~ ITEM: Byzantium 1200; Byzantium 1200 Videos

~ ITEM: The Emperor’s Lost Harbour

~ ITEM: The Byzantine Empire

~ ITEM: Charles Martel

~ ITEM: Mystras

~ ITEM: Iran targets Baha’i cemetery for destruction

~ ITEM: Binks: Finders, Keepers

~ TEH BINKS LOVES many aspects of the Eastern Roman Empire: Byzantium, The Eastern Orthodox Church, and the fact that the Byzantines held back the hateful tide of ruination, murder, destruction and Jihad from swamping Eastern Europe in the AD 600s and after.

On the other end of the Med, it was only the last-minute intervention and skill of Charlie “The Hammer” Martel which stemmed the Jihad-flood from taking France, Flanders and Northwards, Austria, Germany, and the opposite tide meeting them from across the Bosphorus into Central Europe. They did that for us, and for them.

A Response To War

The West began the Crusades as a response to Muslim cruelties and destruction–

“On October 18, 1009, Fatimid caliph Al-Hakim bi-Amr Allah, has the Church completely destroyed. It is believed that Al-Hakim “was aggrieved by the scale of the Easter pilgrimage to Jerusalem…. everything was razed ‘except those parts which were impossible to destroy or would have been too difficult to carry away’.” The Church’s foundations were hacked down to bedrock. The Edicule and the east and west walls and the roof of the cut-rock tomb it encased were destroyed or damaged (contemporary accounts vary), but the north and south walls were likely protected by rubble from further damage”

That is, the holiest place in Christendom aside from the Church of the Nativity, hammered, burnt, re-hammered and re-burnt down to the pavement. Including most of the the actual tomb itself. Imagine if we went over to Mecca today and bulldozed the whole Ka’aba complex, after blowing most of it up.

We Failed Them

Sadly, intra-European war, Venitian machinations, and the vagaries of history meant the Western Crusaders later took over Constantinople and did their own wreck & plunder (1200s); and when the Last Emperors pleaded for help in the mid-1400s, more Venetianism and Papal politics and whatever else saw the final fall of the Eastern Roman Empire, a thousand years after the fall of ancient Rome.

Fleeing Byzantines brought books, relics, ancient manuscripts, and in doing so, directly inspired the Renaissance. Even in their dying, we were blessed, and benefitted, despite Western European muddling, selfishness and short-sightedness.

Then came the Jihad again– into Eastern and Central Europe, throughout the Mediterranean. No Byzantines left to slow things down, and the old Constantinople became the centre of the Ottoman Empire.  Hungary, Russia, Vienna, Italy, everywhere felt the new push, as the riches of the old empire– and the new trading capital itself– funded armies and navies to conquer Christian lands.

Still Not Dead

Several authentic bits of Byzantium are still with us, both in Greece, the other last bastion of the dying Empire. Holy Mount Athos and her monasteries, and the abandoned town of Mystras, above modern-day Sparta. And don’t forget the Orthodox Church itself, in all its national varieties.

Yet more sadly, in modern day Istanbul, there’s a general “since the Greeks are evil, we can’t respect their old stuff too much”, a rising Islamism, and a general neglect and hostility to old stuff that can remind the Turks that in geopolitical sense, they are late-comers inhabiting lands and cities which other people made and started.

Alongside Turkish pride, the hatred that Muhammed held towards pre-islamic times (the Jahiliyyah or “Time Of Ignorance/ Stupidity”). Thus, all the cultures and ruins of pre-Islamic Arabia, including ancient churches and synagogues? Evil paganism to be ignored, torn down, or used for target-practice unless the tourists really really like it (as with Petra).

Blow Up! Plunder! Wreck!

Radical Muslims Everywhere Hate The Old Stuff. That’s why the ancient giant Buddha statues were blown up in Afghanistan. That’s why the Government of Iran recently mused about bulldozing all the surviving Persian ruins and tombs. Or why Muslim Brotherhood mobs torched an Egyptian antiquities library and then danced around and cheered about burning countless irreplaceable ancient Egyptian documents and the related research.

Why? Follow the logic, as follows.

If pre-islamic times were Utterly Stupid/ Ignorant AND Evil, then erasing them is good for Islam, as is destroying all history or religion or evidence to the contrary of Islam. Moe told them to: after all, if all infidels ever are utterly hell-bound, then ancient dead infidels– with no hope of conversion– are clearly the worst of all.

Pyramids? Sphinx? Tombs of pharaohs? See them now, while you still can, or enjoy the pictures.

The world is already littered with plundered cities, wrecked churches, pagan temples, burned libraries, dead bodies, empty monasteries, especially of the Byzantine Romans, who were essentially the first non-Arabian victims of the First 6th Century Jihad. It would be interesting to know how many have been slain world-wide in the name of Moe’s Cult, since Day One, and how many irreplaceable things and places and art were burnt, plundered, ruined, or otherwise destroyed.

Redeeming All Things

By contrast, the incarnation of Jesus implies that there is goodness about creation, and the past; St. Paul quotes pagan poems to evangelize Greeks; Romans used the best of pagan architecture to build churches to the glory of God. St. Thomas Aquinas articulated the principle thus: “Grace perfects, it does not destroy nature.” There was Christian vandalism and intolerance (again, in Egypt, most notably), but more generally no desire to utterly erase all that went before, rather to redeem it and reuse it into new forms.

The Pantheon in Rome became a church; the pagan trees of the Germans are with us each Christmas, transformed in purpose and meaning; ancient arts inspired iconography, architecture, music, painting, to the Glory of the Holy Trinity. Roman Law and Greek Philosopy were used to structure society and ask the hard questions about God, man, and existence. Heck, in English and other European languages, we still use pagan names for days and months!

We Invented That, O Infidels

Those who like to trumpet that Islam invented everything ever forget that they first inherited Stupid and Ignorant pagan science and engineering, and that many leading Christians were actually the ones who transmitted what they knew to their new masters. Math? Hindus did it.

After a brief flowering in Sicily and elsewhere, most Muslim philosophy (since it relied on infidel Pagan Stupids like Aristotle) was forbidden. It’s partly why deep thought and education and book-publishing are so poor in the modern Middle East, despite a lot of technical skills to do with electricity, roads, and oil infrastructure. Even there (as in the fairy-tale wonders of Dubai), many imported Western non-Muslims head up the projects, and do the hard planning and execution.

Finely, And In Contusion

One cool website I’ve mentioned before gives us the merest glimpse of what Constantinople and Byzantium used to be: Byzantium 1200, done by a Turkish archaeology & computer-nerd named Tayfun Oner. Drop by his site– make a donation.

We all owe Byzantium that much, and more. ~

The Neighbour-Kid

~ ITEM: How the left uses “bullying” to restrict free speech that offends them

~ ITEM: Hate crime charges in England, only apply against whites

~ SO WALLACE The Wonder-Poodle needed some personal time outside, so out we wented. It turned out the nieghbour-kid was home.. on a school day.. chopping kindling. I asked him if Wallace’s best bud– a giant wolf-like male husky-thing– was home, and so he was and they cavorted and peed serially on various spots in what passes, I suppose, for doggie-tag.

I enquired of neighbour-kid as to his situation: hooky? Exams?

“I was suspended”, he said. “What brilliance got you that?” I asked.

“I was joking with my black friend, who calls me ‘The White Kid’. I call him ‘The Black Kid’. He brought some noodles to school today, and somebody asked me why. I said ‘Ask the Black Kid’, but then the teacher heard me. She told me that was unacceptable. My friend even tried to explain that “it was a joke back and forth between us all the time, and I call him The White Boy”, but that didn’t matter.”

Wow.

No doubt modern schools, Teaching programs and the notoriously slimy NS Teacher’s Union and the general state of well-meaning conformity and liberal conformity made sure that teacher in particular now has The usual special sensitivities. However, an ordinary kid involved in banter with his friend? Now a victim of Leftard bullying, a suggestion that he is somehow a racist and deserves punishment, and no doubt this goes on his academic record.

This is a sad commentary on ideology interfering with real life, and the rough and tumble of regular school-life. Do teachers or bureaucrats or various other self-appointed moral busy-bodies have an unrestricted right to interfere with free-speech, even when ‘The Black Kid’ in question was not offended or suspicious of racism by his classmate and friend, and tried to defend him from the teacher? Apparently so.

Lessons? Teachers have weird ideas unrelated to the reality of student life & friendships. Authority may be arbitrary. Racism means white people suck. Don’t trust authority, they’re clueless. Never say what you really think or mean.

Plus, the evil racist cracker– a.k.a. the pleasant, hard-working unracist Neighbour Kid– got some free days off before exams. ~

Weaklings, Down With The Ship!

Civilization Is Fragile

“Its continuance requires respect for the law, tough-minded education, collective thrift, private investment, individual self-reliance, and common codes of behavior and civility — and exempts no one from those rules. Such knowledge and patterns of civilized behavior, slowly accrued over centuries, can be lost in a single generation.”

~ Victor Davis Hanson ~

~ ITEM: Steyn: No More ‘Women and Children First‘; Steyn on Culture: Who’s Off First?

~ ITEM: Metaphor of the Week, Month, Year, Decade, Age

~ ITEM: Al Mohler — “What are we to do with Captain Schettino? He will go down in history as an example of miserable failure”

~ ITEM: MS Estonia – Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia: “The survivors of the shipwreck were mostly young, of strong physical composition, and male. Seven people over 55 years of age survived. There were no survivors under age 12. About 750 people were inside the ship when it sank.”

~ ITEM: For some, life is just a game where the goal is to rise to the top at all costs

~ ITEM: Titanic – A man in women’s clothes was among the survivors in lifeboat 10

~ GO READ THE Steyn article– it rocks. A century later, and rather like the cowardly ass-saver on the Titanic, one J. Bruce Ismay (White Star Line higher up), dear Cap’t Schettino of the sunken liner Costa Concordia has already gone down in history as the Captain who bolted (albeit after swinging his ship nearer shore, by some pretty swift thinking after he caused the accident in the first place), hours before the passengers and crew were all safe.

He’s not been tried and found guilty yet, but as Steyn points out, the behaviour of a lot of other folks on that stricken vessel is a parable for the age we live in– and for the hard days that may lie ahead, even (especially) if Obama goes down to defeat. We are on the Titanic, morally and economically, spiritually and culturally, out on the front deck of the ‘unsinkable’ playing with chunks from the iceberg we just hit. Whee.

Iceberg, Right Ahead?

What happens when the local, state, or national bills can’t be paid? When the prices keep going up, wages down, and the unemployed or debt-laden employed can’t pay the bills, or feed themselves & the kids? As the still-deferred reckoning of the 2006-2008 financial collapse continues to unfold?

We’re living on borrowed time– the ship has hit the rocks, and water is pouring in, and the officers are playing about as if it’s all just fine, no worries, go back to your cabins and wait for instructions type thing. The captain & officers will mostly save their own hides, so they’re not overly concerned about the expendable passengers.

So, WWYD?

It is often said that nobody knows how they might act in an emergency. Only partly true, in my experience. If you’re a douchbag/ette, you may surprise yourself with unsuspected resources of courage and suchlike in a disaster.. but you’ve also left it up to luck, maybe, who knows.

The time to prepare for an emergency is before the emergency– just as the way to deal with temptation is to practice virtue and stick to your promises with God’s help before the particular juicy opportunity saunters by. Thinking about what you’d sacrifice– or lay down your life for– best happens ahead of time, not while you find yourself kicking everyone out of the way to save your all-precious ass.. if not your self-respect or basic humanity.

Jeez: Move It, Granny!

Suddenly, we find ourselves pushed back on basics of self & civilization. A cornerstone: unselfish love. The Golden Rule, “Do to others as you would have them do to you.” [ Luke 6:31 ] How about John 15:13 – “Greater love has no man than this, that he lay down his life for his friends.“

.. Or a weaker person, or a pregnant mother, a child, a granny, an elderly person, your spouse or child, a stranger needing saving. The passengers on the Costa Concordia (Or “Peaceful Coast”) found out what happens when civilization loses faith, and when “self and individuality and did I mention my all-awesome self?” is all I really believe in. Some charitable souls have tried to explain the recent disaster by pointing at Italians. As Steyn points out, nice try, but MV Estonia in the Baltic saw the same damned ugly scenes, of panicky men clambering over the weak, and not using their strength to save others.

Going Down With The Ship?

Back in WW2, the last man off the bombed & torpedoed carrier the U.S.S. Yorktown was– wait for it– the captain. He slid down a line into a waiting rescue boat, having walked all the parts of the ship he could get to to make sure everybody was safe. On the Titanic, Captain Edward Smith likewise remained at his station and died there. These were not random acts of randomness, but chosen acts of self-sacrifice and courage, leading to the saving of countless lives.

If Steyn is right, our society is busy on the pleasure deck, but the chaos is incoming. The fraying of manhood, the selfishness and narcissism of comfortable people, the assumption that Nanny-state will look after all the problems.. it means all kinds of unsuspected ugly lurks just under the surface of our brittle modern world. ~

( ‘..And Get The Heck Back On Your Ship, Captain!’ )

We Deserve To Know

Beware What You Gobble!

~ ITEM: MUHAMMADAN MILITARY COMMANDER: ‘THE ISLAMIC CALIPHATE IS COMING‘

~ ITEM: Google: ‘halal campbell’s soup‘; halal turkey

~ ITEM: Peter’s vision of a sheet with animals

~ SO EXACTLY when & who & where was deciding to make so much stuff (Campbell’s soups, ButterBall Turkey, Kiwi mutton products, heaven knows what else) blankety-blank Halal? That is, killed and/or prepared in accord with Muslim sharia law regarding food.

A silent non-consumer-driven revolution has crept into the food supply, whereby some companies placate Muslims, food corporations have gone halal, sometimes in collaboration with Muslim Brotherhood fronts like ISNA (for Campbell’s).

What The Fudge?

What other foods are Muzzie-approved without labels? What other sharia-compliancy is being foisted upon consumers?

Through the magic of Reverse-The-Terms, let’s imagine if food being shipped to Saudi Arabia turned out to be Kosher? Properly offered & sacrificed to Hindu gods? Maybe prayed over by evangelical Christian butchers? Sprinkled with bacon-fat?

OUTRAGE! MOB-VIOLENCE IN THE STREETS! FATWAS! DEATH-THREATS! MULTIPLE DEATHS!

On The Other Hand

Christians confronted this issue back in the early days, where butchery was often a pagan temple thing. Meat sacrificed to idols– should Christians eat it? In 1 Corinthians 10:28 St. Paul said (a) meat sacrificed to not-gods are allowable, but (b) for converts from paganism, or people of tender conscience, such meats should be abstained from, to not trouble those brothers or sisters for whom it could weaken their faith or cause offence. This also connects with the vision given to St. Peter [ Acts 10 ], that all foods were declared clean– no more dietary laws, or forbidden critters. This expands on what Jesus himself said, that it was not what into a man, but what came out from his heart that made him clean or unclean, good or evil [ Matthew 15:11 ].

By that principle, eating a Christian eating halal is free to do so– but other principles remain in force. What if a newly-converted Christian (a former Muslim man or woman) has such labelled food, sacrificed according to his or her former religion? For smarter-than-thou seculars, who cares? One religion is as false as another, and maybe this throw-away will make the Jihadi-prone Moe-lovers calm for a bit.

Still– why are companies in theoretically Christian but legally secular countries sneaking this grovel towards Islam into the food supply?

The Ugly Bigger Picture

The world-domination goal of The Muslim Brotherhood is not necessarily conversion, but the submission of the planet under sharia law, and Muslim domination uber alles. Halal, body-bags for all women, modesty laws, no criticism ever of anything or anybody Muslim, slighting of all other faiths, or non-faiths.. on and on it goes. European no-go zones are colonies of shariatopia. When there’s more than 5-10% of militantly Muslim population, you get your no-go zones, segregated swimming, honour killing, religiously sanctioned violence and dishonesty and Muslims Are Always Right and everything and everybody else shut up, forevers.

Halal soup or lamb or turkey is a first step in our submission to the Muslim Brotherhood Islamo-supremacist agenda. Boycott, and tell them why (the companies, an your local Supermarkets, too).

Our Sick-Making Cretins

The disgusting thing? If you read some of the links above, you’ll note various smirking Leftists mocking those who who called for boycotts. You know, because religious supremacism is just another patch in the rich tapestry of multiculturalism of something and stuff like that.

This should come as no surprise: the radical Left has always had a romance with tyranny and terror, aiding and abetting and apologizing for Gulag and Jihad. Call it a lust for destruction, or suicidal schadenfreude: brain-rot and soul-rot for the hipster radicals of the troubled West.

Drawing Of Lines

We are seeing the civilizational battle-lines drawing up.. while there may be converts from the radicals, we should not be surprised by their treachery, for they are not on the side of the West, but worship creative destruction, envy, self-hatred, and hating all the good things that made them who they are as members in a free society.

In The Inferno of Dante, the traitors are the lowest of the low, found at the heart of hell, frozen in a lake of ice surrounding Satan himself, who chews eternally on Judas, Brutus, and Cassius. Having used their God-given powers in life to betray God, homeland, and their fellow man, the treacherous are frozen nearly powerless for eternity. ~

What You’ve All Been Waiting For

~ ITEM: Well, what a surprise (not); America sails towards Scylla and Charybdis

~ ITEM: The most dynamic and productive economy in the history of the world degenerates into class warfare

~ ITEM: President Gingrich Would Be Good For Canada

~ ITEM: According to the WSJ, Illinois is “the Greece Next Door” to Wisconsin

Michael Coren & Mark Steyn: From Newt To Schettino & Everything In Between

~ GIVEN THE NEAR-INFALLIBILITY of Teh Binky, no doubt the world waits with bated breath Binksmeister’s wisdom on the 2012 American election race. You know, cuz I called it for the RINO in 2008, and Obama won despite my predictive amazingnesousity.

No clue, except: Anybody But Obama as President.

4 more years of his wrecking? And likely worse, since he will be a Lame Duck Prez, and no longer worried about re-election? Where next– $20.. or 25 trillion or more, plus the $100 trill in liabilities and bills coming due?

The Next Election Already

It’s good to hear that some Democratic voters are looking at the actual President’s actual record versus his 2008 platform of lies (almost all broken) and perhaps deciding that America needs real hope and change, minus the Big Narcissist currently sailing the nation straight for the rocks on almost every front domestically and internationally.

Likelihoods

Hard-core radicals will not abandon him, because under his watch the revolution can continue to wreck America now and for the next generation at least.. if not forever. One might wish that the Dems would look at what’s actually happening and seek to dump Obama: but the perqs and power are very intoxicating.

Dear Democrats: please love your country & the world more than the current monster heading up your political tribe.

Dear Republicans: get your #@&%$! act together.

