Friday Afternoon Roundup - Monsters of Warhol

CRIMINALS HATE GUNS

Criminals hate guns. Whether it's the street mugger, the corrupt CEO or the dirty politician, they hate the idea that any of their victims might be armed.

Mugging an armed man is dangerous. Throwing an armed man out of his home is dangerous. Repressing an armed man is dangerous.

If your lifestyle is built around imposing your will on other people by force, it helps if your targets are disarmed.

Obama is a criminal. Obama hates guns.



OUT OF AFRICA

Borders are an illusion in Africa. No more than paper mirages that cannot be seen from the air or the roads where a thousand ethnic groups with dreams of glory move back and forth, striving and feuding, until the blood begins to flow.

Al Qaeda now has its own Alqaedastan in Northern Mali, a territory the size of Texas. Al Qaeda began its true war against the West in Africa. The continent which wavers between a Christian and Muslim majority is to Islamic Colonialism in the 21st Century what it was to European Colonialism in the 19th Century. But the Muslim colonizers were here first, ferrying cargoes of slaves into caves and then selling them in the slave markets of Gao.

Around the core of Koranic students who memorize verses and preach death, is a larger outer ring that consists of sociopaths, stray killers, hustlers, junkies and young men looking for adventure and a group that is organized enough to feed them and provide them with a spot on the ground floor of a shiny new Emirate where women have no rights and their weapons are the only law that counts.

... from my article "An Al Qaedastan Grows in Africa"




A PLAN SO CRAZY, IT JUST MIGHT WORK

In the liberal Northeast, Democrat gun hysteria is still bubbling.  In Burlington, Vermont, City Councilor Norm Blais voted on a resolution to ban assault rifles.

Blais said his city wasn’t nearly as safe as people thought, saying that “if somebody was not a convicted felon and was walking through our thoroughfare and had an AK-47 slung over his shoulder, there’s nothing we could do about that. Most people are surprised to hear that.”

I guess you could shoot him… but everyone knows that shooting a bad guy is a crazy NRA plan that just doesn’t work.

Formerly Burlington was absolutely helpless should a man with an AK-47 go strolling around the place. But now men will no longer walk around the fair city with AK-47s in sight, not that they did before. And if a man with an AK-47 does decide to shoot up Burlington, he had better bring some kind of shopping bag first.

Obama Now In Favor of “Crazy” NRA Guards-in-Schools Plan




MONSTERS OF WARHOL

Piers Morgan has been flailing ever since he took over Larry King's old show. It didn't help matters any that CNN was a struggling network, unable to maintain its identity in a competitive partisan news environment. But it didn't help matters either that Morgan was a crooked hack who had used up all his chances on the other side of the ocean. Like Tina Brown, he was here for a fresh start, because everything can be new in America all over again. But what he needed was a hook.

Morgan had been chosen for his celeb cred. The thinking was that a man with a British accent and a talent for showing up around famous people and digging up sleaze on them would jumpstart Larry King's tired old show. That plan failed.

Plan B was a cause. For months, Piers Morgan had been pushing gun control, mostly on Twitter, but like Al Gore and the angry melting polar bears, he was plugging away at it. Morgan did not really care about gun control or about America. Most European urban elites take it as an article of faith that Americans are obsessed with guns and go around shooting everything. They grew up watching cowboy movies shot in Spain, but starring Clint Eastwood, which just reinforced their belief that the colonials are savages. They visit the United States and exchange shocked stories about gun toting old ladies the way that Americans visit Amsterdam and exchange stories about its open prostitution.

What looks like Piers Morgan advocating a cause is the equivalent of an American coming to Paris and running a talk show where he spends hours screaming at French guests about their hygiene, their morals and how much they owe the United States for WW2. It's not so much a cause, as it is a lazy prejudice from the other side of the ocean.

But to dimwitted American liberals, who denounce class differences but wag their tails at the sound of a British accent, no matter how low class, Piers Morgan is another intelligent visitor from an advanced continent speaking truth to the native barbarians. That is how Morgan sees it too.

But Morgan is, above all else, a creature of the spotlight. A modern creation, he exists to be on camera. Fame is his oxygen. Media is how he pays the rent. He makes noise, throws causes at the wall and sees what people will pay attention to. The content doesn't matter much. If Piers Morgan had to advocate cannibalism to keep CNN from firing him for another week, he would have a BBQ pit on the show by tonight.

