Tuesday, July 31, 2007

Feeding Time for the Eloi


A representative sample

Last week:
"The first step is to establish a sense of unease, a feeling, (and make sure it is never more than a vague feeling) that we need looking after, that the world is hostile and more complex and incomprehensible than we had suspected."

I've been compiling information on Vision Television and their board members, trustees, sponsors, donors, structure, tax status (isn't journalism glamourous?) and I thought I would share some of my little findings.

I wanted to make sure that we all know that I'm not making these theories up out of my wee head.

A good example of the tribe, whom I'll call Trudeaupians for brevity's sake, is Dr. Gordon McIvor. He joined the Board of Directors of Vision TV in 2002 and was recently named to the position of Chair of the Vision Television Foundation. He is also president of the Couchiching Institute, a globalist, multiculturalist think tank that has an annual conference to discuss the meaning of nationhood, citizenship, globalism and business ethics in the new supra-national borderless world. (A world, I might add, into which you and I are not invited.)

I will not bore you with the details of his CV, but suffice to say he is pretty well a cookie-cutter-stamped specimen of the kind of men who are leading Canada - men who are probably best represented by the likes of Maurice Strong. PhD Université Paul Valéry in Montpellier, France, president, chairman and director of a half dozen associations, transnationalist and globalist business clubs etc, etc, etc.

A leader of men, in the post-revolutionary world. Mover and shaker.

He gives us a sample of the kind of ill-defined dis-ease with which he and his tribe have been at pains to invest us. The old rules are no good any more. The old way of doing things is what got us into this (carefully vague and undefined) mess. We need men like Dr. McIvor to help us out. A global vision...

Address Delivered by Gordon McIvor
Canadian Institute, Wednesday, March 24, 2004
“Integrating Social Initiatives and Causes into
Corporate Marketing Strategy”

If I flip through the pile of newspapers and magazines sitting on my credenza, the covers represent a virtual rogues gallery. Of course there are still a lot of good CEOs out there who quietly succeed without bending the rules. But it does appear at least, that an alarming number of leaders, who were once looked up to and respected, are now mired in controversy. And alarming headlines don’t stop with the business pages – questionable political agendas, youth gang wars in schools, the threat of terrorism, bureaucratic bungling in the face of starvation and pandemic illness -- not to mention the havoc we are wreaking on the environment, which is actually more terrifying for the long term than any of these others. Just last Friday there was a devastating report in the Star and the National Post on a study warning that we may be in a sixth major period of extinction comparable to the late Triassic disruption 200 million years ago.


A veritable feast of hazy, indistinct and indefinable threats all neatly bottlenecking down to a global catastrophe. A panic-button, in other words. His world-picture is almost a caricature of the kind of hypnotically induced fear, helped along with a group of unwords, against which there is no defense for the little people and no solution, except of course, more government. Bigger, more controling government. Government that can both be the solution and the generator of more problems, for which the only possible solution is more and bigger government.

There is no enemy whom we can see or name. There are no Nazis or Stalinists. Instead we are presented with ghosts: global terror threat; youth gang violence; bureaucratic bungling; starvation, pandemic illness; environmental disaster. Notice something else? The only threat on the list that is a person and not just an unword is the rich businessmen, "unscrupluous rogues" who have become rich without mandate and (let's jab awake the envy nerves) at our expense.

None of these are directly identifiable things. Who can point to "youth violence" or "environmental disaster"? I can point to a young offender, but of course he is a victim of the evil system and so cannot be dealt with directly. I can point to the Hurricane Katrina disaster, but, despite what Mayor Ray It's-everyone's-fault-but-mine Nagle might have us think, no one could have done anything about it. One weathers the weather and when it is over, one comes out and picks up the bits.

These "threats" are of the same order as the one the Gauls used to fear: the sky falling on our heads. Problems that have no parameters, no definitions, no faces, no solutions. They are claxon words meant to paralyse us into docility. A siren set at a frequency that makes our muscles go limp and our minds quiet.

A vague, unnamable, faceless threat. A global threat. And one, most importantly that acts as Orwell's war against Eurasia. A bottomless pit into which to throw money and around which to build more government.

The solution?

Well, in the speech quoted above, it was Michael Ignatieff as leader of the Liberal Party of Canada.

Next week, it will be someone else.
Besides their gender deviating from the Catholic priest norm, neither of the two deacons ordained Sunday -- who are scheduled for re-ordination as priests on July 28 -- is celibate. Norma Coon, of San Diego, has been married for 40 years. Toni Tortorilla, of Portland, lives with her lesbian partner. Cordero, a newly anointed priest who lives in San Luis Obispo, is a former nun who has been married for 30 years to a former Jesuit priest.

So, do you have to go to Walking-Cliche school to learn to be this good at it? or is it something you can learn as you go?
The ceremony, which took place on the feast day of Mary Magdalene, also differed from the standard Catholic ordination in the names the presiding clergy used for God, who is ordinarily referred to as "the Father." The female priests instead referred to "Mother and Father" and to "God/de." (The latter is pronounced like "God," with the silent, extra letters hinting at a goddess that those in the ceremony declined to refer to explicitly.) Jesus Christ retained his masculine identity, however...
but I heard there's stuff you can do about that these days.

H/T to Diogenes

There, you see? I'm not a racist after all

I've got all the time in the world for coconuts.

Bananas too.

It's been Gritty BBC Crime Drama Month Around Here

I've discovered (and addicted my friends to)

Blackpool

Cracker

The Lakes

Life on Mars

And added today:
State of Play.

Quiz:
An astute observer will see a unifying theme to all of the above. What do they all have in common?

Oh My Gosh, But John Cahil is My Favourite Fan!

isn't he just!

Golly! Putting me in a class with Jerry Pournelle!

I'm gobsmacked!

And yes, I'm preparing an explosive comeback. Just you wait! 'Enry 'Iggins, just you wait!

Monday, July 30, 2007

You know what it's like, new job, all that paperwork...

Oooo! Ya got my vote!

Fight! Fight!

"If I were to tell you that within twenty years, Europe could find itself engaged in a civil war so bloody it made WWII look like a bun fight, you might logically consider me a candidate for the men in white coats.

You would be wrong however..."

Tyne and Wear Most "Hideously White" in Britain

heh.

Good.

Mar 9 2006

By Peter Young, The Evening Chronicle
A complaint has been made to race relations investigators after Newcastle was described as "hideously white".

The remark was made at a conference by Neil Murphy, a Government official who is working on secondment at Newcastle City Council.

At the same conference, the city council's assistant chief executive, Paul Rubinstein, des-cribed the Tyne & Wear area as one of the "whitest" in the North.

Newcastle resident Bryan Allen, 49, has now made a formal complaint to the Commission for Racial Equality claiming the remarks were insulting.

Doom Destruction and Despair, People Dying Everywhere...

One of them, a fifteen year old called Wayne turns up his ghetto blaster as a girl, covered in cheap gold jewellery, her hair scraped back, decorative rings adorning various parts of her overweight, multi-pierced anatomy grinds herself into his lap, her lipsticked mouth a knowing grin, her mascara’d eyes aflutter...

She is fourteen years old. She knows all about sex; thrice hetero, bi and gay varieties, she learned that at primary school. She goes by the name of Shazza...

Shazza also knows about abortions, at least she knows they are her right in the event that Wayne, the Epsilon-Semi-Moron she is presently gyrating upon, fails to use the state-subsidised condoms handed out in assembly and “Knock Her Up”...

She has no concept of the notions of honour, patriotism, duty, obligation, deference and civility. She can barely read, spell, add up or multiply in her head. She has no knowledge of her culture, the history of her country or the history of the institutions that make up and form the community she grew up in. No knowledge of music, art, language or literature. She is the same as the rest of her friends...

They are the sub-race; their future lives will consist of eking out a low wage, semi-criminal, state-subsidised existence on the periphery of civilisation. They are the death rattle in the dying convulsions of a once proud educational system in a once proud nation. Obscene as they are, the truly ultimate obscenity is that they are the cold-blooded, calculated, consciously planned end product of the liberal/left’s tightly controlled forty-five year experiment in Socialist Social Engineering.

"...there's no freedom in Britain. There are cameras everywhere..."

Growing numbers of [Jamaican] families are leaving, with many citing the desire to move their children from failing inner-city schools in the UK into a system with traditional values of discipline and academic rigour.

"People say there is no freedom in Britain. There are cameras everywhere, there is a traffic warden on every corner and the police are more likely to stop you. Add to that the tax burden. You cannot make real money in this country."

"Soaring property prices in the UK mean they have the means to come home and enjoy better weather and lower living costs.

"For £500,000, which is what some get for a London terrace, they can buy something here with six beds, five baths, three acres and a view and have £200,000 left over.

Oh come on Paul, don't hold back, tell us what you really think

In another Channel Four programme, “Undercover Mosques” an intrepid journalist with a hidden camera put his life quite literally on the line and bought us news from various Mosques around the country. This news, essentially, was that homosexuals should be killed, paedophilia condoned, women as second-class citizens beaten — as should girls who do not wear the hijab, and lastly, Islam must take over the UK and run it under Sharia law whilst waging Jihad against the infidels...