Dear independents: vote for America– not for the wreckers. ~

A Teen Adventurer

~ ITEM: Laura Dekker Website

~ ITEM: Laura Dekker

~ IT GOES WITHOUT saying.. that not all teens are the same. Still, young Laura Dekker is a hero in two respects– youngest to sail around the world ever, and a survivor of bureaucratic abuse by the Netherlands nanny-state “Youth Care Acency”, which actually tried to lock her up to kill her dream of global circumnavigation, and take over her .

Until the Victorian era and modern nanny-state, there were no teens. There were children, then young adults. Children might work in the household, farm, or family business. No extended immaturity via baby-sitting schools & party-hearty universities. Heck, these days some folks can even make it into their mid-thirties on the big baby plan.

Another ‘Mere’ Teenager

In Biblical times, someone like Miriam of Nazareth was a young adult: mature, able in her due duties and skills. Likely around Laura Dekker’s age, she was already engaged, and then an angelic vision presented her with a choice which would literally put human salvation in her hands.

In my past teaching teens at Church camp (serious stuff like this, not Kumbayah & canoes), I found many of them– once they knew it was OK to ask real questions– to be serious, interesting, and brimming with questions of the most fundamental sort.

Modern education seems a most unserious enterprise, despite decades of fiddling and experts and dumbing-down. One of teh Binkling’s fellow students had trouble with basic reading (in high school) as they worked together on a project.

Throwing Away What Could Be

How many teens are deflected, defeated, dumbed down by current education into worker drones? Party critters? Studs & sluts? Burnouts?

By depriving kids of serious answers and solid food in their life-deciding years, we are throwing away so many chances for goodness, heroism, world-changing, and solid citizens. Mind you, we’ve been aborting actual babies by the millions in our ‘civilized lands’ for the last 50 years and more, so what’s wrong with a few aborted minds and souls and hearts?

Girls On Deck

Sad to note, despite all the drama and wonder of her voyage, Miss Dekker still reports being haunted by memories of bureaucratic abuse at the hands of Dutch authorities. One might suppose Dutch-descended Mark Steyn knows all about that, as does any member of that unhappy cadre of victims of Canucki Human rights commissions, tribunals, and investigations.

Sail on, brave young lady!* ~

* No, teh Binks is not advocating any and all teens cavorting solo, mid-Atlantic on a yacht.

Saith

The Binksmeister

Random Binky Linkies

~ WOULDN’T Pulp Fiction have been even cooler with this cast…? …. (eyecrazy.blog)

Warwick Castle Trebuchet

~ A SUBCULTURE of Americans prepares for civilization’s collapse …. (reuters.com)

Google: Minding ALL Your Business, cuz they say so.

~ GOOGLE’S BROKEN PROMISE: The End of “Don’t Be Evil”– In a privacy policy shift, Google announced today that it will begin tracking users universally across all its services—Gmail, Search, YouTube and more—and sharing data on user activity across all of them. So much for the Google we signed up for …. (gizmodo.com)

~ THE MOST Amazing Highest Resolution Image of Earth Ever …. (gizmodo)

Star Wars Uncut: Director’s Cut

Via

~ WHERE DOES spiritual autism come from? …. (americandigest.org)

New fragment of Romans 9 and 10 from circa AD150.

More on Hobby Lobby’s Steve Green’s work here. And the exhibition here.

~ BANG, ZOOOOM!– I was under the impression [ George Lucas ] hadn’t made a Star Wars film since 1977 …. (ghostofaflea)

~ THE MIGHTY VANDERLEUN– Pure Science …. (americandigest)

Paul Simon – So beautiful or so what

GreenEcoClimatologyism

~ THE MIGHTY BAYONET– Incoming Batpocalypse?; Global Warming Weekly Round-Up, Jan. 19th 2012; Canada’s big green fight …. (dailybayonet)

~ WISDOM FROM Greenpeace co-founder Patrick Moore: “Tides Canada…should have its tax status revoked” …. (mooseandsquirrel)

~ MANBEARPIG! — Goracle Praises Obama For Rejecting Keystone Pipeline …. (weaselzippers)

~ NEXT ICE-AGE deferred by human CO2 emissions? …. (JR)

~ HEY, KEVIN BACON– “I was part of the Footloose generation. I used to shake my ass to the theme song” …. (themoderateseparatist)

Bacon! I am Binky, and he approves this message.

~ FROM CJUNK– Spiteful, Small, Dishonest … Science …. (cjunk.blog)

~ PEW: GLOBAL WARMING Finishes Dead Last In Poll Of Americans Top Policy Priorities For 2012 …. (Wz)

~ BUTTING UP– Bugs from your colon could produce the world’s next great energy source …. (americandigest.org)

~ AMERICAN DIGEST– Nelson Reads All Climategate 2.0 Emails So You Don’t Have To …. (americandigest.org)

~ THE ACTUAL COSTS of subsidizing solar electricity have exceeded the 100-billion-euro mark in Germany …. (cjunk.blog)

Mark Steyn

~ A COUPLE of months back, I was with a friend of mine when she suddenly collapsed …. (steynonline)

~ A LADY CALLED Manal al-Sharif was killed on Saturday. She was, in Saudi terms, a brave pioneer …. (nationalreview)

~ STEYN ON DISASTER– No More ‘Women and Children First’ …. (ocregister.com)

~ VIDEO– Steyn on Culture: Who’s Off First? …. (sunnewsnetwork.ca)

~ THE RUSH Limbaugh Show: Mark guest hosts Rush …. (rushlimbaugh.com)

Ezra Levant

Ezra Levant on Sex Selection Abortions

~ PATRICK MOORE, founder of Greenpeace, tells viewers why he gave up the radical environmental way of life …. (Ez)

~ THE MIGHTY EZ– Keystone cop-out: Obama chose conflict Venezuelan oil over ethical Canuck oil, and movie stars over working men, women …. (Ez)

~ SPY V. SPY– Cold war reheated? …. (eZ)

~ A FASCINATING RESPONSE by Media Party to Marines’ urinating video …. (ezralevant)

FreeSpeechers

~ AN UPCOMING EVENT– One Law For All: ‘Hold this date – 11 February 2012: A Day to Defend Free Expression’ …. (xanthippa)

~ GO AND READ EVERYTHING over at La Shaidle. She is narrow-minded and incorrect …. (fivefeetoffury)

~ WHAT IS MAN– Anthony Esolen on What Raskolnikov Knew & Translators Have Lost …. (touchstonemag)

~ SAITH THE GYAPONG– Victor Davis Hanson on reading literature; Obama has got to go; So the MSM is ignoring Newt’s standing O– why is that the Anchoress asks?; How can someone lead such a double life?; An interview with Fr. Steenson; What Christians can learn from Christopher Hitchens; A message from Fr. Steenson for us in Canada; Woo hoo! The Binks is baaaaack! …. (deborahgyapong)

~ CRIMINAL GOOGLE– How the Government Used a Con Artist to Catch Google’s Criminal Activities …. (gizmodo)

~ PERSECUTION– Boston Event Spotlights Imperiled Middle East Christians; via Walid Phares …. (theird)

Forbidden Image. DON’T LOOK.

~ BLARING CATBOX– Sh&t Liberals Say; Liberal MP’s & Islamists Bashing Kenney; Rally for Free Expression: One Law for All; Your Tax Dollars at Work; Fighting for property rights. Land rights and gun rights in Canada; Attempted honour killing victim speaks on Quebec TV; Atheists Fear Mohammed …. (blazingcatfur.blog)

~ SPEAK OUT FOR THOSE IN DANGER– Stop Islamization of Nations (SION) Calls on UN to Protect Christians of Syria – Reuters …. (atlasshrugs2000)

~ VICTOR DAVIS HANSON– “The average Californian, like the average Greek, forgot that civilization is fragile.” …. (americandigest)

~ COPTS & ROBBERS– Persecution of Egyptian Copts; One Year Later: The Failure of the Arab Spring; Prominent Coptic activist calls on Minister of Justice to investigate Two Saints Church bombing; MENA’s New Left …. (Various)

~ MOOSES & TREE-RATS– Canada’s anti-property rights bureaucracy targets legal gun owners — Who’s next?; Snowpocalypse in Vancouver; CBC & its “neutral” ombudsman Lapointe to apologize soon; Fired for telling a harmless joke in class? …. (mooseandsquirrel.ca)

~ OVER OUR DEAD BODIES– Men Who Are Willing to Lay Down Their Lives Are Truly Indispensable …. (touchstonemag)

~ WELL DONE, THEN! — “The Harper government has changed our international image in a short period of time, from that of a so-called ‘peacekeeping nation’ whose ill-equipped and bureaucratically shackled Armed Forces were often placed in situations to ‘keep the peace’ when there was no peace to be kept, to a much more vocal nation on the world stage which takes a stand, politically and militarily, against the bad guys” …. (themoderateseparatist)

~ WALKERISM– On libertarianism …. (walker)

BBC – Why I Hate The Sixties

~ ORWELL’S PICNIC– I imagine it’ll be the only one; I find the arguments for Intelligent Design to be somewhat unconvincing; these people knew nothing about the history of Nazism and the War; Never fear Jihadis, the EU stands behind you in that noble effort; a few Thoughts about the subject of philosophical isolation; Hate the cutsie-wootsy figures; A parade of naked emperors; He sees when you’re dissenting, he knows when you’ve blasphemed …. (anglocath.blog)

~ A CANADIAN MEMBER of Parliament proposes to remove a 300-year old law about babies from Canada’s Civil Code. Prime Minister Harper once again won’t cooperate …. (catholicinsight)

~ MERE COMMENTS– No More Narnia Movies?; Mere Links 01.20.12; Gay divorce first, religious freedom a distant second, Charles Lewis …. (touchstonemag)

~ THE LATE Christopher Hitchens on Mormonism …. (ghostofaflea)

~ WINTERY KNIGHT– What happened to the ethics charges against Newt Gingrich?; Haitian man who could not be deported kills three people in Florida; Peer-reviewed paper looks at the causes of homosexuality; Did Obama really create jobs with his green energy and stimulus programs? …. (winteryknight)

~ WORLD TEETERS as past mistakes repeated: “..we ignore past failures at our peril even as we drift towards repeating them” …. (boldcolors)

~ CRANMER BLOG– Nadine Dorries’ quest for sexual abstinence; Christian persecution – the top 50 countries; Chris Bryant on the ‘silliness’ of the Roman Catholic Church …. (cranmer.blog)

~ STATUTES OF LIBERTY– The Tyranny of Modern Freedom versus the Freedom of Jesus …. (touchstonemag)

~ SMALL DEAD AMINALS– Ontario Hydro: One Very Confused Government Agency; A Super Secret Anti-Gay Agenda; Gunter: Big cuts needed in Ottawa’s bloated public service; Tim Thomas “Just Has To Be” a Racist; Now is the Time at SDA When We Juxtapose …. (sda)

~ THE HATEFUL John Robson– Does the topic of abortion make you uncomfortable? It should. Abortion is wrong …. (canoe.ca)

~ CELESTIAL JUNK– The Art of Being Sanctimonious; Travails of the f-35a Flying White Elephant …. (cjunk.blog)

Bill Whittle On Walking Into Mordor

~ THE MIGHTY MELANIE Phillips: A loss of religious belief has led the West to replace reason and truth with ideology and prejudice; South Carolina– Well, what a surprise (not); the idea of elected police commissioners; Cameron and Clegg give a free pass to racism; Save the union? Stop throwing cash at the Scots; the Times still clings to the delusion that the ‘Arab Spring’ was the harbinger of democracy in the region …. (melaniephillips)

~ IT’S A GIRL- Female Infanticide and Foeticide In China and India …. (republicaninthearts)

It’s a Girl! Documentary Film – Official Trailer

~ ED DRISCOLL– Identity Theft, Then and Now; Lunch, Cigars, and the Final Solution; It Looks Like You’re Going to Need a Bigger Boat; Civilization in Reverse, on Dry Land and on Sea; Metaphor Alert: ‘Main Street USA will be Closed for the Duration of the President’s Time There’; Sucking up to Jimmy Carter by praising one of his worst, most self-destructive moments; If Newt so lacked the “moral character” for the Presidency, why did it take Marianne eight months to tell us?; The Me Decade versus the Great Relearning …. (pjmedia.com)

~ MEET THE LEFT’S Most Offensive Twit: Roy Barbeau …. (clayandwater.ca)

~ THE HATEFUL MARK SHEA– “Gay Brownshirts on the March! Because the purpose of gay “marriage” is to create a legal basis for persecuting Christian belief. Tolerance is not enough. You. MUST. Approve!” …. (markshea)

~ MITCHIEVILLE– It Really Is The Favourite; Say, is it cold in here, or is it just Bawney Fwank?; Horoscope for the week of January 22, 2012; UK Headlines From The Year 2030; Modern Propaganda Techniques; Living in poverty like those Mexican welfare cases; It is always nice to know you can blame the Jews for everything …. (mitchieville)

~ SENTINALISM– Gubmint Motors Paying for Chinese Communist Party Propaganda Film; Canadian Indians Opposing Pipeline Accepted Soros Money …. (thecanadiansentinel.blog)

~ BIG BLUE WAVE– Abortion will not come to an end in Canada without martyrdom; Creepy parents reveal sex of their ‘gender-neutral’ child‘; and Sometimes you just want to give a person a vigorous shake; also If you want to fight contraception, you must take up metaphysics; horrible fun with Pro-choice Semantics …. (bigbluewave.ca)

~ A PAPISTICAL rebuttal to “Why I Hate Religion, But Love Jesus” …. (patheos)

~ MIKE ADAMS– Postmodern Political Correctness and Christianity, and here’s Part II …. (boldcolors)

~ CLOSET-CON: “I rarely disagree with the great Caroline Glick, but hey-there’s a first for everything”; Rest in Peace, Navajo Warrior; and The UK is really screwed …. (conservativeinthecloset.blog)

~ LIFESITE– Ontario government thanks Catholic leaders for support of gay anti-bullying bill; ‘Confessions of a recovering lesbian’; A battle to the death against moral relativism – Michael O’Brien; The silliest pro-abortion argument ever (is one you hear all the time); Liberals outraged over Dutch government funding of therapy for homosexuals …. (lifesitenews)

Obysmal

~ HEY, GENIUS POTUS– “Obama was only too happy to help the Islamic supremacists overthrow Mubarak, but has been criminally silent on the persecution and slaughter of Christians in the wake of his post-American foreign policy” …. (atlasshrugs2000)

~ GIZMODO– This Is Obama’s 2012 State of the Future …. (gizmodo)

~ SAITH MARK SHEA: “The question is not whether the Church will survive the growing hostility directed at it by the United States. The question is whether the United States will survive. To hate Christ is to love the spirit of suicide” …. (patheos.com)

~ MUST-READ: “How would you have reacted in 2008 if any Republican ran promising to do the following?” …. (markshea)

~ PULL HIS FINGER! Obama Chooses Chavez Over Canada …. (themoderateseparatist)

~ THE PUNDITA– A few choice words about poetic justice and the Washington Consensus …. (pundita.blog)

~ RENT-A-MOB BOSS Soros Predicts Occupy Wall Street Movement Will Turn Violent, Riots To Bring About A “Repressive Political System” …. (Wz)

~ EXACTLYY– “Barack Obama is a terrible president and an unpopular one. He is ripe for defeat in November, but not by Newt Gingrich” …. (powerlineblog)

Cuddly, Cuddly Evil

~ HE CUDDLES THE EVIL– It is official: the Obama administration supports the radical anti-American, anti-semitic and anti-Western Muslim Brotherhood …. (princearthurherald.com)

The Power of Iconography

~ THE HATEFUL SULLIVAN– Newsweek adds to the left-wing media “racist” narrative: Obama critics are “dumb.” …. (boldcolors.net)

~ PREPARING TO FAIL– “Having basically written off the conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan, Mr. Obama is falling prey to a temptation several of his predecessors found irresistible in peacetime: Cut defense expenditures” …. (centerforsecuritypolicy)

~ REALITY BITES BACK– Dems Say Romney “Not Paying His Fair Share” – Seemingly Unaware John Kerry Was Paying a Lower Tax Rate When He Was Their Nominee …. (Wz)

~ SIGH.. EVEN MORE MARK SHEA– “Really Gingrich and the media are (like Gingrich and Freddie Mac) deeply incestuous (but then, we know how Gingrich feels about the need for his lovers to share him. There’s just too much awesomeness crackling in that Teacher of Civilization to be confined by bourgeois mores)” …. (ms)

~ DR. SANITY– Without envy, there would be no Democratic Party today.”I have to ask again with some exasperation, why aren’t Republicans making a case for the essential morality of capitalism?” …. (drsanity.blog)

~ CB CONGRESS Chairman: Blacks “Wouldn’t Dare March on The White House” Because Obama’s Black, If He “Was A White President We Would” …. (Wz)

~ NEWT’S RIGHT on Sharia, By Frank J. Gaffney Jr. …. (nro)

~ OBAMA’S RACE-WAR– “Too Black to Fail:” Juan Williams and the Race Card Played Two Ways …. (americandigest)

~ THE BOSSY LADY– “What, exactly, does Valerie Jarrett do?” …. (cjunk.blog)

~ THE RBO2 BLOGGER is keeping track of the rent-a-radical Occupy movement …. (rbo2)

~ CYNTHIA FARAHAT: Jihad & the War on Egypt’s Coptic Christians …. (centerforsecuritypolicy)

~ NITWIT FOX NEWS Hires Soros-funded Activist …. (atlasshrugs2000)

~ EAT CAKE, BIATCHES– “Apparently, Obama hopes the cult of celebrity will transform the gravest presidential election since Lincoln into an American Idol face-off. Winner at eleven.” …. (atlasshrugs2000)

Jihad

“The international Left’s embrace of the likes of Hamas, the Taliban, Iran and the Muslim Brotherhood has increased leftist and isolationist American policy-makers’ comfort level in adopting hostile postures towards Israel. So it is that at the same time that the Obama administration is assiduously courting the Taliban, the Muslim Brotherhood and the Iranian regime, according to Channel 2, US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton has refused to meet with Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman during his upcoming trip to Washington.”