Piers Morgan is a pre-internet troll. You can argue with him, but you can't truly defeat him. All you can do is make him more famous. The petition and his screaming fits about gun control have finally made him something close to a household name. Rather than deporting him, the petition all but insured that he will stay. And it will insure that he will focus more on political causes because they have paid off for him.

Morgan's American equivalent is Alex Jones, who throws together whatever sticks on the conspiracy side of the charts. Alex Jones fakes left when a Republican is in office and right when a Democrat is in office. He can play libertarian if it gets him links from Matt Drudge. Like Morgan, his only real politics is Jonesism. Both men are empty soulless blowhards who understand each other perfectly well and feed off each other like an orgy of sinners in some Dantean hell. They are both media parasites who believe nothing, but will do anything to get attention.

And both men are working at cross-purposes, but not in the way you might think.

Piers Morgan does not want there to be gun control, because that would end his ability to talk about gun control. Alex Jones wants there to be gun control, because it lets him talk about fighting against gun control. Neither man has a cause, both have airtime. And when you have airtime, then you want controversies, not solutions.

We are beset with men and women like these, who have no political goals, only personal ones, who destroy whatever they touch and who exist only to get attention. They are the Warhol monsters of our time and they take any idea and make it dumber and take any cause and discredit it. They are the heaving ids of a dying media spectacle crying out for 15 more minutes of fame. And then 15 more.

Both of them want lots of Newtowns, because it is the conflict that they want. There are some in the media who want power without conflict, without the friction that makes for headlines but slows down the express train of progressive policymaking, and then there are those who live for the friction. Men and women with holes for souls who are nothing if they aren't shouting and whose only journalistic skills are those of the carnival barker. Like celebrities they need attention. Like celebrities they are nothing without it.



CHUCK HAGEL'S CHINESE CONNECTION

Bill Benter, a very successful Hong Kong leftist gambler on horse races who is renowned for his ability to “mask his bets.” The horse that Bill is backing now is a whiny creaky old nag named Chuck Hagel.

It seems as if knowing the identity of the man dropping big bucks to get a man appointed Defense Secretary is of far more importance than the names of those who don’t want him appointed. Especially if that man is operating out of territory controlled by Communist China and the sources of his money are somewhat on the vague side.

Hagel served as the chairman of the Congressional-Executive Commission on China and wrote the legislation that authorized it.

In December, the Atlantic Council chaired by Hagel issued a report stating that, “U.S. strategy to 2030 must deepen cooperation with China as the most crucial single factor that will shape the international system…” and stated that “U.S. strategy will need to accommodate legitimate, essential Chinese interests.”

In 2005, Hagel authored an editorial urging against any aggressive US measures to deal with the trade imbalance.  Hagel has also been on record as warning the United States against supporting Taiwan for fear of being dragged into a war with China.

Why is a Gambler from Hong Kong Funding the Pro-Hagel Campaign?




UNFORTUNATELY THEY'RE STILL GOING TO BED WITH CONFIDENCE

Georges Ibrahim Abdallah, a Lebanese terrorist leader of one of the PFLP splinter groups, will be freed from prison, after 28 years in jail and deported to Lebanon, where he will no doubt receive a rousing welcome.

Abdallah converted from Christianity to Islam and his Communist terrorist group murdered an Israeli diplomat in Paris, Yacov Barsimentov and Lt. Col. Charles R. Ray, an assistant military attache. Ray was shot once in the back of the neck. His murder was the first murder officially designated as a terrorist attack by the Reagan Administration and the president said that;

“Just particularly what you should do I think is one of the things that’s been wrong. People have gone to bed in some of these countries that have done things to us in the past confident that they can go to sleep, wake up in the morning and the United States wouldn’t have taken any action. What I meant by that phrase was that anyone who does these, violates our rights in the future, is not going to be able to go to bed with that confidence.”

 French Court Orders Release of Lebanese Terrorist Who Murdered US Lieutenant Colonel





 POUNDING SAND

Sand. It’s the one truly rare thing in the Middle East because it’s so very rare. Sinai used to be known for its sand, until the Jews stole it all to build massive sand castles with which to oppress the Palestinian people.

Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood Gov: “Israel Stole $50 Billion of Our Sand”






MOHAMMED WAS THE ORIGINAL FEMINIST

He always greeted me cheerily, with a “Salaam” and a handshake. Eventually, we achieved a sort of unconventional friendship. “I hate you,” he told me in August, with a smile. “I hate all Jews and Christians, anyone who is not a Muslim.”

