still informal and that would not be made real until the next royal dynasty: of Britishness. We few, we happy few in these islands of four nations were exemplified by the common soldiers, pub joke-like, with Englishmen, and an Irishman, a Scotsman, and a Welshman. He wrote confidently and proudly in the new-found patriotism of his age, and in some ways gave it its language and some of its lasting form.
He wrote with the editorial approval of the State of the day (he had to, otherwise he would not have been allowed to stage his work).

It is dificult to imagine him being able to write so confidently and unequivocally about arms and the men who bear them, and civil society and civil government’s support if he was writing in today’s deliberately and treasonously equivocal days.



What's he that wishes so?
My cousin Westmoreland? No, my fair cousin;
If we are mark'd to die, we are enow
To do our country loss; and if to live,
The fewer men, the greater share of honour.
Or feel the curses of Mussleman’s ungrateful scorn
God's will! I pray thee, wish not one man more.
For all have been stood down from lack of thrift.
By Jove, I am not covetous for gold,
Look in my parliament for such
Nor care I who doth feed upon my cost;
And never work or thank or serve
From idler’s cradle to their public grave
It yearns me not if men my garments wear;
Such outward things dwell not in my desires,
As toys unmade by such as they; enjoyed
But never earned but wished withal and given from the common purse,
But if it be a sin to covet honour,
(Bar a daughter’s death or sullen injury
As infidel prophet and his clerics teach)
I am the most offending soul alive.
No, faith, my coz, wish not a man from England.
God's peace! I would not lose so great an honour
As one man more methinks would share from me
For the best hope I have. O, do not wish one more!
Rather proclaim it, Westmoreland, through my host,
That he which hath no stomach to this fight,
As are scribes and clerks aplenty safe at home
Or town criers, players, and priests unmanly made
Let him depart; his passport shall be made,
And eight weeks on the morrow shall be done
As swift as modern chancery allow
And crowns for convoy put into his purse;
Who cares from whence; not ministers civil
Nor philosophers public, sage, and loving by their
Daily, oft proclaimed philanthropy.
We would not die in that man's company
That fears his fellowship to die with us.
This day is call'd the feast of Crispian.
He that outlives this day, and comes safe home,
Will stand a tip-toe when this day is nam'd,
And rouse him at the name of Crispian.
He that shall live this day, and see old age,
Should he not need to stay in filthy hospital
Or dwell amongst vagabond knaves
My judges have decreed shall live as freemen
As rich in rights as any Duke or armsman true,
Will yearly on the vigil feast his neighbours,
And say 'To-morrow is Saint Crispian.'
Then will he strip his sleeve and show his scars,
And say 'These wounds I had on Crispian's day.'
And they will curse him, like as not,
For blood he spilled and ne’er question why
Nor wonder whence their freedom comes
But as a gift from God or bounteous Nature
And never think to pay or count the cost
That bought their still felicity.
Old men forget; yet all shall be forgot,
But he'll remember, with advantages,
What feats he did that day. Then shall our names,
Familiar in his mouth as household words-
Harry the King, Bedford and Exeter,
Warwick and Talbot, Salisbury and Gloucester-
But likelier in schools my kingdom wide
Will learn other names of sages, clerics;
And foremost slaves; but not of those who struck off
Their chains, or why, or how.
Be in their flowing cups freshly rememb'red.
If drink be made, or law allow
Its quaffing public or in houses
Where weak and hurtful children dwell.
This story shall the good man teach his son;
Should husbands, fathers, or replacements need
To live with mothers e’er again in
England’s generous, charitable slums,
And Crispin Crispian shall ne'er go by,
From this day to the ending of the world,
Unless the parish schools go silent
When England’s kings and martial glory
Need to be retold -
But we in it shall be remembered-
We few, we happy few, we band of brothers;
As raavagers unversed; ignorant, unlettered
And base; cursed as swordmen; killers plain
By those who think of peace as rain but not the work of men.
For he to-day that sheds his blood with me
Shall be my brother; be he ne'er so vile,
This day shall gentle his condition;
And gentlemen in England now-a-bed
Shall think themselves accurs'd they were not here,
Which may be true if hospital bed it be;
Unchanged, unwatched, unsanitary
And hold their manhoods cheap whiles any speaks
That fought with us upon Saint Crispin's day.

My ten cents

Via the blessed Cranmer, we learn just why the Great President Barack Hussein Obama: Beloved Leader; Heavenly Orator; Mighty Poet; Paramount Scholar; Supreme Architect; Engineer of Nations and King of Kings was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in the brief 14 days between his inauguration and the closing date for nominations.

