Barrel Strength

Criticisms of the BNP and Nick Griffin play to the party’s strength. They put me in mind of Smollett’s honest apple-woman.

His panegyric, excluding principle and veracity,
 puts me in mind of a contest I once overheard,
in the way of altercation, betwixt two apple-women
in Spring-garden -- One of those viragos having
hinted something to the prejudice of the other's
moral character, her antagonist, setting her hands
 in her sides, replied -- 'Speak out, hussy --
I scorn your malice -- I own I'm both a whore
 and a thief; and what more have you to say?
 -- Damn you, what more have you to say? baiting
that, which all the world knows, I challenge
you to say black is the white of my eye' --

Having once called Griffin and his Checked Shirts bigots and racists, what then? Eh? Speak up, damn you! What then? Calling them whores and thieves does not black the white of their eyes nor would it seem to lessen their appeal to the voters of Great Britain.

Furthering its quest to firmly brand Québec as Serbia with maple syrup, rhe  Societé Saint-Jean-Baptiste “demands” that:

Prince Charles should use the occasion of his visit to Quebec next month to apologize on behalf of the British Crown for past harm caused to French culture in North America.

Though I am no fan of that hapless Hanoverian doofus, can we finally tell these tiresome people to just get on with creating their habitantistan?

Labour wanted mass immigration to make UK more multicultural, says former adviser

Labour threw open Britain’s borders to mass immigration to help socially engineer a “truly multicultural” country, a former Government adviser has revealed.

But they sure did not want discussion of it, did they?

Christopher Caldwell, in his magnificent Reflections on the Late Revolution in Europe, says the process of allowing mass unskilled immigration was originally started to relieve short-term labour shortages in post war Europe. What were they thinking? That men did not ultimately come with families?
I highly recommend the Caldwell book if you want a comprehensive review of the sweeping and dreadful effects of mass immigration of the unskilled, the Islamic or both on the rights, freedoms and political order of the invaded countries.

Much might be said about the self-hatred of elites which cannot stand their own people so much.

If you go to the article itself, please note the falsity of the final explanation from the government spokesman:

A Home Office spokesman said: “Our new flexible points based system gives us greater control on those coming to work or study from outside Europe, ensuring that only those that Britain need can come.

“Britain’s borders are stronger than ever before and we are rolling out ID cards to foreign nationals, we have introduced civil penalties for those employing illegal workers and from the end of next year our electronic border system will monitor 95 per cent of journeys in and out of the UK.

“The British people can be confident that immigration is under control.”

“From outside Europe” is the key phrase. Hundreds of thousands of African immigrants to Spain, for example, have been amnestied bythe Spanish government. Once amnestied, they are granted EU citizenship. The European Union is open to illegal immigrants at the weakest border, and once in, they cannot be removed from any portion of it. Establishing a points system, such as we have in Canada, is closing the barn door while Grendel is eating your cattle. It keeps the monster warmer while your wealth is being devoured. A points scheme might shut out those from North or South America, say, while the wholly unqualified Cameroonian is already inside your country. But I forgot the essential thing. It is no longer your country.

The following two headlines summarize the challenge to Obama’s oratorical “skill”.

Barack Obama is the most powerful writer since Julius Caesar

Schwarzenegger “Fuck You”: Did Gov Send Lawmaker Obscene Message Through Acrostic Poem?

I have been reading Theodore Dalrymple for years, describing the moral decrepitude of the United Kingdom. I read Mark Steyn’s America Alone, which said that large parts of Europe would not be part of Europe in fifty years, because the inhabitants will have been replaced by Muslims. I am reading Reflections on the Revolution in Europe, by Christopher Caldwell, who describes the massive consequences on every aspect of public safety, allowable civil discourse, the upsetting of all accepted customs, and the demographic future of Europe caused by large scale Muslim immigration and subsequent reproductive growth. Likewise I have read Ayan Ali Hirsi and several books by Robert Spencer including the Truth about Mohammed

Caldwell’s book is the most comprehensive and calm, and for this reason the most frightening. Caldwell describes the Islamic takeover  as akin to the Irish Catholic takeover of the world’s most Protestant city, Boston, from the 1840s to the 1860s. Only the change is immeasurably greater, because what changes is the civilization to which the city belongs. We can and do still drive to Boston, because we want to and can. We will not be going to Duisberg and dozens of other European post-industrial blights soon or ever, he implies. They will not be part of European civilization and we will not be welcome.