“I was once asked: If I came to power, would I let Christian women remain unveiled? And I said: If they want to get raped on the streets, then they can,” Hesham El-Ashry told Nahar TV.

Hesham eventually excused himself to make us tea. As soon as he disappeared into the kitchen, the woman signaled me discreetly. “Do you have a phone number?” she whispered to me in English. “For emergency.”

I could now see that her veil clung to her head a little lopsidedly, as if she had just started wearing it. I deduced two things: that she was Japanese, and that she was absolutely terrified of the man pouring us tea in the next room.

Muslim Preacher Warns Christian Women: “Wear a Hijab Or Get Raped”





FROM ISRAEL TO EUROPE

Tiger speaks Hebrew peppered pretty good English and a little Arabic. He’s single, 30 years old, and he won his nickname because he is very flexible. Tiger works locally as a soldier in a criminal organization in southern Tel Aviv, one of three organized criminal gangs. “If I do not robbing or stealing, I’m dead,” he says. “Just that I’m alive.’s Something I have to do to make me how to buy food and pay rent. No job and the best I can do.”

The third organization called HaKilerim (The Killers) was considered the most dangerous and specializes in collecting protection money from Jewish businessmen, Sudanese refugees and Romanian workers, Chinese and Filipinos who settled in the area and opened small businesses, as well as prostitutes and drug addicts. This organization also operates betting parlors, massage parlors, nightclubs, cafes and restaurants. In addition to all those engaged in smartphone robbery, kidnapping cases, pimping, drug dealing in very large quantities, bike theft, running stalls selling ethnic foods and making deals on the street.

In southern Tel Aviv, on Neve Shanan Street, as soon as darkness falls, the criminals go out and business owners go on alert. “By five – six pm most shops are closed fearing criminals will steal, rob and take protection money,” says a man who sell shoes in the area. “Whoever stays open gambles with his life. Those who do not pay, the criminals break the windows of their stores and put their knives to his throat, destroying and stealing merchandise. They are not afraid of the police. They have nothing to lose.”

This is exactly what Tiger does. Although his appearance is not particularly scary, he makes his rounds of the stores and collects the protection money and gives the money to his boss. “That’s what I do in Sudan. Never learned in school, my parents had no money to send me to school, and to my family not be hungry we were stealing from shops, houses, anything that could get us money,” he says. “I know the South Tel Aviv as if I was born here. Jews also pay us money to keep them in business. Those who do not pay, we destroy his business and steal his money.” 

 African Migrants Make Up 1 Out of 8 People in Israeli City of Eilat




DRONING ON

 It is hard to avoid the conclusion that the report is propaganda manufactured by FFR and Reprieve on behalf of the Taliban and Al Qaeda. And if there is really any doubt about that at all, the following should clear it up.

“I know a lot of people, girls and boys, whose families have stopped them from getting [an] education because of drone attacks.”

That sentence comes from a supposed worried father in North Waziristan, and the section goes on to strongly suggest that children aren’t going to school in North Waziristan because they fear drone attacks.

Indeed it was claimed that a drone attack was carried out on a school for girls… in Taliban territory.

Girls in North Waziristan are educated at home, if at all, because of the Taliban.

Droning On About the Drones




PARDON ME

 “For three nights in a row, arsonists tried to burn down Mike’s Grocery at 302 South Sixth Street and each time firemen went to the neighborhood they were sniped at.

On Saturday Night, Feb 6, the grocery and three adjacent buildings were leveled as gunfire kept firemen from fighting the blaze. It was during this time that a city policeman was shot in the leg, a minister was wounded in front of Gregory Congregational Church in the sixth and Nun hotbed of activity and a 20-year-old student armed with a shotgun was killed by a city policeman.

Benjamin Franklin Chavis, pastor of the First African Church of the Black Messiah, charismatic black organizer and militant disputed preacher of the African Nationalist Church and co-ordinator of community organization for the Commission for Racial Justice was given a prison term of 25 to 29 years in Superior Court.

 Democratic Governor Pardons Conspirators Behind Firebombing of White Grocery





THE END, IT'S COMING SOONER THAN YOU THINK

“In the last five years the number of schools where Norwegian pupils are in the minority increased by 18, from 40 to 58.  At the turn of the millennium 31 percent of students in Oslo were minorities. Ten years later, the share has risen to 40 percent. The share of minority pupils in Oslo schools has grown by one percentage point a year, which means that pupils with Norwegian as their native language will be in the minority in 2021.”