The viewing figures for this highly important programme were between 1 to 1.5 million people. Given the pre-release advertising and the importance that UK Muslims would put on such a programme it is probable that the vast majority of viewers were not of the race and faith singled out for extinction, but the Muslims themselves. Indigenous Brits may have numbered in the low thousands...

I have always thought that if the general population knew what I knew, then the political scene would change. I was sadly mistaken, and not just about the population at large. What should have triggered outrage was ignored by all, including the so-called highbrow newspapers...

We also learned this week that a pass mark of 18% is all that is necessary to gain a C grade exam pass. 50% of our schoolchildren leave school without attaining this in English and Maths, yet 100% of them know everything about TV “celebrities” who can barely speak their native language...

And so we ignore the ideology of one movement who state they wish to eradicate us and another which killed close to 100 million people, whilst we embrace the ideology of celebrity, ignorance and pathology.

Sunday, July 29, 2007

In case you wanted to sing along to my campaign song

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

It's not easy having yourself a good time
Greasing up those bets and betters
Watching out they don't four-letter
____ and kiss you both at the same time
Smells-like something I've forgotten
Curled up died and now it's rotten

I'm not a gangster tonight
Don't want to be a bad guy
I'm just a loner baby
And now you're gotten in my way

I can't decide
Whether you should live or die
Oh, you'll probably go to heaven
Please don't hang your head and cry
No wonder why
My heart feels dead inside
It's cold and hard and petrified
Lock the doors and close the blinds
We're going for a ride

It's a bitch convincing people to like you
If I stop now call me a quitter
If lies were cats you'd be a litter
Pleasing everyone isn't like you
Dancing jigs until I'm crippled
Slug ten drinks I won't get pickled

I've got to hand it to you
You've played by all the same rules
It takes the truth to fool me
And now you've made me angry

I can't decide
Whether you should live or die
Oh, you'll probably go to heaven
Please don't hang your head and cry
No wonder why
My heart feels dead inside
It's cold and hard and petrified
Lock the doors and close the blinds
We're going for a ride

Oh I could throw you in the lake
Or feed you poisoned birthday cake
I wont deny I'm gonna miss you when you're gone
Oh I could bury you alive
But you might crawl out with a knife
And kill me when I'm sleeping
That's why

I can't decide
Whether you should live or die
Oh, you'll probably go to heaven
Please don't hang your head and cry
No wonder why
My heart feels dead inside
It's cold and hard and petrified
Lock the doors and close the blinds
We're going for a ride



Is it the smile? Is it the aftershave? Is it the capacity to laugh at myself?

For a Real Alternative

Vote Saxon

for solid family values...



... as we move closer to the next general elections in Britain and the inevitable disaster it will bring...

Vote Saxon dot co dot uk

Who's Your Daddy?

Now, all of ye who've read me for a while know that I have a soft spot in my black little heart for the bad guys. I've rooted for Ming the Merciless, Sauron and the Sith, and I've always thought that the Emperor Palpatine got his bad rep from squashy leftist bleeding heart propaganda in the media.

But the best, the baddest Evil Overlord of All Time has to be



John Simm as the Master.

...I'll bet he's a heck of a kisser!

Saturday, July 28, 2007

Bee in Bonnet day

Hmmm.. I do seem to be having a bit of a day, don't I?

Exterminate White People

Now that's what I call racism! You gotta hand it to em.


But it's our fault of course. We asked for it.

Does Mr. Inzinga of the Black Panthers support this view? Let's see...

"You set me up for extermination. You bring me on your show and ask me straighforward questions that I can't answer forthrightly without making myself look like a thug and a terrorist...you always bring us on for the FBI profile so later, we can be exterminated, so any call by us to exterminate you has to come first before our state subsidised terror activities and supporters at the New York Times can be stopped, later white people set people up for extermination and then carry it out in our fevered imaginations and pamphlets

We've got to ask ourselves the question why would a professor at North Carolina State...come out and make a statement like this against you? You gotta ask yourselve this question. You gotta ask yourselves seriously, why would a professor use this kind of language?


You people just better start aksing yourselves why we want to kill you so much, so that when we do, you will lie down and beg forgiveness as we're cutting off your heads and enslaving your wives. 'Cause you know, if bad things are happening to white people, its because they're bad.

That's the rule. Just axe anyone in the New York Times or Guardian editorial office.

"Islam is nothing but medieval Mormonism"

This is really interesting.
But Muslims respect Jesus. Revere him as a prophet.

"You can't respect Jesus."

"What do you mean?"

"Jesus said he was God. Jesus said he was God and you've only got two options. You can either revere him as God, or reject him as a fraud, but you can't simply respect him. You can't give him his props." [Good old Uncle Jack he does get around doesn't he?.]

"...think about it. What Joseph Smith did in the 19th century, Mohammed did between 570 and 610...what Mohammed did was exactly what Joseph Smith did. Take the parts of the bible you like, leave the rest. Make Jesus a prophet, not the last prophet, but a prophet who speaks for the last prophet, either Joseph Smith or Mohammed. Make Jesus speak of their coming prophet. Make the communication by an angel... Deny his Godhood."

A Firm Slap Upside the Head

can be found here

When I see certain behaviors go on around me I exercise my cognitive skills. The so called “tolerant” bunch have hissy fits when someone judges. Although, they discriminate all the time, they’re just not self-reflective and honest about it because they don’t want to think of themselves as meanies, and that would make them feeellll uncomfortable!

I hate to break it to you people on the goat (goats to the left, sheep to the right) side of politics, but nobody cares if you discriminate. This isn’t about how you feel it’s about reality. America, and many other Western countries are at war with a group of thugs who don’t care about your lack of living in reality.

In fact, I can assure you that if they get ahold of a leftist their heads will be the first to go because of the lifestyle choices they practice.

Do you really think those who practice openly gay lifestyles will be welcome under a Fundamentalist Islamist theocracy? Or how about the religion of secular humanism? Do you think those of you “progressives” who have convinced yourselves that you are a god will be accepted in an Islamic theocracy? Allah won’t share his glory with any kaffir like you. How about those who practice the slaughter of innocent preborn children? Nope, the more kids a slave woman has the better; all that means is there are more kids to strap bomb belts too!

Norman, Coordinate!

An Interesting Question:

I've often wondered what will happen in the lefty mind when their good friends the Islamonutters start murdering the gays, or at least, when they start killing them in numbers too large to keep on ignoring. Will there be an insoluble programming conflict that will make their little brains explode?

Hmmm probably not. In order to have programming conflicts of this kind, there has to be a capacity to grasp the logical principle of non-contradiction. They have to understand that there is a logical conflict. But we have seen that they cannot conceive of a logical conflict. There is no such thing in the leftist mind as two mutually exclusive proposals. We can, indeed we must, be both in the room and not in the room at the same time.

This explains their seemingly inexhaustible capacity for blaming the victim while at the same time assigning untouchable victim status to the perpetrator. We say, "but if everyone's a victim and no one's a perpetrator, how can anyone be a victim?"

But such nay-saying just irritates them. Of course everyone's a victim! Everyone, that is, except White male Christians and their dhimmi subject race wives.

The L. P. of C. simply doesn't trouble them.

I think I know what it's going to be...

"But Muslims are a privileged victim-class, it can't possibly be their fault that they're murdering members of a sibling privileged victim-class. It has to be because of George Bush. It's his fault. Yes, that's it! Islamophobia and George W. Bush have made them start hunting the poor homosexuals...and besides, it's a legitimate expression of their culture. Each to his own, ye know? Quick, more sensitivity training for police! before someone starts blaming the perpetrator instead of the victim!

I'm confident they'll work it out according to their founding principles.

It's certainly true that their other useful-idiot subgroup un-blamable victim subculture, women, are being raped, maimed and murdered around the world in record numbers and we don't hear much about it except from the neo-fascists like the BNP.

And didn't we used to think the Jews were among the victim classes who could never do any wrong? Seems as if we've taken care of that little game too. They were probably just duping everyone anyway. You know what they're like.

Yes, I'm sure they will be able to figure it out.

Racial/Cultural Segregation is Natural to Us

It just occurred (ghah! that's the third time I've tried to spell that; is it two see's and two ar's?...OK I've got it...) to me while reading this bit of Kathy's on Michael Coren's bit for the Sun.
Another murder in a Canadian black community, this time the victim being 11-years old. And it took only moments for white liberal politicians to blame law-abiding handgun owners and, yes, the United States of America.

(Michael is frequently a fatuous blowhard, but is, nonetheless, just as often right.)

It's about how in every place where there are a lot of Jamaicans, there's a lot of them killing each other over drugs and prostituting their sisters. These are facts, but of course, in our times, truth is no excuse for political incorrectness.

But it's made me think of something else that's incorrect to say. But it's true isn't it?

In every place where a lot of different cultures mix, like Toronto, they don't.

Mix, I mean.

I've lived in "ethnically diverse" places all my life. Victoria, as I have said, had to ethnicities: Anglican and Chinese. Later we added White Hippie. And none of them mixed.