"His diplomacy is founded in the concept that those who are to lead the world must do so on the basis of values and attitudes that are shared by the majority of the world's population."

Here's what I guess 'the majority of the world's population' might have as attitudes, above and beyond the Nobel Committee and President Obama's:

I prefer my family's welfare to that of strangers; I prefer the company of my own kind over that of outsiders (exotic though they may be); you should work to support yourself; spare the rod and spoil the child; that's my stuff - leave it alone; criminals should be punished; the devil makes work for idle hands; don't tread on me; I like the way I live so don’t make me change it; keep the bad people down and out and away from me and mine because I don’t trust them and they’ve been known to kill folk without referring their plans to the Nobel Peace Prize Committee first.

I feel safer already

And in answer to our rolling quiz 'Just how stupid can libs get and still keep breathing?', the BBC has a foreign policy answer for us.

US 'to cut missile defence plan'

Iran has held regular tests of its long-range missiles
The US will abandon its plan to develop a missile defence system in Poland and the Czech Republic, according to the Wall Street Journal.

The newspaper said the controversial plan would be dropped because Iran's long-range missile programme was less advanced than predicted.

As in, 'Don't bother locking the doors tonight, Mother. T' Office of National Statistics doesn't expect the burglary rate to increase from its record low until two years' time.'


He really does want us dead, doesn't he?

Tommy schmutter

There's hope for this old country yet.

Despite all the pacifist whining and anti-British, anti-war propaganda of the MSM for their political-class masters most ordinary people in this country are neither against our troops nor against the idea of arms and armies.

Look around you on the street and you will not notice many people: young and not so young and even children wearing this country's desert camouflage but not in any post-ironic, we are all CND now kind of way.

Like the sailor suits and the bomber jackets before them, Desert DPM camouflage is worn unselfconsciously and, I suspect, rather proudly as casual and leisure wear. Trust the rag trade to catch the true heart and spirit of a nation that still likes itself and honours those who wear its uniform.



Not that it's always easy.....


TOMMY

by Rudyard Kipling (1865-1936)

I went into a public-'ouse to get a pint o' beer,
The publican 'e up an' sez, "We serve no red-coats here."
The girls be'ind the bar they laughed an' giggled fit to die,
I outs into the street again an' to myself sez I:
O it's Tommy this, an' Tommy that, an' "Tommy, go away";
But it's "Thank you, Mister Atkins", when the band begins to play,
The band begins to play, my boys, the band begins to play,
O it's "Thank you, Mister Atkins", when the band begins to play.

I went into a theatre as sober as could be,
They gave a drunk civilian room, but 'adn't none for me;
They sent me to the gallery or round the music-'alls,
But when it comes to fightin', Lord! they'll shove me in the stalls!
For it's Tommy this, an' Tommy that, an' "Tommy, wait outside";
But it's "Special train for Atkins" when the trooper's on the tide,
The troopship's on the tide, my boys, the troopship's on the tide,
O it's "Special train for Atkins" when the trooper's on the tide.

Yes, makin' mock o' uniforms that guard you while you sleep
Is cheaper than them uniforms, an' they're starvation cheap;
An' hustlin' drunken soldiers when they're goin' large a bit
Is five times better business than paradin' in full kit.
Then it's Tommy this, an' Tommy that, an' "Tommy, 'ow's yer soul?"
But it's "Thin red line of 'eroes" when the drums begin to roll,
The drums begin to roll, my boys, the drums begin to roll,
O it's "Thin red line of 'eroes" when the drums begin to roll.

We aren't no thin red 'eroes, nor we aren't no blackguards too,
But single men in barricks, most remarkable like you;
An' if sometimes our conduck isn't all your fancy paints,
Why, single men in barricks don't grow into plaster saints;
While it's Tommy this, an' Tommy that, an' "Tommy, fall be'ind",
But it's "Please to walk in front, sir", when there's trouble in the wind,
There's trouble in the wind, my boys, there's trouble in the wind,
O it's "Please to walk in front, sir", when there's trouble in the wind.

You talk o' better food for us, an' schools, an' fires, an' all:
We'll wait for extry rations if you treat us rational.
Don't mess about the cook-room slops, but prove it to our face
The Widow's Uniform is not the soldier-man's disgrace.
For it's Tommy this, an' Tommy that, an' "Chuck him out, the brute!"
But it's "Saviour of 'is country" when the guns begin to shoot;
An' it's Tommy this, an' Tommy that, an' anything you please;
An' Tommy ain't a bloomin' fool -- you bet that Tommy sees!