I am listening to the Imam of a Toronto mosque as I write. He is a powerful and effective preacher. What is most impressive,  however, is how he manages to portray the current operation of Ontario society around him, such as billboards featuring women in swimsuits - as somehow a train of offences against the Muslim community, and how each refusal immediately to change our society to suit Islamic customs is a set of intolerable insults. His confidence that it is the imperative duty of Canada to adjust to Islamic social mores,  is the more impressive for his indifference to the virtues of the society in which he dwells, or the fact that it has had a separate evolution outside Islam. The separate existence of Canadian society and its particular virtues are invisible to him. He may be an intelligent bigot from our point of view. From his, he is merely bringing correction to a sinful society. There will be no adjustment of any kind from this Somali imam; it will be our bounden duty to adjust Canada to his faith.  Please watch Niqab not Nifaaq at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6hkvzlhCzC4

But this was not my tipping point. It came a few weeks ago when I struck a conversation with a pleasant Dutchman in a restaurant in Europe. He was the chief financial officer for a welfare foundation in Rotterdam, and had been at various times a lawyer and a businessman. Things went smoothly for a while but at a certain point I could not take  it any longer. Every cliché of the smug leftie-atheist European was offered as the unchallengeable truth:

• Obama deserved his Peace Prize, Bush was stupid and a drunk;
• Islamic women are leading the Islamic men into integration in the European economy (and therefore Islam is not threat);
• We have as much to worry about from Christians as we do Muslims;
• Europeans see things in their complexity, North Americans see things too simplistically;

 ”We are not as naive as you might think,” he told me. Well, actually, my Dutch friend, you are more naive than you can possible conceive.

A combination of personal experience and a wide reading into Islam and the phenomenon of mass Islamic immigration has convinced me of the following: Multiculturalism, which is a code for the essential valuelessness of the European Christian heritage and the equal validity of all cultures, and Islam, are as HIV to AIDS.  The defences: mental, spiritual, and demographic are weakend to the state that the body politic is powerless to resist a foreign invader.

Europe is in a very sick state and we may not be  far behind.

http://www.reuters.com/article/newsOne/idUSTRE59D0BR20091014?pageNumber=1&virtualBrandChannel=11604

Australian anthropologist Peter McAllister has published a book entitled “Manthropology” and provocatively sub-titled “The Science of the Inadequate Modern Male.”

The lack of physical stress in modern life has led us to be much slower and weaker than our ancestors of 30,000 years ago, according to his evidence.

How come every advance of ease of life is greeted with derision, yet we all will refuse to haul water up hill if we can get a pump to do the work? North American Indians immediately took to European firearms, as did the rest of the world when they faced a choice.

Human nature, of course, causes us to avoid unnecessary labour. Human ingenuity devises the tools which make labour unnecessary. It also devises the societies in which humans can live together peaceably long enough to invent and use labour saving devices, and even to reward their inventors.

But there is a more subtle objection to Professor McAllister’s argument. The general weakening seems to apply to all of humanity, even those who still hunt for a living, such as Australian aborigines.

Why does the general weakening postulated by McAllister apply as well to those hunters who might be expected to have retained the capacities of their distant forebears?

Are human capacities as plastic as he thinks? Were we once much stronger and faster? There are reasonable grounds to think so.

We know that chimpanzees are much stronger, pound for pound, than humans.  It takes a large  200 pound human male in superb condition to wrestle a chimpanzee, for instance. And even way back then, we were no match for neanderthals. But here we are and neanderthals are in their graves.

Musculature and speed are obviously not decisive for fitness in the Darwinian sense.  Go figure.

Relevant and more important is The Ten Thousand Year Explosion. Evolution is accelerating under the influence of civilization. If we are not the six-foot tall superbly muscled athletes of 15,000 years ago, it is because we have found better ways to live.

The modern man is weak thesis will inform much cocktail party chatter this fall.

A quiz in Somalia pays out in a unique way:

The winners of a quiz organised by Somali Islamists have been given weapons and ammunition as prizes.

Prizes included AK-47 assault rifles, hand grenades and an anti-tank mine. The quiz ran during the holy Muslim month of Ramadan in the port city of Kismayo, and included questions about the Koran and Somali geography.

The Double Jeopardy round must have been interesting.

Earlier this month there were reports that stated more viewers watched Fox at 3am than CNN at 8pm.  Today there is a report that states that the “Wall Street Journal has surpassed USA Today as the top-selling daily newspaper in the United States.”  Is the ground slowly shifting on the liberal media?  The liberals have held an enormous advantage of terrain when fighting polictical battles, with control of media, education and community organisations to name a few.  Perhaps it is time for the Right to play from the Alinsky playbook.

The condescending behaviour of the MSM never ceases to amaze your correspondent.  The haughty Charlie Gibson of ABC News opened his interview with Sen. Olympia Snowe as follows.