In Toronto, even in the Parkdale melting pot, the races and groups stubbornly refuse to melt. And immigration system that allows extended families, ultimately entire villages, to come in en masse, you are simply transplanting, repotting, entire cultural ecosystems and plopping them into existing communities who then flee the invasion of the aliens. Parkdale is a perfect example. The only white people who live here are the people that got dumped out when the government picked up the local loony bin and shook out the loose change.

But everywhere in Toronto, we have accepted (and often liked to have) neighbourhoods we call "ethnic". It's great for people who like to get authentic Tamil food, but not so good when we get everthing else that comes with Tamils...if ya get me.

It's not so bad with the Portugese or Italians or even the Chinese whose preferred forms of cultural criminality tend to involve less street warfare. It became a problem when we started thinking maybe we should have Pakistani, Somalian and Lebanese restaurants too.

But the multicultural argument seems to be fairly simple. Other cultures are interesting and good. We like everyone. So we should all live together.

But we don't. We naturally clump together into groups of people. We like to hang out with people who speak the same language, eat the same food, who don't look weird, who have the same conscious and semi-conscious cultural presuppositions. I'm sure the Philipina ladies find it incomprehensible that we white anglos sit in church like statues and flatly refuse to bring a helpful and useful crackly plastic shopping bag of doodads to play with. ("How on earth do they get through an hour long Mass without anything to fiddle with, or holy cards to pray along with, or snackies to give the kids? These anglos are weird!")

I have observered a funny rule on the bus. In close quarters, particularly in hot sticky weather, all the other people, that is, every other human being on the bus, is your mortal enemy. And for no other reason than that they are another human being who is taking up space. It is an offense that other people are on the same bus as you. That they dare to stand or sit next to you. If you are on the bus with a friend, he becomes an ally in this universal enmity. You look at each other and roll your eyes when yet another goddam human being gets on the bus. You and your friend are your tribe in a space that is eight feet wide by thirty feet long.

Take that theory and expand it into enclosed spaces the size of Toronto (or London or Birmingham or Manchester) neighbourhoods, and you suddenly see why multiculturalism has failed so miserably.

The theory is wrong.

We don't like everyone. We think we ought to like everyone, but we really only like people in our own tribe.

And that's the way it is supposed to be.

Friday, July 27, 2007

Found another one

That's "found" not "founded"

Flaggman

Thursday, July 26, 2007

creepies

Yeeesh!

All those squids are giving me the heebie-jeebies.

Time for a happy duck video.

I was RIGHT!

They ARE coming for us!

Voracious Jumbo Squid Invade California

I KNEW it!

The forces of bilateral symmetry are holding their own for now, but FOR HOW MUCH LONGER?!

How much longer until we start having radial-symmetry diversity training curricula in schools? How much longer before we start seeing hug-a-squiddy campaigns from left-leaning politicians?

How much longer before we have radially symmetrical MEMBERS OF PARLIAMENT!

Open your eyes people!

Wednesday, July 25, 2007

That's not British

All my life I've lived with the Trudeaupian Problem - Canadian national identity. What is Canada for? What exactly are "Canadian values"? What does it mean to be culturally Canadian?

I think I understand what happened. Before the Trudeau/Pearson revolution no one ever bothered to ask; we all knew what being Canadian meant. But national identity crises seem to be the most useful tool the left has ever come up with to undermine national confidence. The first step is to establish a sense of unease, a feeling, (and make sure it is never more than a vague feeling) that we need looking after, that the world is hostile and more complex and incomprehensible than we had suspected. And, this is crucial, never, ever, define the threat clearly.

The first step in infantilising the people of Canada was to convince them first that there was some huge, incomprehensibly complex global movement sweeping the world that was erasing, like a computer virus, all the previous identity programming in the system. A new world, a newly globalised world, was coming, we were told, and the old paradigms were fading away and we would have to learn from the experts how to live and get along in it. We needed new rules.

Well, fade away the old certainties clearly did. The experiment worked. When a single party controls the media, all the means of mass communication, it is apparently easy to convince a whole population that they are in need. In need of a new direction, a new identity. We are in need of keepers. We need the experts to tell us what to do for a living, what marriage is, what womanhood and manhood is. We needed to be told that the old way of living and thinking is no good any more (because of course, it was working just fine and we could never have known by direct experience that it had become obsolete).

We needed to be re-instructed in what is right (recycling, gay sex, abortion, "Ms.", living on credit, rule by unelected courts, taxation, being careful what you say, condoms, no-fault divorce, the service sector, "reparative justice", therapy, pacifism, welfare, vegetarianism, herbal tea, open borders, fat-free diets, human rights tribunals, five-dollar coffee, aromatherapy, globalised labour markets, pornography, crystal-gazing, self-censorship) and wrong (smoking, the manufacturing industries, punishment for crime, veterans, having six children, the confessional, rule by elected Parliamentarians, national sovereignty, the death penalty, red meat, owning a gun, voluntary celibacy, Christianity, "Mr." "Mrs." or "Miss", moral absolutes, earning the money you spend, spending only the money you earn, keeping all your paycheque, saving for the future, saying out loud what you really think).

We must be instructed by panels of experts what to think of international affairs, what to think, even, about the weather. We cannot be trusted with handling our own money, with saving for our retirement. We must be provided with state-sponsored child-rearing supervisors to ensure that the kids grow up according to the established programmes. We must not be allowed to own our homes and if the mortgage ever gets paid, we must be forced by taxation to sell at a loss. We cannot be trusted with guns. We must be told what sort of lightbulb to use. We are in need of a large, permanently established pedagogical state to regulate every minute aspect of our lives, personal and public, internal and external.

But whatever did we do before Nanny came along to tell us the new, fat-free, environmentally sensitive, culturally tolerant way to tie our shoes?

I seem to recall, in the dim recesses of my childhood, that we used to know already how to get on in the world.

I think I recall things like the rule of law, the presumption of innocence, habeas corpus, the national interest, the ability to reward or replace our elected representatives. I remember that Parliament made laws and the courts were for upholding them and punishing miscreants. I recall that we had newspapers that could print opinions that differed from one paper to the next. I remember when "rights" went along with "duties".

I'm reading some interesting material today. The BNP's political manifesto. I am not really that surprised to find in it some very basic principles that are laid down by Catholic social teaching, (the old kind, not the "Justice n' Peace" kind). They are using terms like subsidiarity in the traditional Catholic way.

My ticket outa here

On my desk is my parents' marriage certificate. This is the last official piece of paper I need to send to the British High Commission for my passport application.

I think about my parents in 1965 and it is hard to believe. My father was 26 and my mother 21. I don't even remember being 21.

My father's status was "bachelor" and my mother's, officially, was "spinster."

Bet they don't use that term any more!

Tuesday, July 24, 2007

a good tip - flyglobespan

Hamilton to

Stansted $166
Gatwick $147
Manchester $143
Glasgow $143
Belfast $298
Birmingham $166
D'caster/Sheffield $188
Edinburgh $298
Exeter $298
Liverpool $262
Newcastle $200

Monday, July 23, 2007

One Step Closer to the Fire

My long-form birth certificate arrived today from British Columbia Vital Statistics and I just had an email from Tony saying he has found mum's marriage certificate in the bottom of the trunk of her things that lives in his basement. It will arrive by registered mail this week.

That's everything I need to throw myself on the great British cultural suttee. Now it's off to get my photo taken and package it all up with a certified cheque and we all cross our little fingers...

Hope I can make it by Sept 14. That's when Fr. Finigan is having his little do in celebration of the you-know-what.

"You can't name your restaurant Fat Buddha because it offends Buddhists says [Durham] council"....to Buddhist businessman

It's not even so much that the stupidity of their stupid policies is so stupid. It's the total nonsensicalness of the politicalcorrectified.

Of course, it does make them easy targets for pranks and practical jokes...

Turn me over, I'm done on this side...



I've discovered a place in Toronto where you can go and it is just like a beach. There's sand and water, waves and seagulls and almost all the things that beaches have. The "beach" points towards the lake and is on the other side of Ward's Island so you can't see Toronto, or smell it, or hear the Gardiner X-pressway. (Come to think of it, it may be the only place within the confines of the city that you can't hear any traffic noise whatever.)

I also discovered that a regular rain umbrella does almost nothing to keep one from getting sunburned.

...also bought a new hat and had a long chat with yet another set of long-lost English relatives.

So all in all, a giant win this weekend. I'm in an exceptionally good mood, which usually means I'm ready for a dust-up.

It'll never work...

"...of course, the other thing to remember is that those who have been steadfastly opposed to the Trid Mass will continue to oppose no matter what. They'll come up with any number of clever gambits to stop it in parishes and dioceses. If having the Pope make some decision on high was going to work, John Paul the Great could have done it in a second. The fact that in the 26 years of his papacy he didn't do it is indication enough that he knew that he would simply be disobeyed...."