Norwegian Students to Become a Minority in Oslo Schools in 8 Years




ALL THEY HAVE TO DO IS WAIT

Russia could afford to lose Saddam knowing that whoever replaced him would eventually come calling. And that is what happened as Iraq’s Maliki has turned to Russia for weapons and support as a member of the Shiite axis.

The Cold War is over and China is on the way up, but the global map is still divided in somewhat similar ways. You’re either dealing with the United States or looking for alternatives. And Russia is the big alternative. If the Muslim Brotherhood takes over Syria, they will want American weapons, but sooner or later they’ll also want Russian weapons because they come with fewer restrictions which comes in handy when using them against the United States or American allies.

Are America and Russia Set for a Showdown in Syria?




IT'S OBAMA'S WORLD, WE JUST LIVE IN IT

Only Terrorist in Custody for Benghazi Attack is Freed for Lack of Evidence

Obama Increased Foreign Aid Spending 80%

Egyptian Muslim Protesters Demand End to Spanish Occupation of Spain

We want to remind people that no matter how long the Spanish occupation of Andalusia continues, the day will come, Allah willing, when we liberate it and Islam will return.

California Governor Claims $24 Billion Deficit is Really a Surplus

Obama Appoints French Economist Funded by Saudi Billionaire to Shape US Global Development Policy

Al Qaeda is About to Get Enough Uranium for 5 Nukes

Weekly Jobless Claims Now Up to 371,000

Afghans Release 250 Terrorists Captured by the United States

Obama Gives Hezbollah 200 Armored Personnel Carriers

Libyan Gun Control Left Benghazi Mission Disarmed

Planned Parenhood Got $542 Million in Gov Money, or $1,622 for Every Abortion

Main Suspect in Benghazi Attack Survives Car Bombing

South Carolina Wins Voter ID Battle with Holder, NAACP, Asks for $3.5 Million

Chicago Murder Rate Hits 13, Only 9 Days Into the New Year

Drunk Saudi in Vegas Claims He “Accidentally” Raped 13 Year Old Boy




WHY WE MUST SEND EVERY CHILD TO COLLEGE

Like many public colleges, the University of Minnesota went on a spending spree over the past decade, paid for by a steady stream of state money and rising tuition. Officials didn’t keep close tabs on their payroll as it swelled beyond 19,000 employees, nearly one for every 3½ students.

 A Wall Street Journal analysis of University of Minnesota salary and employment records from 2001 through last spring shows that the system added more than 1,000 administrators over that period. Their ranks grew 37%, more than twice as fast as the teaching corps and nearly twice as fast as the student body.

College Debt and Tuition Pushed Up By Administrator Salaries





THE SOLDIER AND THE SLAVE

In American history, having a gun, and knowing how to use it and car for it, was part of what it meant to be a man. There was a time when this was required by law. In that day, the rifle was hung above the hearth, right above the Bible.

For an Indian brave, the artful use of weapons was the definition of the warrior. Weapons were always carried about on the person. It was part of the dress. One wouldn’t dare be caught without a weapon.

Somewhere along the line of American cultural history, the division of labor won out. Defense was assigned to a special group, a sheriff, police, army, etc. The responsibility of self-defense, as well as national defense, was cast off on others, on “professionals,” whose entire job was to bear the arms.

Thus, the individual members of society were left defenseless, and harmless, or so the early liberals esteemed them.

...from David Yeagley. No Guns, No Freedom, No Country




NO COMPROMISE, NO POWER

The Republicans in DC have remained largely silent.  Predictably.  Pragmatically.  After all, to speak up means they’re for the killing of little children! And that’s not who they are, no sir!  Besides, what’s wrong with some healthy compromise?

It’s time we face facts:  their opposition to big government is, among the establishment, a GOP party pose — a bit of theater to pretend that we still have a two-party representative republic, a way to raise money and bilk those who refuse to acquiesce overtly to the statist agenda and, desperate, go looking for a voice in government. Like the Democrats, the establishment GOP is about one thing: coming up with ways to win elections and secure power.  That they are remarkably bad at it is just a final bit of delicious irony.