Gibson:  And Senator Olympia Snowe, Republican of Maine joins us tonight.  Senator you are now the only Republican House or Senate to vote for any of the health care reform bills that are out there.  What do you know that your fellow Republicans don’t?

Translation: Why are your fellow Republicans so stupid and why are they not falling in line with Obama?

When Obama agreed to scrap the missile defense shield for Poland and the Czech Republic, he hoped that this would generate concessions from Russia.  Instead of negotiating away the missile defense shield, Obama simply gave it away without anything concrete in return.   The hoped for dividend has been snubbed by Russia with the real Russian President saying this today.

Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin on Wednesday warned major powers against intimidating Iran and said that talk of sanctions against the Islamic Republic was “premature”.”There is no need to frighten the Iranians,” Putin told reporters in Beijing.

1. Become the master of the TelePrompter.
2. Wax your bikini zone like there’s no tomorrow.
3. Discuss for the next three years.

Barack Obama was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize and your correspondent’s view are best captured by White House officials quoted in this ABC report.

Two key White House aides were both convinced they were being punked when they heard the news, reported ABC News’ George Stephanopoulos.

“It’s not April 1, is it?” one said.

It is instructive to note that he was awarded the Peace Prize “for his extraordinary efforts to strengthen international diplomacy and cooperation between peoples.”  The Nobel Peace Prize nomination deadline is Feb 1st and Obama was sworn in on Jan 20th, which means that he was awarded this prize for his accomplishments during the 12-day period between those two dates.

Bewailing the media glare on shameless Grit talking point puppet/Bollywood might-have-been Ruby Dhalla, Don Martin somehow churns out 736 words that do not include “Mr. Ruby Dhalla”.

I was asked by Glendronach to comment on the new arrangements whereby ICANN will be subject to new arrangements approved the by the US government. After reflection and discussion with people way more into it than I, the answer is: ICANN’s new arrangements do not matter because ICANN does not matter.

ICANN regulates the domain name system. The domain name system (DNS) is the set of names that cover over the IP addresses that actually route messages to end points.

The domain names (www.barrelstrength.com) are mnemonics – handy things to remember because humans do not remember number blocks, such as 185.086.0.349, as easily.

There are three parts to ICANN. One considers top level domains (com, net, org, biz, travel, museum and soon many more) and another considers country codes (.ca, .us, .uk. .tv., .jp etc.). ICANN’s ability to set policy over top level domains is nigh absolute, subject to its contract with the US government, exercised by the National Telecommunications Information Administration (NTIA, a part of the department of Commerce). What this means is that its ability to set policy over domain names has been and continues to be subject to the vagaries of US government policy.  The fate of .xxx, the porn designation, shows clearly that US Congressmen could work through the Department of Commerce to block the introduction of a top level domain approved by ICANNs processes.

The second part considers and makes policy in relation to country codes. In this area ICANN shares jurisdiction with national states. In this area, ICANN has to listen to its Government Advisory Council, called the GAC. This puts country codes effectively outside the reach of the US Government.

Finally there is the Address Supporting Organization, the ASO, the part of ICANN that deals with routing policy, IP number assignment and autonomous system numbers.

ICANN’s authority to act here derives from a different contract with the USG. This is what is known as the IANA function, and though ICANN executes this function, it does so under completely different contractiual arrangementswith the US government. IANA stands for Internet Assigned Numbers Authority. IANA functions are conceivably detachable from ICANN functions. They are certainly handled by different institutions. Five regional internet registries (RIRs), one for each continent, hand out IP addresses and autonmous system numbers to ISPs, according to their own policies, but which are approved by the ASO and ultimately by the ICANN Board – very ultimately – in the same sense that the Bey of Algiers held office by approval of the Turkish Sultan.

Now all the heat, politics and action revolves around ICANN’s top level domain function, which is a whirlpool of process fanatics and IP lawyers vying for advantage. It sucks in people and provides a large number with employment, status, intrigue, contracts, activity and self-importance. If it all stopped tomorrow it would be months before a difference would be noticed.

Someone likened ICANN to the Emperor of China. His job is to face south, hold the throne, do nothing, be kowtowed to, and prevent inferiors from holding  it. He serves who only sits and does nothing.

Since the true function of ICANN is to do nothing, the new arrangements, which allow more people to sit on Boards to review ICANNs doings every three years, also amount to more people doing nothing. ICANN’s actual contractual duties to the US government have not chnaged an iota. Now more people from different governments may get to sit on triennial reviews to review the process of doing nothing.

ICANN is a placeholder. It occupies attention while more fundamental processes go on undisturbed. So the changes to its arrangements mean very little.

Marc Garneau is unveiled as the Leader’s “Quebec Representative”.