Sent: Thursday, July 19, 2007 9:28 AM
Subject: new TLM in Orange County, CA


> At least one O.C. parish has already taken advantage of Pope Benedict
> XVI's decision to give lay Catholics worldwide the power to request
the
> Latin Mass.
>
> In a message to his flock this week, Rev. Martin Tran, pastor of St.
> Mary's by the Sea in Huntington Beach, noted the pope's direction to
> pastors that is their "prerogative to willingly accede to (the
laity's)
> request." Wrote Tran: "I wholeheartedly 'accede.' We will have the
> Tridentine (Latin) Mass officially started on Sept. 16 at 12 noon
Mass."
>
> That's the first Sunday after Benedict's ruling takes effect. St.
Mary's
> was one of the few O.C. churches once allowed to have a Latin Mass,
but
> that ended when the priest who officiated it retired in 2004.

Saturday, July 21, 2007

"You keep on using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means."

Do you remember in grade 12 math being told about the existence of some mysterious thing, "imaginary numbers"? I think I vaguely recall it standing out in the midst of the haze of revulsion through which I remember most of my highschool math.

What a surprise now, over 20 years later, to have it pop into my forebrain again. I am reminded of it because of something that I have been thinking about: Imaginary Words.

Of course, you say, applying common sense, there's no such thing. If it's a word it's a word. A phoneme group with a set spelling and meaning. A noise that everyone agrees represents in abstract form some reality.

Ah, but no, there are sounds that people use all the time that have spelling but no meaning. I think I remember a physicist friend once telling me about a subatomic particle that had direction and spin but no mass...sort of like that I guess.

See if you agree.

What do the following words mean?

Islamist

Racist

Fascist

Choice

Anti-choice

Homophobic

...

See what all these have in common? They're words that get used a lot in the media and in politics. But what, concretely do they mean? Do they represent real things? Is it possible that they are really just useful noises?

They are sounds like a claxon, and they are so alarming that everyone is so busy jumping out of their collective skin at the sound of them, they don't take a second to wonder what they actually mean.

In some cases, like "Islamophobic" or, you know, that other one, it is a noise that has the astonishing power of creating an impenetrable shield. Bullets don't quite bounce off it, but prosecution certainly does. As well as negative media coverage.

I remember once talking to a young person at a demonstration. She had hurled one of these sounds at me and I think I suprised her by asking her what she meant (I call it my "rational thought shielding"). "I'm sorry, I don't know what you mean by that," was a reaction she wasn't expecting.

Everyone knows what it means. Sheesh! Do I have to spell it out?

No, I know how it's spelled. I just don't know what it means. It's an unword.

What exactly is a fascist? I am willing to entertain the possibility that I am one, but not until I have a clear definition.

What is a racist? What does "choice" mean?

I asked a group of school children once to name me the things that first popped into their heads when I said the word, "abortion." "Abortion" is a sound that represents a real thing. But the first word out of their little mouths was "choice." We explored that word a bit and found out that it didn't really mean what they thought it meant.

Ever have the experience of saying a word, any common word like "lunch" to yourself over and over until it suddenly loses its meaning?

Robert Spencer does all the time, I bet.

Jihad Watch, launched in 2003, has allowed him to answer his critics, and especially charges of “Islamophobia”, a label he dismisses. “It’s a fictional, trumped-up political term, there to deflect attention away from the violence committed by Muslims in the name of Islam. Victim status equals privileged status in the West. People know they can be free from criticism and ordinary scrutiny.

Friday, July 20, 2007

I'm just going through a little phase,

bear with me. Doctor Who and duck blogging will resume shortly.

Have the BNP been banned by Google?

Yep. Looks like it. Shut up by lefty Anglican doogooder:
"I’m not sure, but it looks like the British National Party have had their Google Adsense account suspended following our little Cartoon Blog campaign."


The one thing the left can't stand about democracy is that under it, people are allowed to disagree with them in public.

Orwell's Picnic

found an interesting new political blog. Seems to be only politics, no religion specifically.

Orwellian Sandwiches
Contemporary British politics seen through the lens of Orwell's warnings.


sort of familiar general tone though...

Thursday, July 19, 2007

I want what I want

It's pouring rain today so I took the streetcar instead of my bike. Reading on the streetcar, more on the deracinated society:

We're All Traditionalists Now: The Priority of Praxis to Theoria for the Culture War Thaddeus J. Kozinski PhD.
Christian, pro-life intellectuals are no longer contending merely with formidable anti-life ideas, but a systematic and coherent body of such ideas, united by a historical and publicly authoritative narrative, and embodied in well-entrenched and concrete habits, attitudes, customs, rituals, institutions and practices - a full-fledged anti-life tradition...

...

"Liberalism, while imposing through state power regimes that declare everyone free to pursue whatever they take to be their own good, deprives most people of the possibility of understanding their lives as a quest for the discovery and achievement of the good..."

It only takes a few logical steps to realize that if the dominant tradition is one that "discredits traditional forms of human community", such as family and church, and deprives "most people" of knowing their true good, disastrous cultural consequences must follow. If we do not know our good, then how can we love it? If we do not know or love our good, because the very idea of good has become unintelligible and therefore unlovable, then how can we love ourselves and others?

"I want what I want." that is the first commandment dictated to us by today's culture. As Benedict XVI has warned us the day before his election to the Pontificate: "We are bulding a dictatorship of relativism that does not recognize anything as definitive and whose ultimate goal consists solely of one's own ego and desires."

In short, liberalism, that ideology defined precisely by its
rejection of and claim to transcend tradtion, has been transformed into a tradition itself, and it is not what it pretends to be. Liberalism is a liar.

Wednesday, July 18, 2007

Y'all aren't going to believe this...

I just had a phone call from my cousin Bill Lindsey in Surrey, who told me wonderful stories about my great grandfather, whom he knew during WWII: "He treated me like a man, which was a pretty big deal for me, seeing as I was only 16..."

The news is that I have a cousin, Bill's son, who is a university professor in ... guess where...

Durham.

Odd little coincidence, wot?

Bill and Daphne live in Windlesham. I looked it up on the net and it's a lovely little village boasting some illustrious residents.

I told him, "I saw on the net that your neighbours are the Duchess of York and the Queen."

"We don't see much of them..." he said rather drily.

Polling day in the Outer Hebrides


A by-election was held in the Outer Hebrides today.

Pretty good voter turnout in Berneray: pop - 128.

Tuesday, July 17, 2007

Cold War Anxiety Passivity Syndrome

I think I once pointed out to someone that the routine indoctrination into the post-nuclear apocalypse mythologies we all encountered as children, is, I believe, one of the main contributors to the easy acceptance of abortion/euthanasia.

That "the living would envy the dead" was accepted as axiomatic.

We were taught that life itself was the enemy.

Monday, July 16, 2007

We thought we'd be dead by now...

Cold War Anxiety Passivity Syndrome

I have long noted a generational demographic phenomenon that hardly ever gets written about, but seems to be more or less universal for people my age. If you were born in a big city area, anywhere from 1962-1975 you probably had it drilled into you from school, the news, and your parents that you could not expect to live past about thirty. The Americans or the Russians or the Chinese were going to blow up the world more or less without notice and no one was going to survive, and if you did, you would "envy the dead".

This was the standard cant that most of my contemporaries heard every day. It was the background assumption we all absorbed with the smog particles and our morning granola.

Kathy mentioned today that she never went to university.

I respond:
Hey! you didn't go to university either?

Well, I did a bit, but by the time I was 21, something happened in my wee brain: I woke up and thought, "Haaaaang on! I'm being had! and being made to pay through the nose!"

What a scam!


Kathy says:
I went to Sheridan College for a two-year Media Arts/Writing course (not journalism, but everything from radio ads to government reports). Very cheap and the best thing I could have done.

I had been told all through high school that Ronald Reagan was going to blow up the world anyway, so I was just looking for a way to waste some time. Besides that, I was the first person in my family to finish high school so I didn't have the example of other family members who'd gone to university, and I was intimidated by the whole scene, based entirely on watching The Paper Chase.

So for all those lame reasons I didn't go to university. And unlike all my friends who did, I have a well paying job I like, in my field, without their staggering tuition debt.


Aitchdubya:
That's interesting about the Blowing-up-the-world scenario. I have a lot of friends on the west coast who had the same experience. We all had it drilled into us so hard that the world was going to blow up in fifteen minutes that none of us ever took life very seriously. A whole bunch of us just never bothered to make plans because none of us expected to still be alive after thirty. I've encountered this again and again with the post-hippie generation kids. Their obsessions became the hard reality for their children. They were so irresponsible with childraising that it never seemed to occur to any of them what sort of effect their paranoid fantasies would have on the kids.

I broke out, finally, but I know a lot people who didn't.

I mostly didn't go, truth to tell, because I was on my own after fifteen. Just try to get enough stability and support to go to university as a ward of the state. It just turns out in retrospect to have been a good idea to stay away. I looked at the size of my first year student loan and the likelihood of getting gainfully employed with a degree in liberal arts and dropped it like a radioactive potato.

Best educational money I ever spent was $80 on a typing course at the Y. 100 words a minute! It was my mother who taught me to write.

What a wretched botch we've made of everything!


Kathy:
Exactly. The Berlin Wall fell down and we were all: Damn, now we have to get real jobs!! I know very few people my age (43) who thought they'd be alive past 30 either. Douglas Coupland writes well about this, well, Gen X phenomenon of course. It is a huge problem that few others have looked at.