...from Jeff at Protein Wisdom




THE VOTING DEAD

Americans, too many of them, have an unhealthy fascination with zombies, whatever the antecedents of their favorite walking dead. And too many of them also have functioning motor and autonomous systems, perfect digestive systems, and are selectively conscious. They are eclectically volitional from choice or from habit, and their moral codes make them teleologically driven to consume the living flesh of their fellow men – in the way of social services, government-paid entitlements, surrendering to the state their own lives together with the lives, fortunes and purposes of others. As in "The Walking Dead," they gather in herds and move in herds, chiefly aimlessly, until they find the living.

If, after having seen for themselves what destruction has been wrought by President Barack Obama and his nihilistic policies, and they remain stubbornly blind to that destruction and to the guarantee that he will author even more, and they voted him into a second term, then they are zombies.

If they expect the state to solve every real or imagined crisis, and refuse to grasp that most economic and social crises are caused by government interference or mismanagement or corruption or the systematic expropriation of wealth and effort redirected by force into the bottomless pits of subsidies, welfare, and "social justice," then they are zombies.

from Edward Cline, Our Zombie Culture





THE FACTOR

Millions of Polish Jews were rounded up this way, when the German police only needed a 1-10 ratio to thier victims. 100 German military police, 4-fs in their forties, bottom of the barrel conscripts, would round up and murder a town of a thousand. Force them to gather, then march groups at gunpoint into the woods for execution. A 1-10 ratio means the killer police are not worried at all. The victims were all disarmed. If they were armed, every village would requre a major military effort.

...taken from Western Rifle Shooters.

To add some context, most Polish Jews had positive memories of the gentlemanly behavior of German soldiers from WW1 and, despite Hitler and the Nazi invasion, assumed that Germany might be crossing some lines, but it wouldn't engage in utterly barbaric behavior.

Eastern Europe had seen some bloody times, but there was a perception that there was a hard difference between bandits and militias, and the soldiers of a modern state.

The late 19th and 20th centuries saw a progressive program that spoke a great deal about peace and international law. The League of Nations was viewed as a step forward in human civilization by many educated people who came to accept the perception that a new age was upon us.

It wasn't.




COMPULSORY COMPASSION

I've been told, so often and so stridently, to feel this and to feel that and to feel for the downtrodden of the world, that I find I no longer feel anything at all. I don't think I'm alone in not caring. I think caring and compassion, now that it has been institutionalized enough to demand caring and compassion, has finally found its limit.

In a world dimensional, a world of limits, caring finds itself flummoxed by its own best impulses. If we could inhabit any one of the endless utopias proposed to us by the dreamers and schemers among us, all would be well and all manner of things would be well. But we live in the world of sun, rain, dirt, steel and flesh where all that is needed for evil to triumph is that good men remain distracted by snake-oil hallucinations of perfection. And that they follow the instructions of their betters to feed these hallucinations of perfection in the fond hope that these toys of the mind will become real. The only thing that becomes real when you reach for Utopia is that those few who crave power over many become perpetual seekers of indulgences.

These indulgences of wish would remain harmless and essentially admirable as long as nothing more imperative or noble calls us. That which calls to us is not the world that may be, but the world that is as we make it day by day. We may, from time to time, be able to spare a quarta only so long as all our quartas are not constantly demanded of us. Quartas to spare can only come from surpluses. 

...from American Digest, Against Compassion. In related news, starving African kid pictures no longer work for charities.

A negative image of Africa in the UK is harming efforts to raise food aid in the continent, charity Oxfam has said.

It found that three out of four people had become desensitised to images showing hunger, drought and disease.

In another poll, almost half of the 2,000 respondents thought Africa's biggest challenge was hunger. Three out of four were suffering from 'Africa-fatigue'

Compassion fatigue kicks in, sooner or later. Especially when there is the perception that the money is being wasted.





LEAD VACCINE

Guns are a fact of existence at this point. Like bacteria and viruses, which are not moral agents, you are never going to get rid of guns. But if gun violence is a virulent aberration of existence, then treat gun violence with a benign version of itself that has the power to render it harmless: buy a gun and learn how to use it.

Gun-free zones make as much sense as “vaccine-free” kids and both make for easy targeting by aberrant entities. You should avoid gun-free zones and keep your kids out of them just like you should shun people who don’t “believe” in vaccines because they sometimes kill when they should protect.

from Primordial Slack, If Gun Violence Is A Disease, Get Vaccinated Against It