~ Some Evil Jewess ~

~ KUWAITI PRINCE declares conversion to Christianity: “if they kill me because of it, then I will appear before Jesus Christ” …. (jihadwatch)

~ BAIT, SWITCH, SCAM– Ireland may be the first EU state to sell Islamic bonds. Fleecing the infidels was never so easy …. (jihadwatch)

~ FATWA FROM THE OIC: France Adopting Armenian Genocide Law A “Sign of Islamophobia” …. (weaselzippers)

~ LET MY PEOPLE Go– Egypt: Muslim Brotherhood and Salafists reportedly collaborate in rampage against Christians …. (jihadwatch.org)

~ GRUDGES ARE ETERNAL– AUTHOR SALMAN RUSHDIE IN MUMBAI JIHADI ASSASSINATION THREAT …. (atlasshrugs2000)

~ PAKISTANISTAN– “Beneath the surface in Abbottabad” is the Pakistani regime’s routine use of terrorism as a policy tool …. (pundita.blog)

~ WOULD-BE MASTERS of the world! Egypt: Female former member of Muslim Brotherhood tells all …. (jihadwatch)

~ SAITH THE BOSTOM– “Understanding the Islam in Muslim Jew-Hatred” …. (andrewbostom)

~ UKISTAN: Three Muslims guilty of “hate crime” for advocating murder of gays …. (jihadwatch)

~ UNCLEAN POLICE sniffer dogs trained to spot terrorists at railway stations may no longer come into contact with Muslim passengers – after complaints that it is against the suspects’ religion …. (clayandwater)

~ IRONY ALERT: The country that threatened to wipe Israel off the map is very upset at aggressive language used against it …. (eyecrazy.blog)

~ SPECIAL JUSTICE– AN Indonesian civil servant who declared himself an atheist on Facebook was arrested and is now facing jail for blasphemy …. (atlasshrugs2000)

~ THE VLADMEISTER– Gaddafi supporters seize control of Libyan town; Hate crime charges in England, only apply against whites …. (vladtepesblog)

~ RUSTY SOVIET DISINFO still going– Mahmoud Ahmadinejad Claims HIV Created By West To Weaken Third World …. (republicaninthearts.blog)

~ SPECIAL JIHAD LOGIC– “Hamas says that if only Jews still were in Gaza, it would be able to stage peaceful protests. Without them, the only choice is violence” …. (cjunk.blog)

~ NEO-NAZIS & MOE-LOVERS: Andrew Lawton at Landmark Report remembers a somber anniversary …. (clayandwater)

Freedom of Speech & Human Rights Under Sharia

~ CREEPING SHARIA– Jihadi magazine got into Gitmo cell; At least 143 killed as Muslims wage jihad in north Nigeria; Tariq Ramadan And Youssef Qaradawi Come Together; Bangladesh coup plot by military & Hizb ut Tahrir members fails; Muslim killed wife, brother in law, gets settlement from Ohio for halal meals; Maldives removes monuments “offensive” to Muslims …. (creepingsharia)

~ MORE GENDER Segregation In Iran- Schoolgirls To Get Separate Text Books …. (republicaninthearts)

~ INFILTRATIONISM– Muslim Hate Groups on Campus …. (clayandwater)

~ CAROLINE GLICK– Latma exposes the Jewish terror machine; Mainstreaming anti-Semitism; The rise of the forces of jihadist Islam in Egypt places the US and other Western powers in an uncomfortable position …. (carolineglick)

Ken Kully helpfully chimes in via FC Comments:

To add to the digital privacy/password-changey goodness, grab yourself a copy of KeePass. It’s a simple but powerful password database application, which includes a random password generator you can control the parameters of.

Whenever you need to register for something, just call up a new entry in KeePass, record your username, and generate a random password. The only password you ever need to remember from then on is the one that unlocks your KeePass database. And if you throw said database (which is heavily encrypted) into a Dropbox, you can access it via different apps on your Android or iOS-based mobile device, just in case.

Oh, and KeePass also lets you assign expiry dates to passwords stored in it, in case you need periodic reminders to change your online security.

Best of all: FREE!

It might be included in the PortableApps suite; I forget. If not: keepass.info.

“The servility of Canada’s political leaders (municipal, provincial and federal) to the obvious manipulations of Chinese strategists who flaunt world trade and financial market principles and jail democracy-promoting authors for 10-year terms is a national disgrace.Canada is not a parking lot for Chinese (or American) resources and our complicity with what Glavin rightly describes as “a rigged game” orchestrated by this “increasingly vile regime” in Beijing needs to end…”

~ Anthony Campbell ~

~ ITEM: China has our forests, now we’re sending our oilfields too; also here; and some return fire

~ ITEM: About China: “Canadians need to talk about what’s happening under our noses.”

~ ITEM: The 3-Ds Blog: Diplomacy, Defence, Development — China

~ ITEM: Jean Chretien and the Sidewinder Report; Secret Report Shows China Using Canada To Infiltrate US

~ ITEM: Sidewinder Report — Secret – RCMP-CSIS Joint Review Committee

~ ITEM: Prime Time Crime

~ ITEM: Former diplomat says West has ‘fantasy’ view of China

~ MIGHTY CANADA: Hewer of Wood, Drawer of Water, giant land of endless resources.. but who owns them?

If author & commentator Terry Glavin is right, an awful lot of Canadian stuff, companies & resources belong to Communist China. You know, the people running industrial theft & espionage across the country, and around the world? The folks who own a big stake in Sudanese oil-fields and the resulting genocides? Yup, the People’s Republic of Maoistan.

Sidewindered

Back in Prime Minister Jean “I Love China” Chretien’s day, he crushed a timely early warning– the 1997 Sidewinder Report (link above)– about systemic ChiCom infiltration of Canada via spies & organized crime. He and his travelling pack of pro-China salespersons wanted ever closer-ties with China, in an echo of the earlier Trudeaupian plan of “Anyone But America” for canadian imports & exports. Can’t be pointing out that our new best business budies are snooping and stealing and buying political influence.

Actual Secret Plots

This may not suit the conspiracy theories of the Occutards, The Harper-haters, or the Dr. Dawg-style whingers about the evils of the West.. but like the Jihadists, China knows how to play the long game, wheels within wheels, and is playing for keeps. The weird talk and conspirazoid quacking on any other topic– let alone the Paultard isolationism– would be yelling about second things, while the real and first things slide under their radar.

Wakey-Wakey, Big-Hats!

Harper? Kenney? McKay? Let’s hear the rest of the story about our would-be major oil-importers versus our natural ally to the south (currently crazied by eco-nitwits and $oro$ and Obamunism), before we give in any more to folks who are stealing, buying, lying, and seeking to enslave us to their geopolitical future.

It would be more than disappointing if Chinese Canadians– feeling a certain loyalty to their homeland, or a worry over racism– were to merely dismiss such concerns. The first issue is Truth, and Canadian economic and political freedoms. They, in particular, know the inside of their local mini-culture, the presence of organized crime, or possible eco-industrials spies.

The True North Strong And Free is worth it, after all. It’s ours to lose. ~

The Binky Wants To Save Your Life!

~ EVER SINCE Binks-Dad bought me my first Victorinox Swiss army knife (for cub-scouts), I’ve loved blades. Functional, serious, not toys but endlessly useful tools. When the Binklings were old enough, I bought them jack-knives. So far, no murders or lost fingers.

I also like multi-functional things.. which is why the new & inexpensive rescue knives via Amazon or eBay are a new fave on my radar. That’s one of those folding-knives with a serviceable 4-inch blade, a recessed rope/ seatbelt-cutter on the handle, and a small metal spike on the handle-end.

That is: an inexpensive all-purpose knife which can fit in a pocket or purse or glove compartment, made to save lives in case of an accident by freeing you or others from damaged seatbelts, and which can break car safety-glass to allow escape, above or below water. A life-saver.

Woof, Woof!

You’d pay any amount for such a thing in time of emergency– why not buy one for your car, and each family-member now? A cheap investment in preparedness & life. There are sheep, wolves, and sheep-dogs– be a sheep-dog, and be prepared.

The life you save may be your own. You’re welcome*. ~

* P.S. Please to note that Teh Binks shared such information freely, whether you & yours are Binks-Minions, of whatever faith (or non-faith), or even if you like this page and The Binksmeister, or not. It’s how this infidel rolls. 

Sacrificed Unto Allah

~ ITEM: Honour Killing Entrenched in Islam; and “Honor Killing” is Absolutely Islamic!

~ ITEM: Pakistan: 675 women and girls were murdered there to protect their families’ honor

~ AS YOU SEEK TO re-organize your life around Binky’s tastes & interests, don’t forget NCIS. Show creator Don Belisario has managed two of the least politically-corrected franchises on TV over the past 2 decades, first with JAG, and the spin-off NCIS (Navy Criminal Investigative Service).

Then came season 7, episode 10. Whoever wrote this stinker should be kidnapped & driven around to all the graves of young teen Muslim girls honour-murdered by their families.

A Tide Of Blood

World-wide, Muslims account for 91% of this horrible Islamic custom (yes, it’s original), and that’s why we’re seeing it now in the West, where immigrants bring their sharia with them to use against their modernizing kids (particulraly girls), to protect the family honour (only girls can be sluts, after all). Forced marriage of girls is also a sharia-treat.

Along with this is the murder of converts from Islam to any other faith, since that’s in the ever-delightful Koran of Moe, too.

Um, NCIS, You Said?

That’s what makes NCIS 7.10 so backwards, grating, and politically correct. Forget all the jihad on North American soil, and directed at the U.S. military by Muslims, in this episode of NCIS, we meet a Christian brother murders his Marine son for converting to Islam, and ruining ‘family honor’.

You know, because honour-killings are a big Christian problem, ever since God told Moses about that ‘Do No Murder’ thing, and then there’s when Abraham didn’t sacrifice his son and all… Why, I heard of a Christian doing this to their teen.. um, well: not sure, but Muslims are better than us, so it must be a problem….

Pander, Grovel

Liberally slathered throughout the episode are useful tidbits about Muslim practices, how noble islam is, how only red-necked intolerance and bigotry can account for criticism or wariness of Moe’s cult.. you get the idea. Not only is it a sloppy and transparently pandersome script, it ruined the otherwise moving re-visit to the show of guest star Ralph Waite (Pa on TV’s The Waltons) as Gibb’s semi-estranged father.. who turns out to have things to share with his son.

Fun With Islam

Human sacrifice was a common pre-Islamic practice before Muhammed got his cult going– particularly for unwanted girl infants. Moe did stop that, sort of, but with his unique twist: the Moe Or Die thing.

Honour-killing can arguably be based on a few elements: death to all apostates, and the strange story of the mysterious traveller Al Khidr “The Green One” (see here), who along with fixing a wall, wandering around Galilee, and sinking a boat, also kills a child in cold blood. Says bloody random murderer GreenDude in ‘explanation’,

“I killed the child because Allah did not want that child to cause his parents, who believe in you, to leave and run away from your religion. Allah will give them better children than him.”

Koran, 18:65f.; and Prophet of Doom – 5 Qur’ans

Got that? No repenting, no uncertainty, no mercy, cuz Allah says so, therefore kill the unbelieving little bastards. Call it divinely-sanctioned retroactive abortion, if you will. The cult says murder = many cultists murder their kids. Moe said God told them it was OK. Sacrifice your children to Allah’s will, he’ll give you new & better ones.

Upsidedownistan, USA

The NCIS story has it backwards: the Christian brother murdered the convert. So the world tres to ignore, deny, and even, as in this crappy attitude, reverse the blame. Shame on Belisario, the show’s writers, and the cowardly denial in the West which would apologize for and cover up such evils. Let’s make nice with the crocodiles, so maybe they won’t eat us right now.

Yeah, it’s ugly, and no wonder some Islamic websites try and say honor killing is alien to The Cult Of Moe. Like his fondling a 6-year old ‘wife’ (and deflowering her when she was 9), Moe’s allowance of murder due to apostasy is just plain evil and impossible to justify.

It’s all wink-wink back in the home countries. A horrible conspiracy of silence.

Got immigrant Muslim neighbours? Keep an eye out for the kids.. they are disposable. Of course, here in the West, we already know that, but we tend to hide our form of infanticide in abortion mills and hospitals. ~

The Bitches Are Disposable

No To The Penguin Pr0n!

Hot Nekkid Penguin!

~ ITEM: Steyn: Sex and The Silly

~ HERE AT GULAG BINKS, we run a pretty tight ship re: the interwebs. The Binklings know that if explicit penguin p0rn (or worser) shows up on any house computers, that computer is shut down, online privileges lost, chores abounding. Interwebs is a right, not a privilege.

Thing is, that’s us. Many homes are unsupervised web-wise, DVD/ downloads-wise, and it taken for granted that the PLDs (Precious Little Darlings) would never wander to the forbidden fruit sites online, let alone ever sext or take naughty pictures with cellphones or hook up… oh, you know. If humans are merely animals with speech, then before the PLDs rush off to the bushes to Do The Natural, perhaps they might pause long enough to slip on a condom? Way to ruin civilization, O sexual revolutionaries!

Pee Wee Hermanism

PeeWee Hermanism

Back in the day, there was one (one) local cinema with creepy men in raincoats doing the Pee-wee Herman. There was one (one) hardcore p0rn-shop. Then came VHS & DVD & the interwebs & HBO and the pr0nification of ordinary culture was underway. That’s probably how the last of the mystery of sex & innocence got murdered amongst so many.. or nipped in the bud amongst the younger set, and disconnected from love & procreation and the larger scope of marriage & relationships.

Actual Romance

Odysseus and Penelope, Caesar & Cleopatra? Dante & Beatrice? Romeo & Juliet? Nope, these days & for some kids, it’s down to oral sex at the back of the school bus; dating in Elementary; that’s upwards of 2 decades of dating before marriage.

Old Man Steyn Says “DON’T”!

Notorious killjoy and neo-puritan opponent of sex, the former DJ Mark Steyn, has touched on our current crisis of love and sex and all that dirty stuff. Worth re-reading, in light of the slow death of our culture from the inside, and the outside.

In part, I blame Freud, the Marxists, organized crime, but most of all the Middle Class of pr0n-loving suburbanites– you and me– who enjoyed and/ or ignored this wave of soul-killing stuff as it swamped souls and homes and marriages.

We’re currently reaping the entirely foreseeable results of human nature marinated in such stuff, or as the radical left likes to call it “unintended consequences”.

What Is True Freedom?

In contrast to the often morally anarchic Libertarians, I wish to assert– along with the wisest pagans and the greatest Christian saints– that true freedom is freely choosing to will and do the good. HOW we do that is a discussion for another time. ~

Binks Smacked Down?

~ ITEM: SIX DEGREES OF DIGNITY– Disability in an Age of Freedom, by David W. Shannon

~ CRUELLY HATEFUL infidel professor & alleged freespeecher Mark Mercer wrote to The Binks about a recent post ‘Back In The Day‘ which mentioned– apparently now former– NS Human Rights Boss & rabid utopian Krista Daley. Mark sideswipingly informs me:

You mentioned Krista Daly in your latest Free Canuckistan post. Probably you know this, but she hasn’t been with the Nova Scotia Human Rights Commission for a few weeks now, maybe more than a month. I know nothing about her departure–health reasons, a better offer, internal machinations…. Her first term had expired a few months before she left.

The new CEO of the NSHRC is David Shannon. Here’s the official announcement, here’s a bio.

Ouch! What a heartless and brutally “fact-based” way to harsh Binky’s mellow, huh? Binky: you’re terribly, terribly wrong! No wonder the fact-lite new & improved SMU paper fired his professorial butt.

No word via Mark if Shannon’s a hardcore utopian crusader, a time-server, or one of the good guys. He’s a past member of the ridiculous Ontario Human Rights Tribunal. Anyone got work, or up to a backgrounder?

After a little look, he’s at least a tireless public advocate for teh crippleds, as a quadriplegic. Won’t see him running the Soylent Green euthanasia/ eugenics squads for cripples, feebs, retards, veggies, sickies, and other useless eaters. ~

Avast, Ye Swabby Scurves!

HMS Surprise, by Geoff Hunt

~ IT HAS BEEN suggested by some members of the Binks tribe that I have a short attenti– look! a castle!– erm.. attention-span. My Grade One teacher certainly thought so, whilst I thought all this sitting in rows for interminable periods to be a Very Regrettable Idea.

In any case, I’ve been revisiting the very fine Aubrey-Maturin series of novels (currently on HMS Surprise), by Patrick O’Brian. These books are on my read frequently list.

The 18th & 19th century of sail was the natural culmination of thousands of years of like technology and a way of life. A hard, direct, often brutal way of life for the sailors, but very different from pushing a button somewhere, and things explode far away. Wooden ships & iron men type thing.

The Real Article

This time I’m using Teh Internits to look at maps, paintings & prints, and even downloading the autobiography of Admiral Lord Thomas Cochrane, one of the people O’Brian borrowed to fill out his Captain Aubrey. Earl Cochrane was a huge man, like Jack Aubrey in the books (though not in the movie), and even had a particular friend & physician who sailed with him through most of his sea-going life– though he a Scot named Dr. Guthrie, and not a Catalan named Dr. Maturin.

If anything, the real Cochrane was larger in life than any fictional character, and in many places O’Brian actually scales down the escapades of the man, while preserving the flavour of his exploits, and a naval life at the height of the British navy. Reading the autobiography is very moving, as you recall it was total war against Europe’s first modern dictator, nor was Cochrane was not a man to bite his tongue, or forget a wrong.

In such circumstances, each vessel was precious for the overstretched military and trade needs of the British Empire, and the everyday beast of burden– the versatile royal frigate– was employed as raider, convoy escort, diplomatic vessel, coastal defence, fleet outrider & big-ship protector, special-cargo vessel, explorer, spy vessel.. you name it.

Happy Little Gerbil

 Binky’s Brain
(Not Exactly As Shown)

Reading with a book in one hand and a computer nearby gives depth and background to the book.. plus a field of play for my gerbil-brain. Today (whilst resting) I’ve already looked up the Wiki on Admiral Linois (French), the story of the actual battle which O’Brian used (plus prints of the battle & some of the ships)– where a wary Linois & his powerful small squadron was fooled by a rich comvoy of English merchants into thinking that a half-dozen of the ships were not fat comfortable East Indiamen, but Royal Navy heavy frigates.. so he let them go. I’ve also looked up wooden models of the ships involved, maps of the maneuvers.. and written this blog-post.

Down, gerbil! Back to the battle! ~

Now, With More Nuance

~ ITEM: Wired: “Why the Hobbit Trailer Creeps Me Out”

The Hobbit Trailer

~ I’M A DEEP-DYED Tolkien-nerd. That doesn’t mean I love all things Peter Jackson, since he lacks a certain finesse and inner grasp of the characters and point of what the good professor was on about. No, really.

When asked by one reporter what The Lord Of The Rings was deep down all about, he said.. here it comes.. “It’s about the power of friendship” (?!). On that depth, one might as well say that the Aubrey-Maturin series of novels is about boats, and War & Peace is about lost Frenchmen.

Jackson seems a cultural Christian, at best. Just as Christians can know and feel the truth & power of Handel’s Messiah more profoundly than an agnostic, so a mind at least sympathetic to chivalry, comradeship under arms, the deadly seriousness of some conflicts, and the revelation of God in Christ has the mental furniture, arguably essential tools to understanding the beating heart of Middle Earth, and the events and people in the trilogy.

Danger, Bilbo Baggins! Danger!

As Wired’s Erik Wecks recently warns in an online article, he’s worried about what a Jacksonian treatment of The Hobbit will bring us in late 2012 and late 2013. What messing about with characters, and their essential nature? What buffoonish Dumb & Dumberism? What grand missing the point, or trying to awkwardly fit a bland modern point onto a classic boy’s adventure with all the right elements of a cracking good story? Diversity? Recycling? Dragons are People, Too?