And my mother was far from being a hippie, but she thought it was 'good for me' to watch the news every night because that's what she picked up from middle class people -- and look what I picked up from it! However, not going to university clearly saved you and me from stupidity.

Man! That's a big chunk of change!

Hope he can find a buyer for the cathedral.

Los Angeles archdiocese to pay $600M to clergy abuse victims

three dentists behind an ironing-board

Who is this Gerald Warner guy anyway and why haven't I heard him rant before? He's pretty good at it...

The Mass of All Time will outlive the Sixties revolutionaries

choice snippets:
the motu proprio may be a modest step, but it has significance far beyond its actual contents - beyond even the Catholic Church. For the first time in living memory, a major institution is reforming itself by turning back to earlier precepts: David Cameron might profitably take note.


In July, 1975 Bugnini was abruptly sacked after Pope Paul VI was shown evidence he was a Freemason...What possessed Paul VI to sack the author of the New Mass, but retain his liturgy for universal use?
We'd love to know...

At least this episode throws light on the handshake at the 'kiss of peace' in the new rite.
peacelovegroovy brother...

It is at its bleakest when, on high days and holidays, it attempts to mimic past solemnities, the concelebrants in minimalist vestments fronted by a communion table rather than an altar - three dentists behind an ironing-board.


The Second Vatican Council means as little to today's youth as the Council of Chalcedon. Its elderly adherents are like dads dancing at the school disco.
Eeeeeeewwww! Gross!

Chesterton: "I am very proud of my religion; I am especially proud of those parts of it that are most commonly called superstition. I am proud of being fettered by antiquated dogmas and enslaved by dead creeds (as my journalistic friends repeat with so much pertinacity)... I am very proud of being orthodox about the mysteries of the Trinity or the Mass; I am proud of believing in the Confessional; I am proud of believing in the Papacy."

Found another pop band I like

Coldplay.

Vicky must have laughed when she introduced me to it. We were in the car and looking for good after-funeral driving-about music.

I asked with what I realise now was a rather amusing innocence of things modern and popcultureish, "Are they popular?"

To her great credit, Vicky did not laugh at me, but merely said with a straight face, "They're the new U2."

Ah. Good then, nice to see lads making a decent living at something.

I thought for a moment about the lyrics to this:

Fix you

When you try your best but you don't succeed
When you get what you want but not what you need
When you feel so tired but you can't sleep
Stuck in reverse.

When the tears come streaming down your face
When you lose something you can't replace
When you love someone but it goes to waste
Could it be worse?

Lights will guide you home
And ignite your bones
And I will try to fix you

And high up above or down below
When you're too in love to let it go
But if you never try you'll never know
"Just what your worth"

Lights will guide you home
And ignite your bones
And I will try to fix you

Tears stream, down your face
When you lose something you cannot replace
Tears stream down your face
And I..

Tears stream, down your face
I promise you I will learn from my mistakes
Tears stream down your face
And I..

Lights will guide you home
And ignite your bones
And I will try to fix you.


It won't win any literary prizes (though, come to think of it, maybe given the state of literary contests...) but there's a wee bit of something in this, don't you think? If pop culture reflects the mindset of the general run of the humans, there certainly seems to be a strong awareness in popular music that there is some very deep and important thing lacking. "Fix you". I don't think I know or have even met anyone who lives in the Big Weird Outerdarkness who does not have a crushing sense of needing to be fixed. We know we're broken like a clock that's only right twice a day. Too bad they don't know where to look.

It'll never work

"There's only a slim chance any direct action of the Pope's on the old Mass is going to have the desired effect. I mean, it's just too remote in people's memories now. Priests aren't going to want it, the people love the new ways. And the idea that it is going to reconcile schismatics is beyond the pale. It just isn't that simple. If Benedict brings back the old Mass, if he tries to put back the clock, people will leave in droves..."

Uh huh.
Vermont's Roman Catholic diocese plans Latin Masses

You don't say...
Diocese welcomes formerly schismatic nuns back into church

The sisters then began to follow the story of his successor, Pope Benedict XVI, on the Internet.

"I noticed the good that he was doing," she said. "I sat up and paid attention: We had a good man, a good pope." That idea was almost impossible, according to the strictures of the sedevacantist position, she said. "But he seemed to be doing what a good pope would do."


"But no matter what, all this retrograde stuff is going to hurt Benedict's popularity."
Looking at the timeline of legalised abortion in the western world, it is interesting to note that, with the exception of Sweden and Iceland, before the end of World War II, the only nations to legalise abortion, the Soviet Union and Nazi-controlled Germany, did so as part of overt ideological/political programmes in which individual human beings had no inherent worth or rights. Control of population was ackowledged as a key factor in the exercise of absolute power in both of the 20th century’s major totalitarian ideologies.

In the Soviet Union, communism – a philosophy that fully accepted the principles of utilitarianism with regard human rights – allowed abortion or outlawed it strictly according to the rules of political or economic expediency. Under communism, human beings were valued exclusively for their productive economic output. There is no notion in communist ideology of “inherent” human rights. Communists did and still do regard abortion strictly as ethically neutral, banning or allowing it as it furthered the communist economic or political goals.

Although at odds in many ways, communism and the Nazi philosophies were based on the same foundational utilitarian principles: a human being as an individual has no inherent worth or rights and is valued only for what he can contribute to the party’s goals.

It was not until after World War II, and the defeat of the Nazis and the revelations to the outside world of the horrors of the death camps and human experimentation, that the utilitarian principles, still widely accepted in academia, were driven underground.

Since then a new set of terms, a new vocabulary of ‘human rights’has been used to promote and justify abortion, and as a logical consequence embryonic research. Under this guise, and driven by judicial precedents, legalised abortion spread from the United Kingdom to Europe and throughout the Commonwealth. Britain, having been before the War the world’s most powerful, wealthy and influential country, has always led the way with regards to life issues.

Working on a Sunday

I put this together to illustrate the workings of the slippery slope theory and the connection of Britain to most of this stuff.

Source is mostly from Wiki.

History of Legalised Abortion in the West and Russia – the Slippery Slope Illustrated
1920 – Soviet Union: Lenin legalized all abortions in the Soviet Union.

1927 – Germany: Weimar Republic reduced the maximum penalty for abortion, and in 1927, legalised it by court decision, in cases of grave danger to the life of the mother.

1935 - Nazi Germany amended its eugenics law, Law for the Prevention of Hereditarily Diseased Offspring, to promote abortion for women who have congenital and genetic disorders, or whose unborn fetuses have such hereditary disorders.

1935 – Iceland: Iceland became the first Western country to legalize therapeutic abortion under limited circumstances.

1936 – Soviet Union: Joseph Stalin reversed Lenin's legalization of abortion in the Soviet Union to increase population growth.

1936 – Nazi Germany: Heinrich Himmler, Chief of the SS, creates the "Reich Central Office for the Combating of Homosexuality and Abortion". Himmler hoped to reverse a decline in the "Aryan" birthrate which he attributed to homosexuality among men and abortion among German women. Abortion is still forced upon members of parts of society that were considered undesirable.

1938 – United Kingdom: Dr. Aleck Bourne aborted the pregnancy of a young girl who had been raped by soldiers. Bourne was acquitted after turning himself into authorities. The legal precedent of allowing abortion in order to avoid mental or physical damage was picked up by the Commonwealth of Nations.

1938 – Sweden: Abortion legalized on a limited basis in Sweden for medical, humanitarian, or eugenical grounds. serious threat to the woman's life, if she had been impregnanted by rape, or if there was a considerable chance that any serious condition might be inherited by her child. The law was later augmented in 1946 to include socio-medical grounds and again in 1963 to include the risk of serious fetal damage. The 1974 Abortion Act states that until the end of the eighteenth week of the pregnancy the choice of an abortion is entirely up to the woman, for any reason whatsoever.

1967 – United Kingdom: Abortion Act legalized abortion in the United Kingdom except in Northern Ireland. In the U.S., California and Colorado became the first U.S. states to legalize abortion.

1969 – Canada: began to allow abortion for selective reasons. Abortion remains in the criminal code.

1969 – Australia: The ruling in the Victorian case of R. v. Davidson defined for the first time which abortions are lawful in Australia.

1973–1980 – Europe: France (1975), West Germany (1976), New Zealand (1977), Italy (1978), and the Netherlands (1980) legalized abortion in limited circumstances.

1970 - New York State: legalized abortion.

1973 – United States: The U.S. Supreme Court, in Roe v. Wade, declared all the individual state bans on abortion during the first and second trimesters to be unconstitutional. The Court also legalized abortion in the third trimester when a woman's doctor believes the abortion is necessary for her physical or mental health.

1978 – United Kingdom: Louise Brown is born, promoted by the IVF industry as the “first test-tube baby.” In fact, Louise was the only child to be conceived by the in vitro procedure who survived to birth of nearly 80 previous attempts.

1988 – Canada: The Supreme Court of Canada ruled in Morgentaler v. Her Majesty the Queen, that the abortion law is unconstitutional, a breach of the woman's right to security of the person under the Charter of Rights and Freedoms. The Court called upon Parliament to draft a new law regulating abortion. Canada, alone in the developed world, has no law regarding abortion.