Hope murdered Dylan

Come gather Iranians

You all stand alone

And admit that the waters

Around you have dried

And accept it that soon

You'll be bleached to the bone.

If your life to you

Is worth savin'

Then you better start walkin'

Or you'll die like a stone

For the times they aren’t a-changin'.

Come liberals and pundits

Who prophesize with your pen

And keep your eyes shut

For it’s Poland again

And don't speak at all

For the wheel's still in spin

And you’re tellin' who

That it's blamin'.

For the death squads now

Will be later to win

For the times they aren’t a-changin'.

Come senators, congressmen

Don’t heed the call

Just stand in the doorway

And block up the hall

For he that gets hurt

Won’t buy American at all

There's a battle outside

And it is ragin'.

It'll not shake your windows

Nor rattle your walls

For the times they aren’t a-changin'.

Come hippies and peaceniks

And look at Iran

And don't criticize

Who you can't understand

These sons and these daughters

Will just die in the sand

Freedom’s road is

Rapidly agin'.

Please forget Uncle Sam

The Yanks won't lend a hand

For the times they aren’t a-changin'.

The line it is drawn

The vote it is cast

The quiet One’s fief

It was once the best

As the hope He dashed now

Will soon be the past

Freedom is

Rapidly fadin'.

And the First One now

Will watch over their last

O, The Times They Aren’t A Changing

Velocirapor attacks: latest news

Dependability is nice.

In fact, one of the greatest virtues of living in a lawful civil society is that we can plan our lives with some level of confidence because we know pretty much how the people around us will behave in ordinary circumstances. I like the way that the neighbours will say ‘hello’ or ignore me rather than attacking me with machetes; and how my employers expect work from me in return for the wages they’ll pay me next month; and also how the police always furnish me with a brand new crime report number every single time my car is vandalized. And so on

This goes for the pacifist Left, too.

How well I remember the 1980s when the Soviet Union (then the biggest military power on Earth and the darling of about half of the Labour Party) was rearming mightily and at the same time promoting the world ‘peace campaign’ to secure whatever small portion of the world’s peace supply its huge expansion of conventional and nuclear weapons had failed to catch.

The Left - bless them - spent much of that decade arguing against Western rearmament in order to retain rough parity with the Soviets on a number of grounds; not least of which was that rearming might alarm the Soviet military into a pre-emptive nuclear attack on us because they’d grow afraid that we intended to attack them.

Apparently, Western generals and air forces weren’t expected to suffer similar alarm from watching the Soviets doing that self-same thing.

Another argument was that the building of more nuclear weapons worldwide would increase the probability of terrorists or rogue regimes (such as religious madmen or the world’s dwindling supplies of the crazed and egotistical dictators of unstable regimes) acquiring and using some of them. So the West should refrain from increasing the thievable nuke supply and also lead by example and hopefully the Soviets would be reassured and follow suit.

Strangely the terrorists and crazed dictators who the Left semi-privately expected (and publicly proclaimed they believed) most likely to press the button were such jackbooted loons who’d murdered and dictated their way to the top of Third World hell-holes using polling stations as President Reagan (who was known to believe in God and was therefore clinically insane) and Margaret Thatcher. Even the hated South Africans and Israelis usually got a free pass in those days because the Left had bigger fish to fry.

They didn’t include the Soviet premier on their Evil Nuclear Dictator list, for some reason.

CND and the Peace Movement were right of course about one thing; that any nuclear rearmament by the West was certain to lead to a massive thermonuclear exchange and then a global winter that left the Earth unpopulated by any organisms more advanced than cockroaches and accordionists. And here we are, in the ashes to prove it.

So, how is CND and its anti-nuclear family dealing with today’s new and unique nuclear world?

Well, they link to a site called Global Zero, which states the following:

In December 2008 in Paris—in response to the growing threats of proliferation and nuclear terrorism—100 leaders from around the world launched Global Zero. They announced a plan for the phased, verified elimination of nuclear weapons, starting with deep reductions in the U.S. and Russian arsenals,

…both states are still crazy bastards after all these years of UN-sponsored peace.

Remember how during the Russian invasion of Georgia last year the world waited with baited breath; fearfully watching the Peking Olympics and Big Brother 2008 and paralysed by the knowledge that sometime soon the lights in chanceries all over the world would go out, one by one, as diplomats, politicians and generals alike waited for the badminton semi-finals to come on, and Strategic Air Command went to DefconYawn ?