I agree (and have written similarly) on Wecks’ essential point, that in misunderstanding and weakening the characters in the LOTR movie-trilogy, Jackson missed the point of the books, and the true nobility & strength of the heroes. Aragorn, Frodo, Gandalf, Gimli, Merry & Pippin– all get the emo/ wimpification treatment, because– so we are told these days– noble, brave, principled characters or people are.. horror of horrors.. boring. We must to have the nuance! Angst! Waffling! A little stupid self-betrayal and suchlike. They must be like us, and not get out of our comfort-zone!

Keep It Mushy, Professor!

In reading the comments responding to the critic, ‘lordvanye’ riffs on this theme:

“the screen writers actually gave frodo and aragorn a more human and interesting side. Characters that are intrinsically “perfect” are un-relatable and frankly kind of dull. Much like how, in the book, faramir had no interest in taking the ring but in the films he struggled. That made him more realistic and a much deeper character because he wasn’t so perfect in that sense.”

Mean Old Boring & Dulls!

Wahh! Virtue and character and doing the right thing most of the time is, like, SO boring! You know, like on the recent shipwreck of the Costa Concordia when the Captain resisted the same-old boring goody-goodyism of ‘staying with his ship‘; how some of the officers & crew excitingly clambered over passengers to save their own asses; how the tired and dull “Women & Children First” trope was overthrown for a new and creative paradigm, revealing many new and dynamic shades of character in the midst of disaster. Hmph.

On the contrary, I find wishy-washy dangerous & treacherous; the Vicar Of Bray an unreliable ally. For the Binks, looking up to worthy folks with real virtues is not a waste of time; and men or women who have some honest stick-to-itiveness are the least boring of all. Many of my not shiningly perfect blog-buds are still obviously people with fine & shining parts, who know the cost of standing up for what they believe is right.

Today’s lack of courage, jealousy & resentment of goodness, and that wishing others (even in movies) were just as bad as you are? That’s just plain selfishness & cowardice– St. Gollum, a hero for the rest of us?

Mr. ‘lordvanye‘ simply misses the point (did he read the same books?) about Frodo, Aragorn, and Faramir– the true battles are in the heart, will, conscience, hopefully fought & pondered many times over before put to the test.

The Characters As Writed

So Aragorn had– by the point in the books where we meet him, 86 years of battle, learning, mistakes, reflection, education from the wisest in Middle-Earth, to sort himself out. He’s not some wishy-washy Leftist, ever-changing his ideas and principles to suit the moment, or the passing crisis. So Frodo (in the novels) is not a teen, but a gentle-hobbit in his 50s. He may not know himself as tested by extreme danger, but his fundamental good humour, courage, stubborn goodness are all set qualities.

Likewise, Faramir puts Frodo on field-trial, but then finds himself on trial when confronted by the Ring– but figures out (being a sensible man) that taking it, or bringing such a dangerous thing as destroyed his brother Boromir to his nasty & bossy father Denethor would be beyond crazy.

No need for all that extra footage and moral lapse and cruelty, because good and wise people generally have stuff figured out, understand life reasonably well, and know temptation when they sense it. These characters are not “dull.. unrelatable”, but mature, tried & tested, and not prone to dramatic failures of character just to make emos and squishes feel good about themselves.

Don’t Botch It, Pete

So here’s hoping that Jackson won’t pander to the squishes in the audience, and instead remind people that goodness is in itself attractive and inspiring, as is courage, sticking to decent principles, and understanding the cost and sacrifices necessary to be good and do good in dark times.

Here’s also hoping that ‘lordvanye’ doesn’t find himself on a stricken cruise-ship one day, where the reportedly exciting if unprincipled alternatives to moral and physical courage are set before him & his loved ones in a real-world way. ~

The Titanic II: Massive FAIL

~ IN HONOUR of SOPA/ PIPA Blackout day (SOPA currently on hold, PIPA not), Teh Binks isn’t posting today. More here.

Um, except for this “posting”. Which, properly speaking is advance notice of a posting, and not a posting itself.

It will be an essay-dump tomorrow, not a link-dump, as I’m still building up stamina & speed.. and am yet again on The [expletives deleted] Antibioticals again for my guts, so don’t wish to overdo it. More prayers for feeb-elf, please.

Cheers until tomorrow,

The Binks

According to WordPress, this is posting # 900 by Teh Binks, big & small. Muwahahahaha!

Prophet Of Doom

~ ITEM: Prophet Of Doom

~ SOME TALENTED PEOPLE are lurking out there on the web. One of them is a Christian guy who has read the whole Koran, plus the Traditions and all the other stuff (a Koran alone is incomplete), and then helpfully put it all on line, in a loving dissection of Moe & his cult, and a biography of Moe in chronological order.

Any time you’ve got serious or militant Muslims spouting off, you can be sure what you are seeing and hearing is pure Koran/Tradition, straight from the false prophet himself. Jews? Infidels? Jihad? Hellfire lovingly described in great detail over and over? That’s pure Moe, in the Koran & Hadith.

The fact that most westerners don’t know there’s more than the Koran allows the hardcore cult-members to keep rehashing the same old “When Muhammed Was A Scaredy-Cat Trying Not To Get Wiped Out By His Irritated Family & Neighbours” verses of peace, love and flowers. Later, once he got his gang armed up and cult-crazy, you get the more neck-cutting hand & foot chopping no mercy ’revelations’. Then, there’s everything in the ‘Traditions’, with the Jew-hatey, Christian-bashy, world domination or bust teachings made more than clear. Says Mr. Winn:

“This stuff is corrosive, causing people to act in accordance with its teachings, prophet, and god. Islam commands and conditions men to murder. It motivates them to commit acts of terror. If we want to thwart this foe we must first understand what its adherents believe and what drives them to such ungodly behavior. If we want to rid the world of terror, we must first expose the doctrine that makes men terrorists. Remember, prior to Muhammad, Arabs conquered no one. After Islam they subjected much of the known world to their sword. What changed them, pray tell, if not these words?”

You Are An Orc

For Moe, infidels are kinda like Tolkien’s orcs: evil, corrupt, cootified, dishonest, hell-doomed. Killing them or lying to them or taking their stuff pleases “Allah”. Never mind that you know nice Muslims– this is about their actual religion, holy book, and perfect founder. A lot of Muslims don’t read or get the Koran in itself, and thus must trust preachers to tell them what’s in it, how to live, what it means.

The problem for many Muslims and non-Muslims is the arabic of the Koran– unless you know that language, a lot of the message, the sermons, and the resonant themes go over your head. That’s why a patient nutcase like Craig Winn, the prophet of doom writer, is so danged helpful– translating, decoding, connecting Koran & Hadith so there’s no “religion of peace” nonsense based on the reading of one verse out of context. Pure gold.

As for our alleged orcness, as J.R.R. Tolkien warned in his letters, there are orcs on all sides. All have sinned.

A Right Nasty S-O-B

The more I’ve been reading, the less I like Muhammed as a person, let alone as a so-called prophet. He’s cruel, sleazy, violent & wrathful, rapey, lies a lot, breaks promises, and just when he’s gonna get in trouble for violating local custom or common sense, he claims Allah told him it’s OK, so everybody shut up. He also spends a lot of time (like a furious and vengeful spoiled kid) consigning just about everyone he dislikes to hell, and details the suffering his stupid mean evil infidel critics (especially the ape-pig Jews) will undergo forever. If you’re not his minion, you’re on the poop-list.. no legit ‘agreeing to disagree’.

A warlord & booty-bringer & slaver, with delusions of prophethood.. sorta like if Hitler wore a turban, or if Obama was more manly, and had a sword. Yuck.

Of course, for those who want to worship a glorious leader, Moe-ism is all about enslavement, and hence the political and religious tyranny of the Muslim world ever since ever. Alleged Muslim Spring is just exchanging secular tyranny for a worse religious Muslim Brotherhood tyranny.

Buy Book Now

If you’re serious about understanding the Enemy, it may help to have one of Robert Spencer’s books in hand– The Politically Incorrect Guide to Islam (and the Crusades) is a very good introduction.

The Moe Brotherhood (and their cuddly be-suited North American cadres in CAIR, MSA, ISNA, etc.) counts on your abiding ignorance, and believing (or wanting to believe) their regurgitating the same old “Our is a religion of peace & tolerance & true feminism” & whatnot. As with the world economy, and our Western spiritual crisis, it’s high time to wake up, pay attention, and fight back.

Compare & Contrast

Can YOU tell the difference?

It’s partly why they hate us. Read ProphetOfDoom.Net, and all the news headlines and confusing interpretations will make sense. ~

31C+O6TcfZL._SL500_AA300_.jpg
Mohammed in Hell, via Dante

Shaidle Not Completely, Totally Wrong

~ ITEM: A Review of the book United in Hate, on LiveLeaks.com

~ THE QUEEN OF CANUCKI BLOGS often says that humour will not reverse the revolution, or take down the Jihadis. I’d add: neither does beating them down with facts.

Author Jamie Glazov (of FrontPage Mag) makes this point at some length in his fine 2009 book United In Hate (official Binks review later). As he points out in careful detail, whether totalist or Islamist devotion, there is in the human heart that which seeks total submission.

When such total devotion is focussed on earthly objects and causes, whether Stalin or Adolf or Muhammed or eco-green or a certain totalist-tending POTUS, the resulting crazy is well-documented. Facts? Edvidence? Truth? Disproof of the glorious Leader and Glorious Cause? Counter-revolutionary Jewish Infidel racist!

The radical Left (no longer the Liberal Left) are dangerous true believers– they transpose religious faith into political faith, and hope of heaven into utopian dreams. Deadly serious.

However, unlike real faith, which has a perfect God as the object, and some kind of eternal life as the consequence, heaven on earth radicalisms exalt imperfect leaders & causes, and seek an impossible object.

So who are we trying to inform?

(a) Ourselves. Conservatives are lazy, and seek order and life and leaving well enough alone. Even when religious, we’re naturally content folks, seeking to redeem what is, rather than tearing

it down for some imaginary perfect.

(2) The muddled middle. Lots of folks bob along on the current, not paying much attention.

(iii) People on the other side, with brains, conscience, or those nagging doubts. Witness formerly liberal playwright David Mamet; David Horowitz; Ron Radosh; lots of former Muslims now Christians; lotsa former Communists now Chinese Christians. Folks whose love of truth or gut-instincts or hard experience overcome the crazy, the social pressure to conform, the lies.

(d) The Long Haul. Even in the midst of a blood-soaked crazy era, we have a witness to the future, when people look back (with their different blind-spots and craziness) and try and figure out who we were. Leaving it to the loudest radicals would be to lie to ourselves, and to history. Do we really want the historical record written by Herman Van Rompuy, Eric Holder, Susan Sontag, Tariq Ramadan and all the usual suspects?

Humour, details, the witness of one voice, true self-criticism, seeking to tell the truth– even if we’re in the final days of the West, the truth should be told. With a few laughs at ourselves, our enemies, and the general ridiculousness of the human situation. ~

Protecting Your Privacy

~ ITEM: Privacy and anti-trust flap over Google ‘Search, Plus Your World’?

~ ITEM: Ron Paul supporters threaten Atlanta family with rape, death

~ ITEM: FTC seeks to rein in Facebook

~ ITEM: Get the new PortableApps.com Platform 10.0

~ IF YOU REALLY, really want to protect your privacy, avoid Google, the Chrome browser, FaceBook, Amazon, credit cards, cell & texting, e-shopping, and posting any of your personal information online anywhere ever. That is, do stuff more like you used to before computers & the Interwebs, use paper money & cheques, and voila. Oh, and blog anonymously.

Thing is, most of us (Binks included) trade off our privacy for convenience, pleasure, time-saving and/ or time/ wasting, and because most of us just live our lives with not much in particular to hide. Companies like FaceBook count on us ordinary slobs not to wonder why they like to snoop on us, or why Google wants to be our digital portal to the online world.

A lot of ordinary life in the West is now enmeshed with digital means, and in a “Just In Case” scenario of some sort of crisis or dictatorship, that means a lot of our thoughts, actions, financial details, and life are online, or available to potential police/ government/ surveillance.

It’s like plonking that ruined Japanese nuclear plant by the seashore. Fine, but only as long as no earthquake-tsunami-bad stuff happens. Which it does a lot, in Japan. The old people knew: don’t build on the flat, but in the hills. Why? Earthquakes, tsunamis.

Do It Now

If micro-fascism is on the rise in an economically tsunamied West, digital means will be used by the fascists to threaten, control, snoop, and elimate threats to the micro or macro fascist powers that be. Imagine Stalin or Mao or softer versions thereof with the access into lives now possible through technology.

Keep it simple– keep your personal info not only offline but off your computer (or on an offline thumbdrive, using this set of tools), if you truly desire anonymity or privacy in the digital age. Encrypt your computer, and e-mails. Change your passwords monthly. Use a good anti-virus suite. ~

Good News In Blogger Land

~ ITEM: Orwell’s Picnic: Sod the Apocalypse, I’m going out for gelato — Hilary White

~ AFTER A LONG period of treatment, hateful right-wing pro-life blogger Hilary White is officially cancer-free. If you go to her blog– Orwell’s Picnic– you can follow the recent news (along with fun stuff, and rants, and odds and ends).

Unlike the chipper death-denying “Brave Battle With Cancer”, Hilary by contrast shares all the seasons of the soul when part of our bodies are taken over by rampant cellular communitarianism tending to eventual death.

Death. Oogie boogie. Don’t talk about it. It’s the dirtiest of topics, typically sanitized these days by “Death Is A Part Of Life”, no funerals, sprinkle my ashes in the veggie garden (Mmm.. cannibalism!”, and something or other.

For the ancients, death was an Ultimate Question, tending on to other big questions about human nature, the soul, the good life, life after death, the gods, the meaning of life. Even the neanderthals seem to have had such questions, leaving grave goods with their deceased, whether as tribute and/ or supplies for the afterlife. too many unbelieving moderns don’t want to acknowledge much of this stuff, or give simplistic answers, even as it gnaws at us, and kills our civilization. Such a lack of courage & curiousity is sub-pagan, and ultimately suicidal.

Hilary is remarkable for living whilst confronting her possible immediate demise; sharing the real burdens of her treatment with friends on faceBook & cyberblog; and though Christian, not prettifying everything up to a happy happy joy joy level. Lots of saints and faithful Christian people suffer/ed– some of the famous holy folk had chronic or debilitating illnesses which they used as gifts for purifying their souls and drawing closer to God.

Can you be fully alive whilst suffering, or debilitated, or confronting death? This is a question which confronts all of us, and will particularly do so as the aging Boomers start to accelerate into decrepitude. What will the answer be?

This suffering Christian says yes, and my sister in Christ Hilary would seem to agree. ~

“The thief cometh not, but for to steal,

and to kill, and to destroy:

I am come that they might have life,

and that they might have it

more abundantly.”

[ St. John 10:10 ]

Public Christer Alert

~ ITEM: Hating Tim Tebow

~ ITEM: You might not be aware of this but Denver Broncos quarterback Tim Tebow is an extremely devout Christian

~ ITEM: Tim Tebow, God’s quaRterback or a nightmare

~ ITEM: AMID TEBOW-MANIA, A QUIET, DREAM-COME-TRUE GESTURE REVEALS ANOTHER SIDE OF QUARTERBACK’S IMPACT

Odds & Ends

“A nation can survive its fools, and even the ambitious. But it cannot survive treason from within. An enemy at the gates is less formidable, for he is known and carries his banner openly. But

the traitor moves amongst those within the gate freely, his sly whispers rustling through all the alleys, heard in the very halls of government itself. For the traitor appears not a traitor; he speaks in accents familiar to his victims, and he wears their face and their arguments, he appeals to the baseness that lies deep in the hearts of all men. He rots the soul of a nation, he works secretly and unknown in the night to undermine the pillars of the city, he infects the body politic so that it can no longer resist. A murderer is less to fear.”

~ Marcus Tullius Cicero ~

Funniest Commercial Ever! Adobe Photoshop Makeup Parody

~ FUN WITH COMMENT SPAM: “The importance of bathroom is unquestionable” …. (themcj.com)

Something Wonderful: Lux Aurumque – The Concordia Choir

The Steyn

~ WHO CELBRATES a birth nowadays, asks Mark Steyn …. (forlifeandfamily.blog)

~ DELUSIONS OF THE PAST– Ron Paul beckons GOP to Fortress America …. (ocregister)

~ WHEN POLITICS trumps Left’s empathy …. (ocregister)

~ LIVE FROM STEYNONLINE!.. Steyn’s Song of the Week …. (steynonline)

~ FLIPPING CHANNELS in my hotel room the other night, I caught ten minutes of Hitchcock’s North by Northwest, a film I like enormously. It’s an “old” movie, from the Fifties …. (steynonline.com)

Ezra Levant

~ TEH EZRA– Abuse of power; Pipeline panel problems; the hypocrisy of those groups who oppose the Canadian pipelines; Pipeline review boss’ double standard …. (ezralevant)

Eco-Freakery

~ RADI-LIB ROSIEO’Donnell, the controversial, 49-year-old talk show host, has entered the hot water of environmentalist wrath over a photo showing her and her children with a– GASP!– dead hammerhead shark …. (theblaze.com)

~ DAILY BAYONET– Boozing Nemo: CO2 has no mercy; Bed, Bath & Glow in the Dark; Biradicals to the rescue?; and your one-stop Global Warming Weekly Round-Up, Jan. 12th 2012 …. (dailybayonet)

James Delingpole: Great Britain, the Green Movement, and the End of the World

~ FINALLY, a politician with guts takes on the most popular apocalyptic cult in the West!; Canadian Conservative MP Joe Oliver declares war on green radicals …. (FP)

~ DOOOOOOMED! AGW: The End of Life … All of It …. (cjunk.blog)

~ PR GIMMICKRY– Doomsday Clock ticks closer to midnight …. (WaPo)

~ PEOPLE’S CUBE– Gore Video Shows How GAIA-Love Can Save Earth’s Climate …. (thepeoplescube)

~ FORIEGN FUNDED Canadian ‘grassroots’ enviros playing ‘hijack, undermine, kill’ …. (5FoF)

Free Speechism & Other Stuff

~ JUST GO READ ALL The Shaidle’s Stuff. Subscribe, enjoy; and Talk Radio Watch: weekly recap Jan 9-13 …. (5FoF)

~ THE GYAPONG– Great homily by Archbishop Prendergast; Trans-Carpatho Rusyn (Ruthenian) — my father’s people; Great fisking of silly and obnoxious New York Times op ed; How to evangelize people away from the Catholic Church; Simcha Fisher ponders the state of her soul and her house; The Catholic Knight offers some speculations; Mark Steyn makes me laugh …. (deborahgyapong.blog)

~ CANUCKI UNDIVERSITY– Freedom of speech on Campus? Not at Carleton U. …. (vladtepesblog)

~ WILLIAM GAIRDNER– On The Rise of Microfascism in the Western Democracies …. (williamgairdner)