1990 – United Kingdom: The Abortion Act in the UK was amended so that abortion is legal only up to 24 weeks, rather than 28, except in unusual cases.

1991 – United Kingdom: Human Fertilisation and Embryology Act, establishes Human Fertilisation and Embryology Authority (HFEA).

1993 – Canada: Canada’s Royal Commission on New Reproductive Technologies recommends the creation of a matching regulatory body for Canada.

2004 – Canada: Liberal government passes An Act Respecting Assisted Human Reproduction and Related Research, legalising and regulating ivf etc.

1991-2007 – United Kingdom: HFEA issues series of permissions for experiments on live human test subjects, at the embryonic stage and often created in the lab for the purpose, or donated from “spare” embryos left over from in vitro fertilisation. These include cloning; eugenic screening and destruction of embryos for potential defects; the creation of embryos for sibling tissue match treatments; the combining of human and animal DNA to creat “hybrid” or “chimeric” embryos.

May 2007 – United Kingdom: Labour government introduces draft legislation that codifies the HFEA’s individual permissions.

Sunday, July 15, 2007

Non-Cathlic, Non-political


Raby Castle

things to do in Durham.



Nature: (Yes, I was outdoorsy once...)
Consett and Vale of Derwent
Naturalists Field Club



The North Pennines

Theatre:
Durham Dramatic Society

Durham Musical Theatre Company

Cricket (maybe I'll finally figure out what the object of the game is)

Ye Bitte of Oldie Englandie Theame Parke:

Castles
Auckland castle

Barnard castle

Crook Hall and gardens

Saturday, July 14, 2007

BBC Slideshow of Durham

http://www.bbc.co.uk/wear/content/image_galleries/durham_day_out_gallery.shtml

Sold!

St. Cuthbert's Catholic Church, Durham






What about Durham?


It's Wayfar North...

which means as far away as I can manage from the hell-pit of London whilst still remaining technically in Ynglonde.

David W. said, "Yes, the Muzzies probably haven't found anything that far north yet."

And it's pretty:






And not terribly expensive:

Flat: Two bedroom property £345 per month
We are very pleased to present this two bed roomed mid-terrace property located within a quiet area. Property benefits include full gas central heating whilst boasting a recently refurbished kitchen. If you would like further information about this property or would like to request a viewing please call Sid or Tim.


Studio:
Completely self contained studio in large detached property, 5 mins from Co Durham and close to A1 and A690. Comprises porch, new modern kitchen, new bathroom and living area/bedroom. Secure car parking to front of property. Fully furnished and rent includes all bills except telephone. Short term let available (minimum 1 month). £350pcm (includes bills)


2 bedroom house
Consett Immaculate 2 double-bed terrace. Newly decorated and carpeted. Large rear patio. Unfurnished with fitted wardrobes, washer, fridge/freezer, on main bus route and walking distance to town centre. No pets, smokers or DSS. Bond and refs required £420 per month


The population is smallening: (numbers in thousands for the whole county, not the city)
1961 ....510.1

1981 ....508.7

2001 ....493.5

2003 (estimate) ...492.3

...so it's going to get quieter and cheaper.

And best of all murderous lunatic Muslim population rather lower than expected.

2001 census says:
Outside London, the counties with the highest proportion of Christians are Durham, Merseyside and Cumbria, each with 82 per cent or more. The districts with the highest proportions of Christians are all in the North West: St Helens, Wigan and Copeland (Cumbria) each have 86 per cent or more.

The highest proportion of people born in the UK are found in Easington and Derwentside, both in County Durham (nearly 99 per cent.


(2001 census) Religion (all people)
Christian -- 412132
Buddhist -- 606
Hindu -- 404
Jewish -- 166
Muslim -- 1069
Sikh -- 457
Other -- 862
No religion -- 45970
Religion not stated -- 31804

and it seems like a good place to start working on my thick, incomprehensible Northern accent.

Friday, July 13, 2007

More Family

All my life I've thought I was more or less on my own. Now that my mother has died, I find relatives are coming out of the woodwork.

Got this note yesterday from Tony.

Bill and Daphne Lindsay
__ H---- Park Drive
Windlesham, Surrey
United Kingdom

Honestly I'm not totally sure of his relationship to Judith, but I just spoke with him because he wanted to put a flower of rememberance on the family plot.

He's looking forward to hearing from you.


People I've never met who want to know me. An odd thing.

Some days bad, some days good

Today is a good day.

Toronto archbishop says wider use of Tridentine Mass enhances church
TORONTO (CNS) -- Archbishop Thomas Collins of Toronto said wider use of the Tridentine Mass enhances the diverse Catholic Church in Canada. "We celebrate Toronto as the most diverse diocese in the world. We've just been enriched. I think the whole church has," Archbishop Collins said, referring to the release of Pope Benedict XVI's July 7 letter allowing wider use of the Tridentine Mass, the liturgy that predates the Second Vatican Council.

"This is a great thing, and it solves all of this disputing and all this stuff." Noting that before the papal letter's release there had been rumors and gossip about its contents, he said, "Now we have this wonderful document, and now we can move onto other things."

For Toronto's 1.7 million Catholics, Mass already is celebrated regularly in 34 languages. The Tridentine Mass, celebrated in Latin, is offered at five parishes. In the apostolic letter, "Summorum Pontificum," Pope Benedict eased restrictions on the use of the 1962 Roman Missal, which was standard before the new Order of the Mass was introduced in 1970. The papal decree was issued "motu proprio," a term that reflects the pope's personal initiative in the matter.


"Five parishes"?

Thinking about

millinery classes in Wombourne, Stafforshire.

How2Hats (silly name)
Five-day courses offer an unparalleled opportunity to learn hat making in at least three different materials and several styles. Learn how to finish your hats using different fabrics and feathers in combination. You can create a collection with which to demonstrate your skill and start you on the path to a new career.


Here's Wombourne:
(it's got a canal)




and some hats

Thursday, July 12, 2007

Experiments in proximity - Dewsbury, Yorkshire

...is not filled with Yorkshiremen.

From Wiki:
The town now has a large Asian ["Asian"...nice euphemism] community - making up over 30% of the town's population. Savile Town and Ravensthorpe are populated mainly by Muslims of Indian and Pakistani origin; most of the central and western areas of the town have a large Muslim minority. In recent years, there has also been an immigration of Iraqi Kurds into the town.

However, Some areas of the town remain almost entirely White, such as Chickenley and Thornhill Edge.

Race relations in Dewsbury are generally harmonious but not free from all problems. There was a riot, nearly twenty years ago, in 1989 following from a National Front march that clashed with a large group of Asian men who staged a march the same day, The riot spread into the mostly Asian area of Saville Town. A group of mostly white drinkers in a Saville Town pub called "The Scarbrough" were forced to flee to the upstairs of the building whilst an angry Asian mob ransacked the public house and also attempted to burn alive those trapped upstairs.

More recently, trouble between Pakistani and Iraqi men in Thornhill Lees on Monday, 11th December 2006. The town's M.P., Shahid Malik, was criticised in June 2007 by the Kirklees Racial Equality Council for his comments on local knife crime, which were said to have "poured fuel on the flames of friction between Kurdish and Pakistani young men".

The British National Party, which is often accused of being a racist organisation and openly opposes multi-culturalism in favour of a single English Identity, has sizeable support in Dewsbury: it polled its largest gross vote (only second largest by percentage) in the 2005 general election in Dewsbury, and won the "Dewsbury East" ward in the local elections of 4th May 2006.

Wednesday, July 11, 2007

A case for segregation

This is one of the happiest and most hopeful sentences I have read in a long time:"Mistrust of Muslims in Britain has developed quite quickly and could develop much further."

Theodore Dalrymple:
Now, despite friendly and long-lasting relations with many Muslims, my first reaction on seeing Muslims in the street is mistrust; my prejudice, far from having been inherited or inculcated early in life, developed late in response to events.


I said to a friend once that racism is something that develops in proximity to others. One never hates a man one doesn't know and one is never racist when one is amongst one's own. It is upon daily and close exposure that irritations and obvious differences arise. It is, for example, only when made to sit every day in a church full of chittering, gossiping, fidgeting, fluttering Philipinas whose total obliviousness to the anglo social signals, and dedication to the contents of their crackly plastic shopping bags, making you want to throttle them, that one starts to develop a dislike of them. I don't think I ever gave the Philipina ladies a thought until I started going regularly to a church where they, and their...err...prominent cultural differences are in the ascendancy, that I realized that they were different. People don't like difference. One's own way is the best way.

When I left the Island and moved to the Lower Mainland, I started becoming aware of the existence of other cultures and races. Growing up in Victoria there were really only Wasps and Chinese, and these were unconsciously blended in my mind into the superspecies, "Victorian". The Chinese in Victoria had come there at the same time as the English. The history was pretty bad, but by 1972, the place was pretty comfortably theirs as well as ours. And there wasn't anyone else. I did not see a black person in the flesh until I was sixteen.