…to be followed by multilateral negotiations among all nuclear powers for an agreement to eliminate all nuclear weapons—global zero. The growing group includes former heads of state, former foreign ministers, former defense ministers, former national security advisors, and more than 20 former top military commanders.

All that out-of-office and retired experience must contain much wisdom, I’d expect.

Global Zero gave letters to Presidents Obama and Medvedev signed by more than 90 Global Zero leaders, urging them to commit to an effort to eliminate all nuclear weapons worldwide as outlined in Global Zero’s policy plan; Global Zero Commissioners, Senator Chuck Hagel and Ambassador Richard Burt, met with President Medvedev in Moscow and discussed this agenda; and Global Zero presented its plan through the media, including on the morning the two presidents met in London, with an op-ed in the London Times authored by six Global Zero American and Russian political and military leaders.

At their meeting, Presidents Obama and Medvedev issued an historic joint statement committing their “two countries to achieving a nuclear free world”—beginning with reductions in their two arsenals. Three days later in a speech in Prague, President Obama declared his intention to “seek to include all nuclear weapons states in this endeavor.”

This leadership from Presidents Obama and Medvedev—matched by growing support from governments around the world—represents an historic opportunity to stop proliferation and end the nuclear threat once and for all by setting the world on the course to the elimination of all nuclear weapons.

You can see how this is going.

Obviously, three’s nothing to worry about in China’s impeccable peace record, or they’d be on the list to disarm soonest too. That whole India-Pakistan nuclear stand-off is similarly a snoozeroo to the serious-minded peace activists. South Africa is decently governed now it’s free of the Apartheid Terror, and as southern Africa becomes ever more civilized and peaceful under the enlightened leadership of such virtue-swollen luminaries of probity and empathy as Robert Mugabe and Jacob Zuma it’s clear there’s little reason to worry that the South African bomb will ever end up in the wrong hands.

Even the State of Israel gets pretty much a free pass from CND, and this is about as harsh that the CND website gets about the Zionist Entity, which makes it the second least anti-Semitic Left-wing organization in the world after the Faroe Islands Social Democratic Party.

Nope – the Big Bad Boys are even today such crazed religious nuts as all the Americans except for their shiny new President, the Russians (kinda, sorta), and that goose-stepping, frothing-mouthed God-botherer, eschaton -immanentizer and rooftop sniper Gordon Brown.

CND works tirelessly to prevent Trident being replaced and most of all for any anti-missile defences which are the most likely source of a Russo-American war just now in exactly the same way that equipping private homes with stout locks and electronic alarms always startles burglars into shooting their customers once they get onto the premises.

So that silly American waitress and her school drop-out son can stop blowing up all those computer factories and leave World Peace to the people with their fingers on the pulse as much now in the Twenty-First Century as they were in the pre-Ragnarok Europe of the 1980s.

Because the one thing we can depend on is that the nuclear disarmament peace-lovers are bang up to date and have it all covered.

We can rest easy in our Anderson Shelter beds knowing that they haven’t missed a thing.

Not. A. Single. Thing.

Sleep well.

Poverty Causes Violence : Final Proof

Click picture to make it bigger...




Click picture to make it bigger...






Fortunately for the German people they live in a largely demilitarized country where any expressions of patriotism and racism are forbidden equally and where cradle-to-grave state welfare is provided along with; great retirement benefits; mandatory vacation rights; job protection; strong unions and the enlightened centrist policies that proportional representation and membership of the European Union all guarantee one of the highest standards of living, access to services, peace, and...what's that word - you know; the one that begins with an 'f'...

Nearly got it...
No. no, but it'll come back to me, and...



I know.
I know.


It's bad taste to make political points about a human tragedy on the very day itself, but...
It won't prevent the Left asking for more of the same and pointing out how many more machine-gun massacres there are in Britain with its Anglo-Saxon anti-welfare culture and its strident nationalism, its killer troops in Iraq and Afghanistan and...

Look, kids.

Capitalism and freedom. Traditition, country and religion (except for Islam)..
They cause poverty.
They cause school massacres.
They offend Muslims.
They casuse sterility in rats, golbal warming, the coming Ice Age and they shot Kennedy.

Thank the blind forces of [non-competitive] evolution/Allah/Mother Gaia/History, that the Americans have learned their lesson and are aiming to be like Germany...just as soon as they've invested all that nasty cash in state welfare projects.


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