~ LO, THE KATE– The “Party of the Future” Can’t Figure Out How to Vote; Now is the Time at SDA When We Juxtapose; The Left’s Missing Self-Awareness Gene; Voter’s Guide To Republicans; They Took All The Rights, Put ‘Em In A Rights Museum …. (SDA)

More Whittle here

~ FJORDMAN– ”Europe is the sick man of the world” …. (vladtepesblog)

~ OVERWEENING U.S. Government Threatens Free Speech With Calls for Twitter Censorship …. (xanthippa)

~ STAND YOUR GROUND– Why Do We Need Student Unions? For Censorship; Fetal Cells Heal Mother For Life …. (forlifeandfamily)

~ WALKERISM– On libertarianism; Pain patient advocate Siobhan Reynolds died in a plane crash last month; Public Schools - Keep Failing One Generation After Another; Fetal Rights Debate Goes On – With Or Without Harper; Homophobia – A Rhetorical Weapon; Foreign Special Interests Against Canada’s Northern Gateway Pipeline …. (walkersunknownthoughts.blog)

~ YOUR MUST-READ Statutory MLK Day roundup; plus I’m So Bored With MLK …. (5FoF, Taki)

~ RIGHTGIRRL– Men in bathrooms with cameras; Long before I was an evil right wing extremist; Canada tops the list of countries with inflammatory bowel disease; It doesn’t mean I wanted to be right …. (girlontheright.com)

~ UGLY TOTALITARIAN ARTin downtown DC, glorifying a plagiarizing booze-n-whores loving civil rights leader; Belated MLK Day fun-ness …. (takimag.com)

~ DUMPING ON MAGGIE– “The Iron Lady” as an anti-feminist film: IRON LADY FALLS TO THE ANNA QUINDLEN DOCTRINE: VIRGINIA POSTREL …. (bloomberg)

~ BID EU GOODBYE– Fitch warns of ‘cataclysmic’ euro collapse; Standard and Poor’s cuts credit ratings for nine European Union countries…. (vladtepesblog, wk)

~ RESOLVED: ROWAN WILLIAMS SHOULD NO LONGER BE ALLOWED TO PUBLICLY SAY ANYTHING ABOUT ANYTHING AT ALL …. (themcj.com)

~ LOTSA LYNCH List.. go read everything …. (missnixon)

~ PLUS THE JEW-COOTIES– Beware Freemason Michael Coren’s Reach: Coren’s Egyptian Nemesis Tawfiq Okasha’s Show Has Been Banned From Airing; in utterly unrelated news, The Jewish Character Is Still a Source of Evil in the World …. (blazingcatfur.blog)

~ EVIL CHEERLEADERS– Robert Fisk, Nir Rosen and Andrew Gilligan: Propagandists for The Dictator Assad …. (transmontanus.blog)

~ THE HATEFUL SOCON– Development & Peace: Fundamentally UnCatholic; Socon or Bust is folding up the tent …. (socon)

~ WILL GOOGLE, Amazon, and Facebook Black Out the Net? …. (fox)

~ MICHAEL COREN– Canada must be Canada: We are not the North American version of Switzerland …. (lilleyspad)

~ SCARAMOOCH– Bad idea, Eva, even if it does come from a good place; Babsy Hall’s Ontario “human rights” racket; Martin Peretz Has Obama Buyer’s Remorse; The eco-freaks over at the HuffPo; Zafar Bangash ‘Splains It Alll To You; The Toronto Star’s resident Islamism booster; Ottawa Citizen Editorial Gets It Wrong Re the Dead Nukers; A Report on the Jews’ Censorship Debate …. (scaramouchee.blog)

~ THE DYING ANGLICAN cult– “Seems that Jeff John is considering suing his way into a bishopric” …. (mcj.com)

~ PLEASE JUST go and read all Terry Glavin’s fine essays, like About China: ”Canadians need to talk about what’s happening under our noses.” …. (transmontanus.blog)

~ POLITICAL CORRECTNESS, a mental disease, will trigger rise in racism and hatred …. (wernerpatels)

~ THE ABORTED LUNACY of Occupism is now descending into merely a Jonestown of the Imbecilities …. (transmontanus.blog)

~ CULTURE-WARS CANADA– Gay marriage’s phoney crisis created by shoddy reporting and cheap politics: Andrew Coyne …. (nationalpost)

~ TERRY GLAVIN on Oil Sands, the Pipeline and China’s stealth control of Canada’s oil …. (eyecrazy.blog)

~ CRANMER BLOG– Alex Salmond’s Anglophobic racism; Newt Gingrich observes the bias in the left-liberal media; His Grace has just received this communication from The White House; UCL students forcibly sensitised to sharia; We must be free to insult our neighbour; Buried deep beneath the British political fray there is an ongoing search for the elusive Thatcher boson; The Iron Lady – not a review; Rick Santorum on Islam, Muslims and EUrabia …. (archbishop-cranmer.blog)

~ STUPID IDEAS-MAN– “Senator Schumer Is In Favor of Censoring The Internet” …. (Wz)

~ WERNER PATELS– Let’s be clear: many celebs are just airheads …. (wernerpatels)

~ THE SENTINEL– Canadian Indians Opposing Pipeline Accepted Soros Money; Greece’s Little Victims of SOCIALISM (Obama’s Agenda for USA); Ron Paul’s Dhimmi, CAIR-Connected Advisor On Islamic Threat; How is Ron Paul ‘Dangerous’?; BUSTED: Ron Paul Denies Today ‘Racist’ Writings He Admitted To in 1996 …. (thecanadiansentinel.blog)

~ BLAZING CATBUTT– Uncle Ben’s Rice versus Free Speech …. (blazingcatfur.blog)

~ IDIOTS @ MERCEDES-BENZ use mass murderer to sell cars…. (eyecrazy.blog)

~ GHOSTLY FLEAS– Stories from the Stone Age; It turns out George Lucas hasn’t finished raping what’s left of our childhood; Kurt Vonnegut on the Shapes of Stories; Christopher Hitchens on Holocaust Denial, Religion and Free Speech; Dimensionally transcendental; The Blood Rayne Arm Blade W/ Sheath & Adjustable Handle; Our ships were British oak, And hearts of oak our men; Hey, Scientology, Andrew Ryan called …. (ghostofaflea.com)

What FACEBOOK and GOOGLE are Hiding from world

~ ONLY 9 YEARS LATER– The Nortel Show Trial …. (eyecrazy.blog)

~ ED THE DRISCOLL– Chart of the Day: Disappearing Workers; Well, At Least Until the EPA Bans Electricity; German Automaker Apologizes for Using Fascist Imagery in Ads; The R-Word: Hollywood Throws It Around So Effortlessly; Jodi Kantor’s new book, The Obamas has already made Obama’s 2009 Alice In Wonderland party a headache; ‘Michael Moore Is the Most Famous Director in Iran’; Politics Trumps the Left’s Empathy …. (eddriscoll)

~ SAME OLD INCESTUOUS CANUCKI ESTABLISHMENT– Bob Rae: in the driver’s seat and not looking to give up the keys?.. Rae – Maurice Strong – Chretien – Desmarais, it’s a small world after all, Oil For Food Scandal, and on it goes …. (vancouversun)

~ COMMIES VS. JIHADISTS? The Great Debate: David Goldman vs. Robert Spencer — on The Jamie Glazov Show …. (frontpagemag)

~ PHANTOM SOAPBOX– Too much government, agency vs. agency smackdown!; “Dear America, your government is too big…”; Yes, an entertainer has committed the ultimate sin!; Rawesome Foods Update: Big Brother was watching! …. (phantomsoapbox.blog)

~ WHY IS SOPA NOT PART of the evening news? Perhaps because most of the parent companies of TV news broadcasts are staunch supporters of SOPA …. (xanthippa)

~ THE MIGHTY C-JUNK– A Sober Look at Romney the Candidate; Mitt Romney was Obama’s choice to run against; California’s budget problems …. (cjunk.blog)

~ REAL BANKRUPTCY– Greek Govt. Calls Pedophilia “Disability”– Hands out Benefits. Saith Binks: A morally, economically, and politically bankrupt failed state dignifies perverts, thieves, and weirdos.. and rewards them “benefits” it can’t afford. Makes pure sense in the melting dying world of Europe …. (networkedblogs)

~ CANADIANS already pay some of the highest cell phone fees in the free world …. (xanthippa)

Burly Sailors, Captains, And Scrambling Male Cowards First!

~ EVIL ZIONISTA CLOSETCON– Nanny Bastards; Child Denied Transplant Due to Mental Retardation?; Women and Children Not First; First they came for the neo-Nazi kids, then they came for the fat ones …. (conservativeinthecloset.blog)

~ SAITH SALIM Mansur – Immigration, the issue that dare not speak its name …. (lilleyspad)

~ PEEK-A-BOO! Computerworld: ‘Hacked memo leaked: Apple, Nokia, RIM supply backdoors for gov’t intercept?’ …. (xanthippa)

~ DOCTORS ADVISED not to upset fat patients by calling them “fat” …. (NP)

Religianity

St. Basil’s prayer for his day:

We bless thee, O God most high and Lord of mercies, who ever workest great and mysterious deeds for us, glorious, wonderful, and numberless; who providest us with sleep as a rest from our infirmities and as a repose for our bodies tired by labor. We thank thee that thou hast not destroyed us in our transgressions, but in thy love toward mankind thou hast raised us up, as we lay in despair, that we may glorify thy Majesty. We entreat thine infinite goodness, enlighten the eyes of our understanding and raise up our minds from the heavy sleep of indolence; open our mouths and fill them with thy praise, that we may unceasingly sing and confess thee, who art God glorified in all and by all, the eternal Father, the Only-Begotten Son, and the all-holy and good and life-giving Spirit: now and ever, and unto ages of ages. Amen.

~ THE ANCHORESS, Elizabeth Scalia– just go read everything. ‘God is never “done” with us‘; 5 Myths about Christian Persecution; “I love Jesus but Not Religion”; 75% of those killed for faith are Christian; SCOTUS Unanimous For Religious Freedom …. (theanchoress)

~ VIA LILLEY– Let’s let religion out of the closet …. (canoe.ca)

~ CHURCHES WILL no longer be able to use public schools to hold worship services in New York City …. (theblaze.com)

Emperor Obama & Election 2012

~ COMES THE OVERLORD– Internet censorship bill becomes political liability; plus ‘Homeland Security’ monitors journalists …. (WaPo, RT)

~ SINKING FEELING– the United States of America ranks behind Chile and Mauritius in economic freedom …. (ricochet.com)

~ ODDLY ENOUGH.. Obama Regime Condemns Assassination Of Iranian Nuke Scientist…. (weaselzippers)

~ GLAVINATOR– The Obama Administration’s Foreign Policy: Inconsistent, Incompetent, Mendacious …. (transmontanus.blog)

~ CORRUPTOCRAT Holder On Civil Rights: “Let’s Be Clear — We Have Not Yet Reached The Promised Land” …. (weaselzippers)

~ DEBBIE DOES DNC– It’s “Two Idiots for the Price of One” day here at the MCJ. Stupid broad brings the love …. (mcj.com)

~ ARE YOU READY for the ‘American Spring’? National Occupy Wall Street Day will establish permanent encampment at McPherson Park in DC on March 30 …. (rbo2.com)

~ JUST A STATISTIC: Nearly 1 million workers vanished under Obama: real unemployment rate at 11% …. (winteryknight)

~ AMERICA Barely Makes the Top 10 in Economic Freedom …. (theblogmocracy)

~ 1/2 KENYAN OBAMA MUTE ON on human rights abuses and attacks on Christians in Kenya? Will he campaign for Luo kinsman Odinga this time? …. (rbo2.com)

~ DEM ZOMBIES ARISE! Dead People Voting in New Hampshire…. (SDA)

~ THE PUNDITA– “These days it seems that only Sarah Palin and Rick Santorum know that there is a working class in this country.” …. (pundita.blog)

~ CONSTITUTION, SCHMONSTITUTION– Barack Obama gets his Hugo Chavez freak on …. (MCJ)

~ GLORIOUS LEADER Obama Propaganda Out of Control …. (conservativebyte)

~ “BOOO,” CRIED the students who heard Mrs. Obama; and the students who heard Mrs. Obama; and Mooch Promotes Upcoming Appearance on “iCarley” With What Else …. (weaselzippers)

~ RA RA ROTTEN REV.! Obama Camp Begins the Rehabilitation of Jeremiah Wright …. (sheikyermami)

~ HEROIC OBAMA– Making the world safe for same-sex relations! …. (catholicinsight)

~ SOLD INTO SLAVERY– “For a few measly millions, Wall Street not only bought itself a president, but got the start-up firm of B. H. Obama & Co. LLC to throw a cabinet into the deal, too” …. (nro)

~ O HEARTS WALL ST.– New Obama CoS: Former Hedge Fund Exec at CITI, Made Money off Mortgage Defaults …. (weeklystandard)

~ ONE MORE REASON TO DISLIKE BHo– Maker of Twinkies, Wonder Bread Prepping Bankruptcy …. (myfoxdc)

~ FUN WITH PHOTOSHOP– IOTW’s annual agitprop competition…. (atlasshrugs2000)

~ HOT NEW BOOK Claims Obama Complained About Taking Pictures With Troops During Trip to Baghdad …. (theblaze.com)

~ CUBE OF THE PEOPLE– Obama orders HUNDREDS for the RNC, Congress, and Senate …. (thepeoplescube.com)

~ AMERICAN DIGEST– “You know how you can tell that ‘everyone wants freedom’ is baloney?”; “Conservatives Remain the Largest Ideological Group in U.S.” (And, of Late, the Dumbest); Before the Fall: Once upon a time, gods walked the earth playing guitars; Say what you like about our poor beaten-down gas guzzlers; The Confederate Submarine H.L.Hunley Has Risen Again; Lord Macaulay on American Institutions and Prospects, 1860; “The Swiss Army Knife of Prayers.” …. (americandigest.org)

Religion Of Moe

~ OH THE GIGGLES! — Chavez, Ahmadinejad joke about bomb; plus, Israel preparing for nuclear Iran …. (reuters, breitbart)

~ WEASEL-ZIPPERS: Bolton- Why Is Obama Taking Credit For Navy SEAL Team 6 Killing Bin Laden?; Taliban Trick Children Into Becoming Suicide Bombers; Moochelle: I’m a “112 Percenter” …. (weaselzippers)

~ PUNDITA– “It is a bold challenge to the United States and Pakistan to live up to their pious homilies.” …. (pundita.blog)

~ DAMIAN THOMPSON– When Islam met the diversity industry …. (blogs.telegraph)

~ REPUBLIHEARTS– Iran Executed 12 Prisoners Sunday, January 15 2012; Palestinian Mufti Uses The Jews’ Islamic Hadith; Federal Appeals Court Overturns State Ban On Sharia Law …. (republicaninthearts.blog)

~ MICHAEL ROSS talks about the “hit” on the Iranian nuclear scientist …. (eyecrazy.blog)

~ THOSE MAD MALEKIS– These Blogs Must Be Eradicated Immediately …. (propagandistmag)

~ ATLAS SHRUGS– “The jihad in Thailand continues. Not only is Thailand under siege by Muslims from within, but from outside Islamic forces as well” …. (atlasshrugs2000)

~ CREEPING SHARIA– Surely not what MLK Jr had in mind; Adopting Pro-Sharia Textbooks in U.S. Schools; Imam sentenced to life in prison for JFK Airport terror plot; Muslim Persecution of Christians: December, 2011; Video: Christian converts under attack by Muslims in UK; Three more Muslims in jihad plot on Marine Corps Base Quantico get 15-45 years; Canada: Face of an honor killer…. (creepingsharia)

~ SHARIASTAN, USA– Here is the latest on the Muslim Brotherhood mega-mosque going up on a quiet, residential street in Brooklyn …. (atlasshrugs2000)

~ GERMANY TRIES SHARIA– Rhineland-Westphalia introduces Islamic instruction …. (blazingcatfur.blog)

~ BOSSY MASTERMINDS– Muslim Brotherhood Declares ‘Mastership of World’ as Ultimate Goal …. (raymondibrahim)

~ THE FEARLESS Melanie Phillips Rips Western Useful Idiots a New One …. (sheikyermami)

~ VLAD TEPES– Helsinki teacher was also expected (by parents) to wear a veil; Crown lays out in most detail to date, theory of critical night in Shafia deaths; Pamela Geller on the Oklahoma sharia law decision; Iran, Venezuela Plotting Attacks “Worse than 9/11; British worker faces jail in Abu Dhabi for ‘insulting Islam’ with angry comment made in meeting …. (vladtepesblog)

~ WELL DONE, THENN! Mosque-busters is now winning his applications to stop various Islamic structures from being built without even having to physically show up at council …. (vladtepesblog)

~ HEAD OF THE PACK! Muslim Nations Take 9 Out Of 10 Top Spots In International Ranking. Sounds like a shoe in for the 2011-12 Award for Outstanding Achievement in the Field of Excellence …. (blazingcatfur.blog)

~ JAMIE GLAZOV: When Muslim Moms Kill — my speech on behalf of Muslim girls being slaughtered on our territory …. (frontpagemag.com)

~ JIHAD WATCH– one of the good guys; Americans rise in rank inside al-Shabaab; Muslims’ destiny is to kill Jews; Egyptian Muslim cleric: “After a while, Europe will become a single Islamic state”; What would it mean if Iran blocked the Strait of Hormuz?; North Carolina Muslims get 15 to 45 years in prison for Misunderstanding Islam; “Iran Pastor Nadarkhani Rejects Release Offer“; An ex-Muslim psychoanalyzes Muhammad …. (jihadwatch.org)

Jerry Agar & Pamela Geller On Oklahoma’s Sharia Setback

~ WHAT NO-GO ZONES? Malmö dwellers forced to deliver their own mail …. (vladtepesblog)

~ THREE MORE MUSLIMS in jihad plot on Marine Corps Base Quantico get 15-45 years …. (creepingsharia)

~ BLOGMOCRACY NOTES Threatening Shadows Over Egypt…. (theblogmocracy.com)

~ PROPAGANDIST– Get Pissed Over the Taliban ….(propagandistmag)

Daniel Hannan: How the West unwittingly sponsors Islamism

~ WELL DONE, THEN– The Palace of Westminster has rejected demands to serve halal meat: “We won’t eat halal meat, say MPs and peers who reject demands to serve it at Westminster.” …. (atlasshrugs2000)

~ DEAD KID IN CANADA: Face of an honour killer …. (creepingsharia)

~ JOHN ROBSON: Here is why there is no peace in the Middle East …. (vladtepesblog)

~ IN DETAIL– Islam’s Latest Contributions to Peace …. (thereligionofpeace)

~ YES, MY DEAR EVER-growing army of pre-dead minions, 2011 was a sucktastic year for your glorious leader & inspiration, not to mention for the Free Canuckistan blog, and thus the blogging world, the internets, and planet earth more generally.