When I was growing up the Chinese people in Victoria were by no means Anglicized. They were Chinese and retained their cultural identity. But they knew us, the white folk, and we knew them. And we all knew our limits; we interacted, bought things from each others' businesses, passed the time of day in the streets, went to the same schools and movies and parks and whatnot; we rode the same buses and lived in fairly close proximity. But the differences were respected. We were not them. They were not us and though the two populations were polite, we did not really "mix" very much. It was a fine arrangement. We each knew the other's quirks and while the division between us was fairly sharp, it was not unfriendly. More like two neighbours chatting over a mutually well-maintained fence. This was segregation that suited everyone's needs and served the public good. There were a few intermarriages and no one batted an eye, but it was rare and I can imagine, something undertaken in the face of much family opposition on both sides. (Things are probably no longer this way, mind you. We are talking about thirty years ago after all.)

When I moved to the Vancouver mainland the first time at 19, I was in shock for months. I had never imagined that there were so many kinds of people in the world. I was fascinated and a bit scared. I started roaming around Chinatown and buying the exotic-looking brown spikey fruit in the fruit stands. I bought periwinkles and blue crabs. I went to Mass in the Chinese Catholic church. I took a few classes in kung fu and watched in fascination the Wushu artists doing their martial dances.

But for the first time, I was aware that these were foreigners. These were not the Victorian Chinese who knew the ropes, who knew us. These were the deeply, unabashedly xenophoic Chinese who had kept themselves aloof from everyone who was not Chinese. There were third-generation Chinese in Vancouver who had never spoken English.

Vancouver's Chinatown was a different world and I knew right away that my presence was only tolerated as long as I was there to buy something. They did not have a qualm about not liking me. There is no political correctness in Chinese culture. White people are, simply, inferior and alien. One tolerates them to get what one can out of them but only that far.

And, after a lifetime of relative indifference and complete acceptance to the Chinese, among whom I had lived all my life, I was aware for the first time of an extreme othernes. These were not the friendly, happy, well-established family-business-owning, acculturated people I had talked to every day.

It was an interesting lesson and one that has been brought home to me again and again. The cultures are more important than the races, if we only think of "race" as physical characteristics. In my experience, Asians and European, Anglos, can get on if they are careful about boundaries. But these boundaries should not be crossed.

What seems to be coming clear is that Arabs and Europeans cannot get on. If they can be totally acculturated, fine. But we must be clear about what that culture is. Now that we have jettisoned the cultural things that made us what we are, or were, we have nothing to which to acculturate the unimaginably hostile aliens who are flooding into our historic territories. By abandoning our own culture, we have robbed ourselves, our children, and those who might have been helped out of their own barbarism.

I suppose I'm not really a racist, since I am still indifferent to colour. But I can't help being a culturist. It is being made abundantly clear that one culture is irrefutably superior to another. And I think in this case, there is no fence sturdy enough.

Concretely

Just sent this note to Steve who asked, "So that’s it, huh? Sick of it all? Think it’s going to stick this time?"

I think he means, am I going to keep blogging.

Sheesh! Of COURSE! But he doesn't know. I have a plan. Not the Great Ineffable Plan to Save the World, but a plan to take up where I left off a long time ago. Gonna blog about that, and other stuff.

I thought that my experiences as a re-patriated Catholic Anglo would be interesting blogfodder.
To that end:
I've certainly found that watching a great deal of British television has helped. I'm going to stop off and rent the boxed DVD set of Cracker on the way home today. One thing I admire about British TV is the top notch writing. Even their middle brow fare is wittier and more fun than US TV. (Though the talk shows are wretched. Beyond bad.) And all the really good stuff is available on DVD so no telly licensing fee.

I also told my employer last night that things have developed lately that have made me want to get away entirely and that I'm planning on being in England by the end of September. So after September, my writing is by necessity going to be pretty strictly curtailed and restricted to paid work. Circs, admittedly circs I am myself orchestrating, are going to make the Catholic moving n' shaking thing difficult. Thank God.

I'm hoping to stay with the Chester relatives at first, but there's no reason I can't keep working for LifeSite until I get something better. Something more meaningful. More relevant to the bigger picture. Something in a chip shop perhaps.

The plan as it stands is to take a retrospective on the things I was doing before I discovered The End of the World. I recall it was fun, and fairly well paid. I liked the theatre, before I became a prissy Catholic snob. I also remember that I was pretty good at wardrobe work and had once vaguely thought of opening a business. There's no money in it of course, unless one joins the TV and movie unions (which I might do) but there is money in Britain in couture millinery. I took the hatmaking component of the costume studies programme when I was in theatre school in university, but it was so long ago I'd have to refresh. But it's OK, because it turns out Britain is bristling with private millinery schools. I've done a tiny bit of digging about and discovered that there is quite a thriving industry. Ready for one more to jump in.

The world is going to carry on ending with or without me paying attention. I'm retiring from the army and am going to go see what life is like as a lowly civilian. Part of the mob. In Birmingham.

I used to have quite a heavy middle class Manchester/Yorkshire accent. I wonder how long it will take to come back.

Tuesday, July 10, 2007

Tulip Fancier's Weekly

I quit.

Now now, don't panic. I'm not quitting anything that I ought not to quit. Nothing that doesn't urgently need quitting. Good quitting here, not bad.

In the last few months, I've been able to come to grips with a few things. Various developments have developed that have clarified some thoughts and I wonder if I am not the only one who is thinking about this.

For many years, I thought the Church was on the upswing. I knew lots of nice young conservative Catholics and lots of less young people who had lived through the changes and had held onto the faith. It seemed that the old dry withered branch of liberalism and feminism (and all that) was finally showing dying off and would start to fall, perhaps even within my own lifetime. And I have thought of myself as part of a movement, a revival of good old sweet-smelling things that my mother's generation had forgotten or tried to bury.

When I was a child I wanted to be a nun. I hardly knew what such a thing was and certainly didn't know how to find out. But it was there and didn't go away. When I grew up and re-found the Faith, I remembered what I had wanted and set about trying to find the thing I had in mind. In the process of all this, I discovered that movement. I found out about the Nashville Dominicans, the Benedictines at Ryde, the CFR's, the Missionaries of Charity, the little groups of sisters reviving and making it new.

I was elated that the old thing, like Old Narnians, still lived on in secret. It was like finding elves, faded and diminished, but still living and singing in their lofty halls.

It has indeed been an interesting ten years; that's how long I've been a fully practising Catholic.

Since the first rush of excitement at finding this amazing thing, from my arrival in Halifax in September 1997 with a backpack full of summer weight clothes and a hundred dollars in the bank, I've found out more about the world than I had dreamed it was possible to know. I learned that there is truth to be found if you look, that the nihilist philosophies of modernity were demonstrably false and did not have to rule one's actions and outlook. I learned that the poisonous black smog that lies over nearly everyone's minds is possible to dispel with a word and an act of the will. We don't have to live like I lived before. Things can really be different.

But I've had enough now. Of the Professional Catholic Mover n' Shaker business. Of "vocational discernment". Of second-guessing God. Of punditing on all the Catholononsense. Had enough Motupropisms, End-Times Jargonising, Tradificating, lobbying and worrying.

In the last few months, since the suspension of my public blog and even more intensely since my mother's death, I have had a growing sense of nausea creeping up on me surrounding all things Cathopolitical. Revulsion at the thought of movements, revivals, groups, new orders, bright ideas and projects. I can no longer bear to read liturgical blogs, Trad blogs or Catholic news websites.

My reaction to the Motu Proprio has been to shrug. I see all the happy Trads popping champagne and setting up blogs for MP news and speculating on what it is going to mean, but I just can't get excited about it. It seemed inevitable, as action of water on stone, but mostly it just doesn't seem like my business. The Church is like the weather; it's silly to complain about its changes because they are going to come and go as they please while the Faith remains. Christ remains, but the movements of the tectonic plates of the Church are not my concern. My job is to get on with things I have to do. Was over at a friend's place this evening, just hanging about watching Dr. Who and chatting with the kids - goofing off, and I saw that someone had put a note on the fridge: "Stay Calm and Keep Going."

I've had the biscuit of trying to 'discern' what great plan God has for me in life. A long time ago, a wise friend tried to tell me as I grew more frantic over the meaning and purpose of life, "The trouble with God's ineffable plan is that you can't eff it. It cannot be known, by its nature, until it has finished unfolding. You'll just drive yourself squirrelly trying to figure it out ahead of time."

As I have said elsewhere, I've given up Vocationism as a hopeless exercise in tail-chasing and maddening second guessing. I was joking today with someone, a priest friend, saying that I think I don't believe in vocations any more. I think it's all over. What God had for The Before Time is not what He has now. Now things are different and times are requiring something else. Something harder maybe. God in his wisdom has seen fit to destroy the religious orders; who are we to argue?

I've visited a lot of these new places and groups in my quest, and there has always been something about them that has struck me as a false note. Even the wonderful Clear Creekies, though these have the false note less than all the rest. All that is over. It is not the time for reviving old things; something else is happening now and the world can no longer contain what served before.

I was having a conversation with someone who lives in one of the Catho-commune enclaves-of-the-glassy-eyed, who asked me to pray for him and his family. He had the flu, his kids were all sick and he was having trouble booking a flight for a long vacation in a distant exotic land. "We're really under attack," he said knowingly.