Fiathful folks have been praying, I’ve been praying, and at least some of my blog-mojo is returning.. in fits and starts.

Link-gathering is still a bit much, but my brain has started to cogitate mini-essays, for what they are worth. I will try to start linkery again, since therein lies my best skill, and much inspiration for essays on The State Of Things According To Binks, and Binks Doesn’t Have Humble Opinions comments on the links.

It’s been a very rough year, and I want to thank Mark & Ezra & Kathy & Arnie & Squirrel & and all kinds of other blog-buddies for keeping in touch, being encouraging, and sweetly lying about the fact that they miss me online and stuff.

Thing is, it’s hard to shut up, because I love life, justice, the dignity of people in need or suffering, and telling the truth in the face of overweening power, lies, ignorance, and evil.

I think I can, I think I can…. ~

Spengler & The Rest Of The Story

10,000′s of Muslims Convert to Christianity in UK.

~ ITEM: It’s Not the End of the World, It’s Just the End of You: The Great Extinction of the Nations

~ JUST FINISHED a very fine book, It’s Not the End of the World, It’s Just the End of You: The Great Extinction of the Nations by David P. Goldman. It’s a re-edited collection of his online essays, written under his nom de web, Spengler.

Fans of Mark Steyn will find his thesis familiar and congenial– societies which lose their faith begin a long suicide by failing to reproduce. The consequences of economic, political, spiritual and cultural wreckage begins to pile up. Death haunts everything.

No Invisible Means OF Support

As in recent essays and his most recent book, Steyn’s recognition of the spiritual dimensions of the current crisis of the West find a fuller explication in Spengler– he asserts the central place of Israel in past and present world history, and our spiritual and historical self-understanding. By articulating the effects of the loss of faith in the West, Spengler also completes the punditry which would only argue economics, clash of civilizations, or the political of the recent past, present, and what lies ahead.

His prescription for America is worth the read– stop clinging to Keynsianism, and stop trying to reproduce the 1980s, because the U.S. is an aging nation, and needs to re-invest in entrepreneurship, savings, and exports to the rest of the world, unless it wants to stay in the mire of endless down-cycles, and profligate government intervention in the economy.

The Muslim World’s In Trouble, Too

Finally, the same birth dearth and aging population afflicts the Muslim world, and Spengler issues a stern warning: most Middle Eastern nations face economic and demographic collapse withing 30-40 years; there is currently a large mass of young men available for warfare, suicide bombings, and other jihadist assertiveness, and they know that it’s now or never (at least in 21st century terms).

Spengler thus warns that the greatest danger to the West is in the next 30 years or so, before Islamic nations are confronted with a massive aging population, and not enough young people to support them, on top of moribund economies, a decline in oil production, and the usual political nightmares. Europe in particular stands at risk, as a self-emptying secularist paradise in a death-spiral of dying economies, and aging/ decreasing populations, and less and less faith in anything, let alone God.

This is a dense book, like cheesecake rather than a Twinkie, and bears close attention, and smallish doses for the ordinary reader. There are many more themes and issues addressed in these essays, and each one is worth the price of admission.

So Finally, And In Conclusion

Must read, Binky rating of 9.0; to be read frutifully alongside Mark Steyn’s latest book, 2011′s After America: Get Ready for Armageddon. ~

Back In The Day

~ MY ESTRANGED UNCLE built plastic models, and taught me to love them, too. A lot of my hard-earned paperboy cash went for models– WW2 ships & aircraft, Star trek, Star Wars, Tanks.. though decent painting & decals were not part of my skill-set.

In the spirit of not ranting about evil, but living life and pointing out real talent, witness predead Binks-minion Warren Zoell, model-maker (plastic, wood, scratch-built) extra-ordinaire. Wow.

Take a look, enjoy, surf his website, and appreciate skills that sadly have faded amongst the young, as the devil XBox and texting and interwebs vaccums up life, leaving little in return.

As a fan of Patrick O’Brian, I especially like the HMS Surprise (wood) finished this Summer; the USS Arizona model (plastic); and a wonderful, whimsical space-train (scratch-built) from Jules Verne’s “From The Earth To The Moon”.

Warren’s commentary on each model, and related history & facts are alone worth the price of admission, plus all the pictures from various angles of each project. Many TV-shows and movies have spawned fine kits, many of which are to be found on his site. He writes:

“Almost everyone at one time or another has built or at least attempted to build a model at least once in their lives. Model building in my view is quite possibly one of the most complex and I believe is one of the most rewarding art forms their is (some people would call it a craft but we’ll just ignore them). To build a model can be easy, to build a model well even from the most simplest kits can be the result of years of study and practice. Basically model building is the art of recreation of reality and fantasy brought down in miniature. The more effort and attention to detail put into building a model the greater the reward, worth all the endless hours put into these works of art.”

But More About Me

Models (and yes, I even did balsa-wood planes) are great tools to teach attention, patience, artistry, step-by-step attention, and a lot of basic life-skills. They are cool, and aid imagination, and remembering stories and history and the like; and the nerd-spazz factor of holding in your hands a reproduction of a famous plane or ship or spacecraft which you made? Priceless.

Not sure if Teh Binks will be getting back into kit-modelling in wood or plastic, but Warren’s projects and talent are an inspiration, and bring back fond memories of many hours spent with a new kit, an x-acto knife, plastic glue, paint, and sometimes inscrutable instructions.

Check him out. ~

Wanna Be A Nazi?

~ ITEM: Who goes Nazi?, By Dorothy Thompson

~ CAPTAIN AMERICA is coming out on fillum (in spiffy DDD)– with teh battle against.. Nazis. Not Jihadists, nor Communists, nor Frankfurt School zombies.. just the ever-dependable Hitlerian uber-mensch.

The Third Reich has a seemingly endless afterlife in movies, video-games, and human-rights dialogue. The only protection against Hitlerian horrors? Big Mama Government, courtesy of tax-supported Steve Harper, The Lynch mob in Ottawa, and Ontario’s Big Babsy Hall.

Who Goes Nazi??

As Dorothy Thompson’s kick-ass August 1941 article notes, the Nazi-thing is partly about circumstance, opportunity, and temperament.

“It’s fun- a macabre sort of fun– this parlor game of “Who Goes Nazi?”… Believe me, nice people don’t go Nazi. Their race, color, creed, or social condition is not the criterion. It is something in them. Those who haven’t anything in them to tell them what they like and what they don’t-whether it is breeding, or happiness, or wisdom, or a code, however old-fashioned or however modern, go Nazi….”

Read the whole thing.. it’s frighteningly relevant.

Obey, Or Else

We gotcher un-nice peoples galore: Richard Warman.. Barbara Hall.. ‘Niffer Lynch.. Krista Daley.. and all their apologists. They squawk about impending Nazism, imagining themselves human rights Indiana Joneses.. whilst playing Gestapo, legal & media bullying, social engineering, and many of the good old maneuvres from the Nazi/ Communist playbook. Heck, Mizz Lynch is famous for travels around the world for hors deuvres with the modern-day equivalents of Nazis from tinpot second and third world regimes– whilst bashing her critics in the semi-free and partly democratic land of Canuckistan. We gots nasty smiley-Nazis.. minus the stylish 1940s Germanic trappings.

Meanwhile, Big Steve has his majority, and we await any sort of action on the crimes & misdemeanors of the human rights regimes across Canada. Free Dominion is getting sued again.. Shaidle & Catfur are still under legal burdens.. former comedian & thought criminal Steve Earle is supposed to now conjure up cash for a Supreme Court appeal of his BC Human rights conviction.

Plus ça change, plus c’est la effing meme chose. ~

And Could It Be?

~ ITEM: The Onion– ’These Last Two Are Gonna Be Real Turds,’ George R.R. Martin Assures Fans

~ AFTER AN E-SMACK upside the head from Ghost Flea Nick Packwood, Teh Binks went and bought book 1 of the Game of Thrones series. Loved it. Then bought the other 3. Loving them. Better than the HBO TV series, actually.

So.. um– well, er: it may possibly be that mistakes were made, errors took place, and Teh Binks was theoretically wrong about George R.R. Martin. But not terribly, terribly wrong.

Lotsa Style

Martin’s no Tolkien or Lewis.. more in the style of historical fiction about the 1300s, with some captivating fantasy elements and chapters named for the point-of-view character. Lotsa style.

Unlike the HBO series, in the book the naughty bits are here and there, but not nasty HBO-style.. nor is there a prominent gay character (now all but officially required by Hollywood & TV political correctness, to remind the masses “Not That There’s Anything Wrong With That“).

Almost There Yet?

The entire series can be slow, unrewarding, and repetitious– it’s 4500 pages long, after all.. and if I never again read about another graphic de-nippling, or the words “boiled leather”, it will be too soon. Plus, George R.R. Martin seems to enjoy butchering his characters overmuch.. he’s one of those authorial sadists who exercises a nasty power over his hapless cast of people to “up the excitement”. Witty bodice-ripper author Diana Gabaldon is much the same.

The Bink’s-Rating?

A solid B-, but I re-sold the set a few months ago, and will not be re-reading them, or reading the 2 or 3  more needed to complete the story-lines (if Martin lives that long). Why? For me it’s not the kind of series that inspires or abides in my heart and imagination. However, I can see how for others, some of the medieval elements might be inspiring, and find the mushy morality more congenial to current attitudes than the rank Christian & redeemed pagan moral sense of Tolkien or Lewis or Edith Pargeter.

Instead, it’s kinda like the dance of the seven veils, with the endlessly deferred promise of something worth waiting for.. but you begin to get the feeling there’s nobody under the last veil: all style, no substance. ~

A Modest Proposal

~ ITEM: The Girl Who Played with Tax Data: And uncovered the foreign funding of Canadian green groups

~ ITEM: Never before has a Canadian politician challenged the hitherto saintly protectors of the environment in such direct language

~ ITEM: Northern Gateway pipeline hearings sabotaged by Chicago-style politics

~ SINCE THE RECENT oil-wars revelation that a lot of Canadian Green groups are suckling on American greenbacks to oppose Canadian policies and projects like TransCanada’s $7-billion Keystone XL pipeline, I think it only reasonable that they lose their charitable status, and face public exposure to the taxman.

Declares Natural Resources Minister Joe Oliver:

“These groups seek to exploit any loophole they can find, stacking public hearings with bodies to ensure that delays kill good projects. They use funding from foreign special interests to undermine Canada’s national economic interest. They attract jet-setting celebrities with some of the largest personal carbon footprints in the world to lecture Canadians not to develop our natural resources.”

After all, they are actually U.S.-funded political lobbying groups working under the guise of charitability, and no way like, say, the Salvation Army or the local Anglican parish or a soup kitchen. Instead, they are rented sockpuppets for the American green agenda, interfering in Canadian domestic business and self-interest. That is, undercutting Canada for pay.

Yum Yum Money

You like that estimated $250 million American so much, and keeping hush-hush about who’s paying for your bills and first-class airline tickets and fru-fru fair trade coffee? Then no cloak of noble charitability for you, and how’s about some full disclosure, you dissembling & smug hirelings?

Eco-greenians: rich, well-funded crazies telling everybody else what to do, and minding your business for you. ~

Under Da Sea

~ ITEM: Possible lost world found in Lake Huron

~ ITEM: hundreds of submerged sites of often megalithic ruins of historical cities

~ ITEM: HISTORICAL SEA LEVEL CHANGES

~ ITEM: Archaeologist digs diving?

12,000 Years Old Unexplained Structure

~ ITEM: Underwater Cities, Ruins and Other Urban Archeology: 7 Submerged Wonders of the World

Underwater Roman Village?

David Kennedy: Ancient Ruins

~ OVER THE PAST 25000 years, sea-levels have gone up by abut 500 feet. Thus, a lot of human settlement, archaeology, fossils and artifacts are in the largely ignored world of marine archaeology, a science still in development.

Ancient now submarine river-valleys would be full of old stuff, as would then-coastal areas, hilltops, and elsewhere. The advent of satellite mapping & imaging– with tools like Google Earth– has already helped with shallower archaeology, since many larger ruins & remains are visible from space.

Of course, that includes the Atlantis-seekers and alien conspiracists, but whatcha gonna do? I’m more interested in evidence, ruins, human and fossil remains, submarine caves and settlements and possible older civilizations. Since the undersea is still largely an undiscovered country, it lies open to serious researchers to find what’s hidden, and to rule nothing out.

Of course, we’re talking the time up to the last Ice Age, but also before– how old might human civilization be? Dunno.

It was a smug assumption of the 18th and 19th century that the direction of civilization was always upwards and more complicated– yet ruins throughout the world remind us that nations and civilizations also decline, fall, collapse. A singularly uncomfortable thought for self-congratulating European empires, but come home to roost in the 20th & 21st century.

Hide & Go Seek

If there were past civilizations over the previous 100 000 years or so– local or regional– then it’s a matter of figuring out their particular sea-level, probable location on the ancient landscape (in many cases, near existing settlements & cities), and the likely depth of sedimentation on top, and– voila!

As I say, this need not involve aliens, Atlantis, time-travel, or any other less serious elements. Indeed, the crazier folks paying attention to such discoveries make it all less credible to legitimate archaeology.

It Makes Sense

If humans invented stuff, it may have been invented & re-invented, built and rebuilt over many thousands of years. The fact that such possible evidence is under hundreds of feet of water– imagine a 500 foot increase in our 2012 sea-level, and how little of our current civilization would remain above water for future archaeologists to easily discover– means it’s sitting there, if it’s there, waiting for rediscovery.

Just saying, is all. ~

Hippy Cavemen & Really Bad Ideas

~ ITEM: Karl Heinrich Marx (5 May 1818 – 14 March 1883)

~ ITEM: Noble savage – Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

~ ITEM: WRETCHES OF WALL STREET: PROTESTERS ACCUSED OF LIVING IN FILTH

~ ITEM: REPORT– US debt now size of entire economy; and Obama to ask for more money ‘in a matter of days’

~ ITEM: Who are the Tasaday?

~ SO ANYWAY, the other day I was reading somewhere about Karl Marx– you know, the noted sponge on his capitalistically rich co-thinker Engels (the family furniture business), like so many other Communist sponges since the 1800s. You know, those copyright-loving, money-collecting live in Western societies but preach them down sorta folks. Like Ernie Guevera’s daughter complaining about her father’s image on the t-shirts and dorm walls of rich idiot university students, violating.. copyright.

It turns out (I absolutely refuse to read turgid bad ideas translated from the German, so I’m taking somebody else’s considered word on the matter) that Mr. Marx dreamed– that in the end– after all the blood and violence and dignification of the poor proletariat and redistribution of everybody’s stuff, that Marx imagined that a primitive kind of campfire caveman happiness and sharing circle would ensue.

Sweet Sweet Crazy Juice

That is: Marx had drunk the crazy juice of English Whiggery, and the idea of the “noble savage”, along with “Man is born free, but everywhere is in chains” from the French Revolution, so tear stuff down and a paradise of noble & generous savages results.. eventually. Why?

“In his evolutionary model of history, he argued that human history began with free, productive and creative work that was over time coerced and dehumanised, a trend most apparent under capitalism.”

Backwards into the future! Yes, Marx was a total frickin’ hippy idiot. Of such nostalgic manure would be fashioned– not in modern states, but backward ones like China and Russia– the worst totalitarian nightmare in human history thusfar. Yay Karl.

Ideas Gots Consequences

Old Karl took on Really Bad Ideas, added his own Really Bad German & Lapsed Jewish Communist ideas, and unleashed 150 years of civilized barbarian hordes, starvation, gulags, destruction, spies & traitors, and betrayal.

Because ancient people were just people– warlike, garbage-prone, sometimes cannibals, utterly identified with nature and tribe and blood. Obviously, they didn’t share in the particular evils or complexities of modern society, since they weren’t moderns. But to then imagine that their sins didn’t exist because they weren’t our sins; that the current evils were somehow permanent, and warrant violent destruction of both the goods and evils of that society? Crazy evil.

After all, we still know stone-agey peoples, as in the highland warrior-tribes of New Guinea. They don’t have industrial disease, ennui, investment-worries, or boring industrial or office-cube jobs.. they make babies, and like life and stuff, but spend most of their time warring, feuding, planning wars & feuds, and occasionally killing each other off (ancient warfare is not exterminative, but more semi-recreational rugby with spears and warpaint for these particular ignoble savages).

Just Makin’ Sh*t Up

That’s Marx’s big idea. Happy hippy cavemen. Hilarity ensues.

Stupid? Yeah, but so ingrained a bad idea that in the 1970s, a made-up “Lost tribe” of peaceful stone-age hippies “found” in the Phillipines became the subject of films, books, many academic papers, and even National Geographic attention.

Called the “Tasadays”, they were a government put-up job to distract from the brutal Marcos regime. They were actually just poor rural folks, paid to act like “a lost stone age tribe”. Gullible Westerners eneamoured of the “noble savage” romantic idea fell over themselves to visit, take pictures, write and show how this proved how civilization was warlike and mean and bad, and these “ancient people” and their primitive state of life were innocent and pure and good, and  that they recycled and stuff.

New-fangled Cavepersons

Something like this mentality lies behind much of the Eco-Green cult, who want to have their cake and eat it, too– you know, construct a modern high-tech way of living naturally off-grid– you know, with all the conveniences of stone age life, like solar power, netbooks & wireless internet, gourmet coffee, recycling chemical toilets, books, greenhouses and the rest.

You’ll not see the wannabe-cavepersons dump modern health care, nutrition, vitamins, modern clothing, nor buying a ticket to get their stone age on with the hillbilly New Guineans, or the upper Amazonians. Too real.

The Bad Idea Club

Our modern neo-savages are often Marxists, too– combining one fairy-tale with another. Only thing is, unlike the Tasadays, real Communism is all too real– bloody, ruthless, ruinous, and utterly wrong. Hence Obama and the Occutards (witness their delightful noble savagery and return to nature) and Soros are wilful believers in a tested failure, and seek to propagate and spread the lie, because as we all know, if you insist enough that something works and is true, it will somehow one day work, and become true.

Indeed, the Occutards have achieved a real resemblance with a lot of stone-age folks– along with defecating outdoors and copulating in public, they leave garbage around in festering heaps, an open invitation to rats and other vermin. Ask an archaeologist. ~

Almost Paradise?

For Such A Time As This

~ I’M OVERJOYED that Ezra on SUN-TV has a huge public platform to speak his mind, and that he’s using it to do good for Canada, the truth, and public discourse.

A sometime commentator and journalist and politician and author, via the free speech wars he took on a different place in Canadian life– one which he has taken up with relish, righteous indignation, hilarity, and an underlying seriousness which nobody should ever underestimate.

Does he love Alberta? Yup. Does he think the Oil Sands are a good idea? You bet. Is he a shill? Nope.. and some ecogroups in Canada are plenty on the take.