I almost...not quite, but almost...yelled into the phone: "You're going to be under attack from me if you don't stop gibbering you fantasizing religious loon!"

Of course, what I said was "OK". Plus perhaps, "poor you."

But I can't do this stuff any more. I'm so BORED. Bored with the knowing glances, the paranoid certainties, the gnostic in-crowd in jokes. We're geeks who don't know we're not cool.

I'm fed to the back teeth with Catholic political correctness. With having only a strictly prescribed set of tastes, interests, friends and opinions. I'm tired, in short, of the self-imposed "Faithful Catholics" ghettoized hive mind. I want out of the Borgatorian Collective.

Some time ago, I had a guy who regularly read my blog and my LifeSite stories and sometimes sent me notes commenting on them. In the first of these, commenting on some particularly apocalyptic horror I had uncovered on LifeSite, he wrote in the subject line, "Don't you wish you wrote for Tulip-Fancier's Weekly?".

YES!

YES I DO!

YES, I want to live in the real world. I want to have friends whose conversation consists of something more than rehashing 500 year old papal documents or the latest political gambits from the homosexual lobbyists. I want to hang out with people who disagree with me. I want to explore interests that have nothing to do with eternal salvation. It was more fun than I can say to go spend ten days in Vancouver with a group of people who didn't know what a Motu Proprio was. I was able to recall that I had once liked the theatre, that I had enjoyed working in wardrobe at the North Shore studios. I remembered suddenly that I had once been keen on fencing and aikido. I remembered that for years I had spent a week a year, every summer, walking around the Gulf Islands camping and swimming in the ocean. That I knew how to draft dress patterns and make hats. I remembered that I had family somewhere in England and that I had always wanted to go live there.

I left Vancouver in 1997 like Bilbo rusing out of Bag End without so much as a handkerchief. And like Tolkien's reluctant English adventurer, I discovered things of inestimable value. Precious and wonderful things that I could not have imagined if I had stayed home. But I'm obsessive. Once I was on the track to find what I was looking for, I gave up everything that I had loved before. I forgot where I came from.

I've got the big picture, thanks. Now I'd like to focus on day to day life. And I'd like to stop sneering at people who have got it wrong.

Let's let them be wrong! Just for a change!

There is more out there in the great wide world than is dreamed of in our little cliques. And a great deal of it is wonderful. I think I mentioned something somewhere about Milton. I was/am reading P. L. for the first time and loving it.

Ah yes, I remember now. I mentioned it on the discussion listserve for the Catholic Restorationists in the context of a list of recommended reading. The list was of the usual suspects, I'm sure y'all know who I mean, and it was depressing me. Can't we read something else? Isn't there more to educating oneself as a traditionalist than Chesterton and Michael Davies? I suggested Milton. I can't remember the comment verbatim, but the response I got was along the lines of "Well, I heard that his language is beautiful, but the theology was pretty weird wasn't it?"

Uh huh. Right. He is not correct.

How do you explain to people like this that there is more to literature than the catechism?

I am trying to get in touch with my relatives in Cheshire and I want to go see them. They will know me now only as a little six-year old girl. But I look so uncannily like my mother, I'm sure they will have no difficulty recognising me. I am going to go there and stay there and find out what it is like to live outside the walls.

Maybe I'll keep writing. Probably. In fact, I can't imagine not. But I'm finished with the Great Project. With every Great Project. I'll be looking for the small, the homely, the insignificant.

Maybe I'll end up writing for
Tulip Fancier's Weekly
after all.

It's like Stephen Hawking vs. the Speaking Clock

Daleks meet the Cybermen, and they don't get on.



Identify yourselves!

You will identify first!

Daaaleks do not take ooorders.

Our species are similar though your design is inelegant.

Daaaleks have no concept of elegance.

This is obvious.

Exterminate!

Delete!

Exterminate!

Delete!

Monday, July 9, 2007

People have always told me I'm eccentric



so I am beginning to think that England will be a fine place to blend in.

Bog Snorkelling

Cheese Rolling

World's Biggest Liar Competition

Welly wanging

and duck herding, which strikes me as very similar to the sport I used to practice in Victoria: duck chasing. Great fun.

And I see they still have donkey and pony rides at Blackpool. I remember that particularly fondly. Ice cream, sand and a bucket, the boardwalk and a donkey in a flowered hat.

Sunday, July 8, 2007

Boilerplate test

from USA today, using Jeff's criteria:

Pope Loosens Restrictions on Latin Mass: Poor Women and Children Hardest Hit

The Coalition Ecclesia Dei, [a tiny band of obsessive compulsive cat-lady nostalgics who are so primitive, they still think digital watches are a pretty nifty idea: check] an advocacy group that supports the Latin Mass, 119 US churches today offer the Tridentine Mass, up from six in 1989, when John Paul II granted bishops the power to authorize Latin Mass celebrations. A few dioceses, such as Washington, offer it at more than one parish and some offer it daily.

But critics see increased use of the Latin Mass ["longer, more formal, celebrated in a language they don't understand"; check] as an unwelcome symbolic throwback to the past that will be meaningless [...and scary, like Stockwell Day- scary...especially when the Vatican secret police start coming to your door and dragging you and your poor children to it kicking and screaming and start forcing your wife to wear a skirt...ick] to the vast majority of believers. The modern Mass, said in local languages, is more accessible to the faithful and reflects post-Vatican II ecumenical teachings.

...Cardinal Jean-Pierre Ricard, the head of the French Episcopal Conference, warned in the newspaper Le Monde that pressure on priests to offer the Latin Mass, "will seem like a standard aimed at testing the priests' loyalty to the pope." [oh no! not that! Sacre Bleu! Escargot! Mon Ami! What will we do zen? We 'ave to giiv up our catamites nex! Eet eez ze end of ze shurch as we know eet!]

But liturgical books with original Latin prayers rather than Latin translations of the modern Mass may be impossible to quickly locate [except to anyone with access to EBay]. The director of the Vatican publishing house told Catholic News Service he doesn't even know who holds the copyright to the text.

Gibson says initial offerings of the Mass could look like a Catholic amateur hour.


Yep, with the MP out and Benedict showing no signs of dropping dead, the party's over. It's BYOB from now on. (Bring your own bongos).

BINGO!!

A sampling of the MP scare headlines:

first runner up one hour ago, third prize goes to the Guardian: "Pope revives old Latin Mass, to protests"

Second runner up, also one hour old: "New rule for Latin Mass worries critics"

and the grand prize, split between MSNBC and Reuters:
"Pope OKs Latin mass, sparks Jewish concern"

Let's give them a big hand!

* special mention goes to the Belfast Telegraph who quoted the ever vigilant ADL calling it a "body blow to Catholic Jewish relations", that we still might think it a good idea if the Jews, along with everyone else, became Catholic.

Friday, July 6, 2007

Heeeeere we go!

"Anti-Semitic" is the prearranged judgement on the MP, which I feel safe saying really is going to be released tomorrow. Let's see how many news stories follow the leader.

It worked so well on Pius XII, after all. And who can really blame them? How could they possibly resist the temptation, given the nationality of the Pope? Certainly nothing was held back in that regard after the conclave.

Just for fun, I offer Jeff's media template for MP stories which he offers in convenient point form.

Some people feel nostalgic for the Latin Mass.

In the Latin Mass the priest faces away from the congregation and prays, sometimes in a whisper, in Latin, a language unfamiliar to most of the world’s one billion Roman Catholics. Unlike in the new Mass which is celebrated in the vernacular with the priests facing their congregations.

Because two generations of American Catholics are accustomed to hearing the Mass celebrated in English, it's unlikely most will want to switch to a liturgy that is longer, more formal and celebrated in a language they don't understand.

Pope Benedict is taking the church back to before Vatican II and removing the reforms of the Council. Liberal, reform-minded Catholics are concerned about these rollbacks to progress made.

Some prayer for the Tridentine liturgy are offensive to Jews.

The Rev. < Insert Jesuit of choice> said < insert attack on the Tridentine rite>.

The groundbreaking Second Vatican Council opened the door to worship in the local vernacular.

The Latin Mass involves a diminished role for women as altar servers and eliminates progress made in women's equality since Vatican II.

These changes will only aggravate declining Mass attendance by introducing a liturgy not relevant to the times.

Insert comment by former America editor Thomas Reese now a fellow at Woodstock Theological Center at Georgetown University. (Make sure you mention he was forced out of the editorship by Pope Benedict.) If you can't get in touch with Thomas Reese for a direct quote just mention something about clash of cultures between conservative priests and liberal congregations.

Pope Benedict has been receiving resistance from the Bishops in France, England, and Wales who worry about the change dividing the church.

But liberals are deeply wary because a number of the rite's adherents are associated with ultra conservative groups that oppose the radical reforms ushered in by the Council.

The proponents of the old Latin mass are said to number no more than 2 percent of Catholics, and polls show that the majority of Catholics embrace the reforms of
Vatican II. There seems to be no demand for it.

Insert a comment from a proponent of the Tridentine Rite at the bottom of your piece.