I like SUN-TV, though I might wish for a little less FOX-North vibe. Long live Ezra on the small screen, and my he stay firm on the course of defining & defending The True North, Strong And Free. ~

The Giant “Off” Switch, USA

~ ITEM: “the detonation of one or more nuclear weapons at high altitude over the continental U.S. would result in an electromagnetic pulse (EMP) that could effectively remove the United States as an actor on the world stage, long-term”

~ ITEM: Facts & Figures– “The EMP Commission was reestablished via the National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2006″; The Commission has released a Critical National Infrastructures Report (PDF, 7MB) and testified before the House Armed Services Committee (July 10, 2008) -Written Testimony (PDF, 76KB)

~ PEARL HARBOR ON STEROIDS– That’s what would happen if a rogue nation launched only a couple of nukes high into the atmosphere over North America. No, not nuking a city, but frying almost all modern electronics in a matter of seconds. All. Modern. Electronics.

Never mind that some machines & computers would be undamaged by virtue of place or inbuilt protection– power plants would be dead, all post-70s vehicles dead, all food & drug & consumer goods supplies stop; cellphones die; the internet reduced to a tiny military backbone (if that) inaccessable to most; TV & TV-stations, cable companies dead.. the list is endless.

All for the low, low price of a couple of ICBMs. Iran, North Korea, Pakistan, or some handy intermediaries could do it tomorrow. Today.

Warning: Possible Very Bad thing Right Ahead

The worst part? It would cost a lot less than a trillion to make the U.S. EMP-Nuke proof, but nobody has had the political will or foresight to make it a serious issue in the ever silly-making circle of the DC Beltway.

Power plants & transmission infrastructure need to be hardened & protected; the internet backbone & nodes made EMP-proof; the military & emergency responders & hospitals retrofitted. It needs to begin now, to be ready in 5 years.

Empty Shelves Policy: FAIL

More than the above, Western nations & businesses need to ditch the risky ‘just-in-time’ supply chain for food & drugs and essential materials. This is the low-inventory policy whereby suppliers are called every few days for inventory, but drug stores or supermarkets no longer keep several weeks of inventory, but days. As we saw in post-tsunami Japan, the just-in-time model presumes no disasters or interruptions. Emergency? A run on supplies, and suddenly there is nothing left.

Instead, in this world of increased risk and uncertainty, we need a widespread Just-In-Case program for business, manufactory, food & drug supplies, the military, government, and all the rest. Large inventory may cost more, and risk stale-dating, but Just-In-Time is a recipe for utter disaster, whether via EMP, nuke-strike, natural disaster, or any other massive interruption.

Ignoring The Risk

Mind you, the surviving post-EMP U.S. would counter-launch via their ICBM nuke-subs and splash the guilty, but the U.S. would be suddenly in the 1600s, minus all the infra structure to make that world work. Famine. The death of the old, sick, weak, chronically ill, the over-civilized and vulnerable. Gang-rule in some areas, martial law in others. Mass migration of refugees to warmer climes, seeking food & safety. Try this book for a taste.

This is unlike Pearl Harbor because we already know (1) the likely risk and (b) exactly what to do about it, and (iii) that it’s a very attractive option for terrorists or rogue nations who don’t want to fight the U.S. directly.

I Told You So. America, please prove me wrong. ~

Thus Saith

Teh Binksmeister

UPDATE/ BACKGROUNDER

Raw Evil Sewage, GTA-Style?

~ ITEM: Toronto Auto Station « Stop Terror Now: A Project on Terrorism Site

~ ITEM: Toronto Auto Station, Toronto, Ontario Complaints & Reviews

~ ITEM: Google of “m***** york regional“; Antisemitic York Regional Police; Murder By York Regional Police

~ RECENTLY, BLOGGER BLAZING Catfood reprinted a bizarre series of death-threats & garble from a certain family-member of a malignant clan of Iranian immigrants. When you go and research said clan, it appears to be a veritable sewer: of the dark side of immigration, jihad-financing, anti-semitism, York Regional Police corruption, murder, aryan supremacism, business fraud, death-threats, and officials looking the other way.

Blazing has gotten tackled online by said jihad/ crime-family members. In his typically brash way, he’s not backed down, or shut up.. despite being a “Zionist garage”, according to one e-screed.

Who knew?

It’s On Fire, You Idiots

Dear Harper, McGuinty, CSIS, RCMP, OPP, Toronto PD– why is this allowed to continue? Such folks give decent Iranians, Muslims, and legit immigrants a bad name. The alleged renegade police corruption gives all LEOs a bad name.

Like the Caledonia Occupation by militant native criminals, Ontario is becoming a possible broken-down future of laws flouted, ordinary citizens abused & exploited & outraged by predators; of a corrupt, and/ or incompetent officialdom; of a civil society breaking down by degrees and the fabric of our common bonds fraying.

Kick The Bums Out

If even 10% of the claims, allegations, and specifics online about The Crime Family Who Shall Not Be Named are true (not to mention their police enablers), then heads should roll, names be named, criminal immigrants imprisoned and after incarceration, thrown out of Canada. Let them rot in Iranian jails.

Canada, Ontario, and York Region deserve better, as do the victims of this out-of-control crime/ jihadi family. ~

Binks Hath Commanded It

Green Bean – Coffee For Our Troops in Afstan!

F*ck The Wop!

~ ITEM: Muslim Hate Mail – Content warning

~ IF YOU’RE A BLOGGER in the West who mentions Islamist radicals, expect death-threats. Most are just extra-nasty fan-mail, but then there’s the scary kind, like the recent stuff posted by Blazing CatFur.. involving some other folks in Toronto.

As I wrote to The Cat,

“Now we see the horrible pride and wrath behind “honour killings”– of course, in any other circumstance the police would have this guy and his cronies up on charges, making death threats & threats of bodily harm and sexual assault against a variety of people. Plus the whole stalking thing. Once the diversity officer gets their 1/2 cent in, it will be marked up to diversity.”

All Hail The Squishy!

This is MultiCulti Canada, 2012: puzzled, unable to discriminate or tell the difference between good and evil, lawful versus criminal activity, because of a genteel & suicidal reverse racism. We all pay the cops and the army so most of us need not bear weapons, fight, form militias or posses.

It is a good idea (as Catfur & FiveFeet have done) to know your way around guns, and to own one; to train your kids in self-defence; to not walk in our de-civilizing large cities as if it were all a cheerful happy-land. By pretending that wishy-washy, nihilism and cultural cringing will be strong enough to Canadianize immigrants or their restless children and grandchildren, we insult those who see Canada as standing for something rather than nothing. By allowing ghettos, old-country vendetta, and double-standards in law, we betray them and ourselves.

Pray for all those in Canada & around the world who are threatened by the rising helltide of radical Islamism: of many faiths and none; indeed of their own faith, all those non-Wahhabist groups within the non-Monolith of Islam who are in a veritable fight with death-dealing Muslim Brotherhood zombies. ~

Redemptor Mundi

Son of Saudi mosque builder leaves Islam

~ ITEM: Jesus is visiting the Muslims through dreams and visions; and more to read here

~ SIMPLY AMAZING.. you can see the joy in his face, and hear the excitement about his new life. That he is a Saudi means that in his own homeland his conversion is a crime, a social disgrace, and a life-threatening decision. Yet he made it.

The strange part is, there are many such converts despite this danger, and reports of visions and appearances of the Risen Christ appearing to Muslims, offeringing to transform their life.

Related to this was the re-appearance of the Marian apparitions at Zeitoun Egypt in 2009, before the Muslim Brootherhood takeover of the country. The threats against the Coptic Christians of that land has never been greater, and apparently heaven has sent some comfort, warning, and aid.

In 1968, before a previous wave of anti-Christian violence in Egypt, the apparition appeared over several months, and was widely reported in the western media. The repeat 2009 apparition was widely ignored by the Western media, which tends to be anti-Christian, and worried about offending Muslims and secularists.

Whatever is happening in the Muslim world, there are many converts, and some apparent miracles attending. While Western churches age and empty, Muslim Christian converts, the Chinese churches, and others around the world are taking up the faith we’ve set aside or ignored or rejected.

Because we lie within the Christian worldview, we don’t always see clearly what it would mean to convert to it from another religion. From Christianity (and the redeemed Greco-roman world in which it was born), comes law, freedom, individuality, secularity, and most of the societal, cultural, and legal goods & assumptions we all take for granted.

The Muslim Brotherhood represents enslavement, backwardness, and the very best of 7th century religion & cuddliness.  The rising tide in the Middle East is blood-red. ~

Free Speechery

Coren & Levant on Richard Warman

Ezra Levant with Marc Lemire: freedom of speech

Michael Coren with Connie Fournier of Free Dominion

Just Go Watch Everything

A Man Of History

~ OBAMA WILL go down in the history books.. since an awful lot of such books are burped up by obedient radicals.. as a man of history.

I predict so as well. In 4 years of awesome bungling, neglect, and misplaced principles, Obama has waved the radicals on through in the construction of the New Caliphate. Unless it somehow misfires, we are even now witnessing the rebirth of radicalized miltary Islam from Syria, Jordan, Egypt around to Libya, with Turkey and Iraq not far behind.

WTF? The dead man walking of the Ottoman Empire was partitioned after World War I into the hodge-podge of modern Middle Eastern nations. Nation-building, oil, modernization, more sophisticated politics– and another World War– occupied the area for a while.

A Little History

Unseen on the larger stage, the Muslim Brotherhood was born in Egypt, rejecting modernity & secularity, and hearkening back to a purified Islamic ideal. The Muslim Brotherhood is the inspiration, and the terror-groups (state & non-state) are the visible forms.

Then the declaration of Israel in 1947 (though original plans had it much larger, including Jordan, but ugly post-war British anti-semitism had begun to kick in), plus the fiddling of Stalin & successors in every geopolitical plot

The Muslim Brotherhood now stands to direct & influence the New Caliphate, a supercharged neo-Ottoman entity with Nukes, modern weapons, and the power of several states behind it. That Obama’s anti-Colonial era politics and West-hating principles are not dealing with the sitation is like saying that the Saudi royals won’t be celebrating Hannukah this year.

Choppity-Chop

Muhammed the Head-chopper’s original demand that Islam must be uber alles– all under sharia, if not converted– still stands. And more than 500 million Muslims worldwide just can’t wait to do what they think their deity demands, for our good and theirs.

While The West slept. ~

Binks: Man Of Mystery?

“I heard gasps all over the room. Binky could barely get the words out. “The Ark Case?!! I thought that was a… myth!!”

MCJ is still watching the Anglican Titanic go down. ~

Man Hut

~ ITEM: Tiny House Blog

~ BINKS GOTS DREAMS.. of a Man Hut. Tiny House. Bloke Shed. A sweet He Shed, he said.

Preferably one on wheels, and with very basic amenities. For.. teh quiet. Simplicity. A sometime hermitage. Portable cottage.

I really like the design of this house.. except they seem a little.. erm, sincere.
Maybe a little spooky, too. ~

Upgrade Without End, Amen?

~ THE CHRISTMAS AD E-MAILS pour in, suggesting that– yet again– I must update my DVDs to BluRay, to experience my old favourites in better than reality or the theatre where I saw them originally, presumably on a 70-inch LCD bigscreen. Maybe even with 3D.

How many times have I bought & owned Star Wars? Not enough. How many times must I rebuy music from my youth? Cough it up, and keep coughing.

Heck.. this is the third set of LOTR I’ve gotten. Theoretically when they get the laser-gel centabyte intra-cranial downloads rolling, there will be one more.. plus however many versions of The Hobbit, The Hobbit Extended version, and the final Hobbit Ultimate Platinum Extended Collector’s Edition in BluRay.

While online piracy is theft– and is one reason behind the ever-more abysmal Hollywood output of late– the endless re-re-releasing of old product to an increasingly cynical public. ~

The Pearl Gambit

~ ITEM: Pearl Harbor veterans remember how paradise suddenly turned into hell

~ ITEM: 1870 in History

~ ITEM: Portrait of a Police State?

~ ITEM: Messiah of Hate

~ ITEM: Obama and Obamism: David Horowitz TV

~ PEARL HARBOUR WAS brilliant– but it was a once-off gamble that failed the day it happened. Why? Two words: carriers, oil tanks.

For whatever reason, the U.S carriers from Pearl weren’t home: they would form the backbone of America’s war against Japan in the Pacific. Further, while the Japanese fighters hit the U.S. fleet hard, even mighty battewagons need oil to sail anywhere.

The massive tank farm at Pearl went mostly unscathed– had it been a secondary main target, the fleet, including the carriers, would have been on a severely restricted range. Putting out the fires, rebuilding, resupply– at least a year or more delay.

From a Japanese point of view, a fatal first strike was a high goal of samurai training. An admirable thing. To the Americans, it was sneaky, underhanded, and dishonourable. Hence the rousing of America to a crusade in the Pacific, where Europe was always third ring in the wartime circus.

It is well to remember the living past, the cost of freedom, the horror and need for war under certain circumstances. The attack on Pearl Harbour was 70 years ago now. That event is now closer in time to the events of 1870 than to those of 2011.

Stealth War 2008-2011

Now, the attack on America and the West is from within, via radical politicains, unelected armies of left-leaning bureaucrats and “Experts” who serve as an ever-growing army of moral busybodies seeking to subvert everything they can put their hands to.

This is a kind of self-inflicted attack, engenedered by political elites, radicalized education, the richly-funded nanny-state, and a lazy sleepy comfort of Western societies. Like weakness or sickness in the body’s immune system, it’s stealthy, all around us, and debilitating.

The Shrinking Cage

By hook or crook, law or lie, politicians like Obama has attacked and undercut America and the West since he and his cronies got power. Using Wall Streeters, and cheering the Occupods? Setting race versus race, rich versus poor, Obacrat versus everybody else? Pro-muslim, anti-Israel?

The dirty secret here: all Americans should be against his Pearl Harbouring of American politics and the economy. Obama is a corrupt, pathetic hypocritical, corwardly bully and wrecker.

Are Americans resilient enough to rise to this crisis, and survive this U.S.-made treachery? Will Obama be able to resist the temptation to take and not win power for a second term? Look for convenient emergencies & crises to arise. So far, the “Spontaneous Mass Uprising” of the Occupy Rent-A-Protest has just fizzled. Next gambit.

Remember Pearl Harbour– and look around you. ~

Free Advice?

~ ITEM: Mayan Calendar Runs Out In One Year; What True Believers Are Doing

~ NOT TO DISRESPECT the Mayans and their supposedly apocalyptic calendar, but should we really be looking for advice on anything from these guys? Consider:

• Their entire civilization only lasted a few hundred years.
• Human sacrifice was their big public entertainment & worship.
• They botched their entire environment & farm-production system over.. making whitewash for their public buildings.
• Their calander-making geeks couldn’t even figure out how to make a calendar any further-forward looking than 2012.
• Stone knives. That’s what they used. Not copper, bronze, iron.. stone. You know, the very latest in 50,000BC technology.. 61,500 years later. And no wheels.
• Expert predictors? They couldn’t predict their own destruction by volcanic climate change. Go figure.

So, OK– all you folks figuring that the Mayans somehow had a brilliant clue when all the very basics of life and civilization escaped them? Might as well get dating & hygiene tips from World Of WarCraft game-obsessives.

See you on the 22nd of December, 2012. ~

Trust me: I’m an expert.

Whatcottery

Freedom of What?cott (2011)
Retail Price: $14.99
Sale Price: $11.99** (Save 20%)
Category: Documentary (67 min)

What’s it about?

On October 12, 2011, Bill Whatcott managed to make headline news for virtually every major newspaper in Canada. How does a guy go from being the butt of a joke on The Daily Show with Jon Stewart to the Supreme Court? This film dares to investigate the motives of an unlikely poster boy for Free Speech. Love him or hate him, his case will have implications on what the rest of us can and can’t say.

Brian Lilley Interviews Bill Whatcott

Smiling Boomerist Evil

~ ITEM: Joanna Manning finally leaves the Catholic Church

~ EVIL RARELY LOOKS IT. No, the radical old bag is entitled to her opinions, just not as a subverting, self-righteous, sneaky, forked-tongue officialista dedicated to undercutting the institution which paid her and to which she once owed vows of obedience, and baptismal & confirmation vows.

No, not approving or covering up the vile stuff in the life of churches which everyone should revile; she was someone who spent her life as a mini-pope, dispensing her infallible radicalisms, as an absolute authority consisting of her own self and all the clever radical Christians who think like her.

Such busy-body hags and their sandalled male equivalents have murdered the once-powerful Western convents; helped create relentlessly liberal/ progressive bureaucracies in the church; dedicated their lives to tearing down, in the name of the smelly little orthodoxies of the 20th century radical set anything they and theirs didn’t approve of.

We Are The Champions!

Now, I know these types always represent themselves as the lonely prophetic voices crying in the wilderness, longsuffering for their cause– but they’ve created and not suffered the ideological tortures which faithful Christians candidates for ministry now have to undergo; the vomit-inducing worship; the predictable socialist bent of church public policy; the pew-emptying NDPification of Christianity into vote Left and give to radical causes-ism.

That is, she’ll fit perfectly into mainstream North American Anglicanism, a once noble if flawed institution which has largely given itself over to the spirit of the age with all the reluctance of a prostitute nailing a rich customer.

One wonders if she’ll notice the “surplus” churches, ancient congregations, and moribund finances of the nation’s fastest-declining denomination all round her. But the champagne and canapes liberals don’t really care about all that, as long as they have had their way with everything, and get a good pension out of it before they kick off. ~

~ THANKS to the evil hobbits Blazing Catapult and Kathy Shaidle for the natal anniversary shout-outs. ~

Just Trying To Help

~ OUT OF THE THANKFULNESS of his ever-generous elven heart, The Binksmeister wishes to thank The Evil Jew Mark Steyn for sending along his latest yuletide CD collaboration with Jessica Martin, ‘Making Spirits Bright’. Go buy, download, and enjoy same. No doubt as we speak, Mark is still experiencing body-wrenching waves of ecstasy due to his generousity unto Teh Binks.

Now, the same joy that is Mark’s can be yours– give now, give often via The Binks Amazon Wish List. It’s Binky’s Birth-Month right now, plus there’s the upcoming Boxing Day celebrations, so give now, give hard, give long, give like you’ve never given before. ~

Weird Theories In Olde English

~ ITEM: The Lord’s Prayer

(Old English – Anglo-Saxon)

Fæder ure þu þe eart on heofonum;
Si þin nama gehalgod
to becume þin rice
gewurþe ðin willa
on eorðan swa swa on heofonum.
urne gedæghwamlican hlaf syle us todæg
and forgyf us ure gyltas
swa swa we forgyfað urum gyltendum
and ne gelæd þu us on costnunge
ac alys us of yfele
soþlice

Translation of Old English Text

Father our thou that art in heavens
be thy name hallowed
come thy kingdom
be-done thy will
on earth as in heavens
our daily bread give us today
and forgive us our sins
as we forgive those-who-have-sinned-against-us
and not lead thou us into temptation
but deliver us from evil.
truly

“Old English” is version of English spoken from approximately AD 450 to about 1100, and was in use in much of England and southeast Scotland. It also known as “Anglo-Saxon”, and is a combination of the Germanic based languages of Old Norse and Old Frisian, and Latin.

~ BACK IN THE DAY, I liked to use “hallow-Ed” when leading public worship, instead of “hal-lowed”. you know, the word in Hallowe’en, or All Hallow’s Eve, All Holy’s Evening (the night before All Saints’ day, which was deliberately plonked on the old celtic pagan high holy day).

Yes, I was being deliberately olde-fashioned, but I never knew why until I watched Michael Wood’s latest historical show. In the introduction to episode 1, a local scholar read aloud the Lord’s Prayer in Anglo-Saxon.

Fæder ure þu þe eart on heofonum;
Si þin nama gehalgod

Or

Father our thou that art in heavens
be thy name hallowed

The word ‘gehalgod’ is pronounced “Yeh-Hal-god”.. be hallowed, or reverenced as holy. “Ye-Hal-God” Hal-Low-Wed. Coincidence?

One might suppose, but in that same parish, the descendents of the original German settlers still had traces of the old language in their daily speech, 240 years later. When asking if someone wanted to go out on an errand with you, the phrase was “Come with?” As in “You want to come with?” this looks like a local weirdness, until you check the same phrase in German: “Kommen sie mitt?” or “Come you with?”, later shortened and anglicized and still in local use 250 years later as “Come with?”

Again, one Nova Scotian name of German origin is spelled many ways, but is an attempt to copy the original German pronunciation. The original is Wienacht (Vee-knockt)– Christmas Eve, as in “Wienachten”. How did that end up over ten generations? Whynot, Whynotte, Veinot/te, and a dozen other variations– but still pronounced by some as “Wann ick”, or “Why-knocked”.. a direct echo of the original German name Wienacht (Vee-knockt).

Language survivals and usages– while often derided as ‘old-fashioned’, and under threat from the levelling effect of movies, TV, and the interwebs, reveal our connections to the great story of language, and our own history.

It’s all around us, if we have ears to hear.. it may take some untuning from the blandification of modern English (including the ever-irritating re-spelling of words for laziness’ sake), but history is not then, but also now– not them, but us. Historians like Michael Wood help us unfold the clues, to see what is right there, to re-understand our roots, the origins of our rights & duties and history, the migrations, wars, and events which helped make us who we are. After all, we are not the height of human civilization and evolution, but the transitory residents of now, preceded by many countless people, and (hopefully) followed by countless more generations.

In that perspective, our responsibilities to receive, keep in good repair and hand on unimpeded to our posterity the good things of our civilization are paramount. If our current version of civilization– endangered by riches, giant government, and apathy– is to recover and reinvent itself, we must first remember who we are. ~

When Not At The Golf-Links..

~ ITEM: White House statement will likely help Muslim Brotherhood gain immediate power in Egypt

~ CRAZY EVIL DAMN sumbitch in the White House is aiding and abetting the New Caliphate, Muzzy Brohood extremists in Egypt and elsewheres.. at the instigation of George Soros & Co., and the radical international Left. Death/ enslavement to Evil America, and all that.

You Americans have to get him out of office by ballot or impeachment ASAP, or the next world war will be your fault.

I Told You So. ~

The Living Past

~ MOST OF US ARE MODERNS– so even in the freespeecher wars, we actually agree with our opponents on almost everything, except details of the powers and pervasiveness of the super-state. It’s a shock to meet the past– whether in views most people discarded because they were olde-fashioned, or people who believe ‘all that stuff’, like orthodox Christians, Jews, and Muslims.

The current debates over things like coverings for Women are part of the current conflict. Many immigrants (and their children and grandchildren) find our free-for-all modernity chaotic, rootless, destructive. And so it is, in part. So you’ll see those folks hearkening for roots– or in some cases, being more old-fashioned and strict than people in their home towns back in the old country. Call it a nostalgic reaction, except sometimes, it’s those same folks (Sikhs, or Muslims, or Tamils) who then go on to take up their age-old forms of warfare and self-identity, and bring their problems here.

Clueless Us?

Thing is, when we meet many folks from the back countries of superficially ‘modern nations’, we literally cannot understand them. We think ‘enriching our diversity’ or ‘OO! New fancy take-out!’ or ‘You’re from Whereistan?’ or ‘There goes the neighbourhood’ or ‘Why do they dress like that?’. They are literally people from our own past– a living past, real peasantry, actual early medieval people still around today, and not got up in make-believe at a modern Renaissance Faire.

Ren Faire Target-Rich Nerd Envoronment

If you take away the Islam & the Burkas & the Jihad, such were our ancestors in England, Germany, Italy, Ireland, Spain, The Low Countries, Scotland, or wherever your before-people called home. They had long memories, and felt strongly about religion and freedom and their local places.

The 18th century– but especially the 20th– brought that wider world into contact with our modernity, technology, and expansion. The North American Indian Wars, the conquest of the Indian sub-continent, the colonization and exploitation of Africa and Asia… we’ve stuck our oar in almost every pond, and stirred it up over 200 and more years.

A Gift From The Enemy

We take it for granted that our moment is right– even if we’re self-hating pomo liberals. As I’ve noted before, aside from wondering at our powers & gadgets, our own medieval ancestors would find our insistence on rights & libertine freedoms and destruction of nature and life and the unborn, and the pronification of culture– and the general loss of faith– as horrific.

Wisdom says that criticism by an enemy can hold a gift, for those who would listen. Islamofascists may be wrong in what they want, and what they do, but they can be a reminder of some of the good things we’ve neglected, thrown away, or thought we could do without. ~

The Lies Of Lying Liars

~ ITEM: The “Rule of Thumb” Has Nothing to do with “Wife Beating”

~ ITEM: Domestic Violence Myths

~ FROM THE ever-growing “It’s Not Factually True, But It Still Proves Our Point” school of feminism, how many times have you heard the recent assertion that ‘rule of thumb’ was about wife-beating?

You can thank Mzz. Del Martin (N.O.W. Task Force on Battered Women) & journalist Terry Davidson for the modern feminist fable, still taken as gospel in many feminist circles despite a lack of evidence, laws, or facts to prove it.

Why make crap up without factchecking? Zeal, partisan bias, and lots of government money for feminists to ‘fix societies’ founded on the horrible ‘rule of thumb’. It’s like the endless talk of unequal pay for equal work– once you take out Victorian & Depression era ideals to help families survive on one income, and the fact that family life and child-bearing and maternity leaves and other non-business priorities leave women behind in seniority, experience, and related factors, it’s mostly a fable.

Time for feminists to get off the pity pot and make sure society is fair and equal for every person; that imaginary suffering via thumbs be replaced with real concern for the unborn; that “facts” must be found to be true, and not convenient & therefore “True” in some special enlightened feminist sense. Mind you, such honesty and true fairness doesn’t help the special-interest funding and pseudo-science of Wymyn’s Studies, but neither of those things are particularly useful, truthful, or contributory to a healthy society. ~

Them Real Smart Cavemens

~ PEOPLE ARE PEOPLE, even anciently. It is an ugly habit to mock the preceding age– you know, like the people after it referring back to The Dark Ages, as if that age of reinvention, migration, the creation of Europe and Christendom was an accident.. in the dark. Or the stupid old Medievals– as later generations of the ‘renaissanced’ and englightened referred to over 500 years of music, architecture, literature, ingenuity, faith, and invention.

To look way back, let’s remember the clever and catchy Geico commercials– “So easy, a caveman could do it.” I’m inspired by the episodes of the BBC’s A History Of Ancient Britain, with hairy Scots archaeologist & presenter Neil Oliver.

As he depicts the pre & post-ice age era. It’s TV-survival guy Bear Grylls 24-7 .. for everybody. Kinda like a lot of places worldwide still today.

Smarter Than Geico

“So easy, a caveman could do it.” Like using fire, inventing wind & water-proof torches, hunting & fishing spears, harpoons, fish-hooks, knives, needles, canoes, arrows, tents & portable housing, boomerangs, stone scrapers & arrow-heads, high-tensile thread & fabrics, trade routes, pottery, neolithic cathedral-observatories, and barrow-tombs.. yeah, all that.

Mind you, perhaps this era 5000-10000 years ago is when it all went wrong– if you listen to the eco-crazies and feminists. Better to live without the blessings and curses of civilization. Of course, we don’t see most of these advocates of simplicity moving in with the few surviving stone-age folks around the world, and giving up their iPhones and gourmet free-trade coffee.

Occupy Wall Street? St. Paul’s Cathedral yard? Downtown Toronto? Try Timbuktu. Outer Mongolian highlands. Deepest darkest Amazonia. There will be no 3G wifi coverage for your iPhones & iPad 2s, nor half double decaffeinated half-caf lattes, with a twist of lemon, plus Sweet & Low. ~

Free Canuckistan.. so boneheaded, even a caveman could blog it.

Tinfoil Hats, Please? Or Not.

~ ITEM: WiFi from laptops ‘may damage sperm’

~ ITEM: National Post editorial board: Getting a whiff of WiFi paranoia

~ ITEM: At Center for Ethics event, cell phone radiation and institutional corruption addressed (video)

~ ITEM: Google: “wifi health“

~ WHEN THE ECO-WEENIES rage and natter, I’ll admit my ears turn off. Then again, what about the truth, which is the truth no matter who says it?

I’m interested in a massive biological experiment now going on globally, involving wireless technology. You know, cellphones, pdas, iTech, wifi computers, cellphone towers, and the like.

Humans lived for millions of years with the usual amount of background radiation and electromagnetism, whether solar, geologic, weather-related, whatever. Since World War I & II, with the invention of radio transmission, radar, and all the communications technology which now surrounds us. The Binky-Bunker iteself? She-Binks has a cellphone, and we’ve a decent wifi wireless router.. and for 3 different wifi devices.. so it’s not an abstract matter.

For we older folks, wifi came along half way through their lives, or more. What does it do to a person raised to it, with a phone stuck to them round the clock, computer running in school & at home, and XBox or equivalent streaming games the rest of the time?

Asking Questions

Aside from eco-freakyism, where are the health-reviews? Sadly, in a world where the semi-toxic sweeteners Aspartame and Splenda remain on the market, there are possible financial reasons for not too closely checking on what actual patterns of long-term usage might do to health, genes, the environment, preborn children.. it’s a long list.

One scientist has observed:

“The practices of institutional corruption in the area of wireless communication are of enormous concern,” said Adlkofer, “if one considers the still uncertain outcome of the ongoing field study with five billion participants. Based on the unjustified trivializing reports distributed by the mass media by order and on account of the wireless communication industry, the general public cannot understand that its future wellbeing and health may be at stake. The people even distrust those scientists who warn. In democracies, it is a basic principle that above power and their owners are laws, rules, and regulations. Since in the area of wireless communication this principle has been severely violated it is in the interest of a democratic society to insist on its compliance.”

That is, aside from the pooh-poohing, there are many reasons for wondering if we’re being told the truth– or if anybody is even interested in investigating the possible side-effects of our mass communications-revolution.

Going Tragical

Huge profit? Massive media-advertising contracts? Scientists for sale? As a conservative, I do not assume that humans are basically good, and only need ever more rights & liberties for their inner goodnessidity to shine forth. Hence the endless progressive project, spending, and social engineering.

We’re all basically good? Real politics, religion, literature, human experience and self-reflection refutes such a naive assumption.

“And [Jesus] said, That which cometh out of the man, that defileth the man. For from within, out of the heart of men, proceed evil thoughts, adulteries, fornications, murders, thefts, covetousness, wickedness, deceit, lasciviousness, an evil eye, blasphemy, pride, foolishness: All these evil things come from within, and defile the man.” Mark 7:20-23 (KJV)

Gentle milquetoast-y Jesus, meek and mild? Not so much. Here is the tragic basis for Western law & society, that laws are to restrain & punish human evil, and duties are to train us to serve others, to use our powers for good, and to redeem the time, for we are a mix of good and evil. This Is Greco-roamn Judaeo-Christian first principles 101.

Those who imagine instead that they in particular are progressively right & wise and better than are the most dangerous of all, for they are blind & dishonest about themselves, others, and the society around them.

Former ‘naive liberal’ author, playwright, and screenwriter David Mamet writes about this in his wonderful new book The Secret Knowledge: On The Dismantling Of American Culture –

“The Tragic view.. holds that life is complicated and man flawed, and so, our actions must be guided by laws difficult both of formulation and of observance; that these laws, being the product of Man, will, themselves, be flawed, that they will not cover all instances, that their observation and correct application will often cause anxiety, and, indeed trauma, but that the health of a society (both moral and material) must rest on the attempt to do so.” [TSK, p. 48]

Finally, And In Conclusion

Only the naive say ‘It’s All A Conspiracy’ or ‘They Will Look After Us.’ Or, like the NatPost editors “You’re paranoid!”

WiFi– all-prevalent, over-lapping, in our ears & laps & cars & soaking our homes & offices– should be tested, re-tested, short & long-term studies, not funded by cell-companies or self-interested governments, and supervised by civilian watchdogs. Like many other recent health-debacles, we can hardly wait a generation or two for the potential health effects, genetic damage, cancers and other possible side-effects. Especially for the young– born with attached netbooks, phones, and wireless devices constantly all around them, proper research cannot wait.

Sorting out the potential dangers of our constantly evolving technology will take time, the public & legislators making good laws, and allowing informed choices. As Dr. Adlkofer has suggested, even the admission that wifi is “probably” carcinogenic might spur research into safer technology, or allow people to understand that long-term personal exposure to wifi could have serious health effects over a decade, let alone a lifetime.

If there are serious dangers here, will we die for convenience and connectedness? Will we allow others to do so? ~

Binks

of the eleventh day

of the eleventh month…

Remembrance Day always hits me hard, because as a young elf, I heard from my earliest days about war and family and saw abiding sorrow; as an avid young reader, trying to fathom this great mystery of evil and courage that is war; and as a priest, befriending  sometimes burying vets with due honours, and taking part in yearly services and Legion events.

It’s not a past past.

With that in mind, a repost of my 2008 tribute to a slain Canadian airman, who also happens to be my great-uncle.

Binks

http://steynian.wordpress.com/2008/11/11/remember-your-friend/

Remember Your Friend.. Gren

Grenville Gordon Stanley

~ WITH YOUR INDULGENCE, I’d like to introduce you to a friend you’ve never met and probably didn’t even know you had. Grenville Gordon Stanley(more details here). His friends and family called him “Gren”– feel free.. for he’s your friend, and he also gave you a gift.

Gren was an out-going, funny, and warm-hearted young man, a Christian planning to study for the Anglican ministry. He was much-loved by his sisters and brother, and his parents  Frederick Malvin Stanley and Susan Jane Stanley, in his home town of Saint John, New Brunswick, on the West side. Details vary on whether he had a fiancée or not, but it wouldn’t surprise those who knew him to suppose he had.

Though I never met him, his sister was my Grandmother, his veteran brother my great-uncle, and his sisters my great-aunts. Two sisters are still alive. They still miss him, 65 years on, and all that might have been.

REPORTING FOR DUTY

He volunteered for the RCAF, and after training as a Wireless Operator (or “Sparks”)– later promoted Flight Sergeant– Gren was shipped to England, as part of Bomber command. He flew as part of a Halifax Bomber Crew with 76 Squadron, taking night-missions deep into the German heartland.

Handley Page Halifax B Mk III in 76 Squadron markings.

HANDLEY PAGE HALIFAX bomber

On the night of the 1st-2nd of March, 1943, the 76th sent an operational flight to attack Berlin itself. The Halifax Bomber was a slower plane, with a lower operational ceiling than the more famous British Lancaster, or American B-17 Flying Fortress. The Americans bombed by day, the British and Canadians by night, seeking to cripple Hitler’s industrial output, and the infrastructure of the German War-machine.

The deadly German air-defense was deep, layered, and coordinated with radar and fighter bases and belts of flak/ anti-aircraft artillery. You had to fly in; and then you had to try and get home again.

On March 3rd, the Wing Commander GL Cheshire of 76th Squadron (Yorkshire) wrote to Gren’s Mother:

“Your son was one of the most cheerful men I have ever met. He proved himself to be a remarkably fine Wireless Operator, and by his courage and skill set us a standard of which we are al proud. He became extremely popular with everybody, and made himself a sort of figure-head in the squadron. The news of his loss has been received by everybody with the greatest sorrow.”

For in the night skies over Belgium, the Halifax Bomber flight heading for Berlin were set upon by German night-fighters. The particular fighters may have been specialized Messerschmidt 110s, Junkers 88s, or regular fighters like the Me 109.

Gren’s plane was shot down, and crashed in some fields south of Antwerp. No survivors. The bodies of the five crew were buried with full military honours, with temporary wooden crosses over the graves. To his dying day, Gren’s broken-hearted father wished he could have exchanged his life for that of his son. Gren’s sister– my Great-Aunt, told me that in tears.

THE GOOD NEWS

Gren was a Christian: on his way to full-time ministry and service to the church. He knew the possible cost of volunteering, but that it was his moral and spiritual duty to defend what was good from what was plainly evil.

He would have known his Bible, and heard Armistice Day services and the famous verse from John 15:13: “Greater love hath no man than this, that a man lay down his life for his friends.” His friends: his family, his fellow Canadians, his crew and squadron.. and all who would benefit from the sacrifice of time or life that those who fight are willing to make, if need be. Those in his own day, and yet to come: me, you, all those in future generations who love peace, freedom, faith, love, truth.

THEY MAY TAKE OUR LIVES..

For me, freedom is both a concept, and yet a flesh-and-blood thing. When the HRCs talk in fascistical style about a Utopian Canada, and of the government giving permission or forbidding reasonable thoughts and words, I think of Gren. Then my blood boils. Laying wreaths at a cenotaph? My head explodes.

He’s not buried in Belgium alongside his crew so that a few decades later, we could fall into a soft and cuddly version of the same sort of God-hating all-encompassing heaven-on-earth that Hitler and Mussolini and enamoured pre-war North American and European fascists dreamed of and planned for.

We simply owe it to our friend Gren– and to each and all of those precious others who suffered and fought and died– not to throw away what they sacrificed and gave us as a precious gift: the exchange of their lives for our freedom. To forget or fail in upholding freedom is to spit on their graves and on the cenotaphs standing their mute memorial in our towns and cities across the land.

So please, on this day of Remembering, say a prayer for Gren. For those who share his faith, God willing we can thank him and all the other heroes face to face in that bright and better land where war and sin and suffering and death and Utopian hells shall be no more, in the eternal city, where the Lamb of God is the undying light and peace of the blessed.

Thank you Gren. For.. everything.

While this Canadian and proud relative lives, I will remember the real price of freedom, paid not by bureaucrats and social engineers, but by the ordinary men and women from that time to this who seek God’s will and purpose in maintaining our land glorious and free. Not one day, but every day.

Your Great-Nephew,

Binks