The weird, wild, wooly, and disturbing
Can’t argue with this. I mean it literally can’t be done.
The way Trump—the way China will respond is when we gather the rest of the world that in fact [unintelligible] in… in… fr- in in in in open trade and making sure that we’re in a position that the world uh that, that we deal with WHO the right way that, in fact, that’s when things begin to change, that when China’s behavior is going to change.
Absolutely! Thanks for “clearing that up” for us there, Gropey.
Forget Huntergate. Forget the decades of unrestrained graft and corruption. Forget the sleaze, the lies, the patent incompetence. Forget the fundamental absurdity of a powerful career politican who’s spent almost five decades with his greedy snout rooting in the government trough now pledging to “fix” problems he never bothered himself about before, if we only make him president first. There’s only one argument anybody needs to make in support of the fact that Dementia Joe Biden is unfit to be president, and this is it.
Harpy (noun)

har·py | \ ˈhär-pē \
plural harpies
Definition of harpy
1 capitalized : a foul malign creature in Greek mythology that is part woman and part bird
2: a shrewish woman
Synonyms
battle-axe, dragon lady, harridan, shrew, termagant
I’ve never seen the 2020 left summed up better than I have here. Also, I’m sorry for this. pic.twitter.com/e5i8WiMbpc
— Brandon Morse (@TheBrandonMorse) October 19, 2020
Just in time to freeze the blood of every male in existence for Halloween, and make his testicles draw all the way up into the back of his throat—because they’ve heard that tune before, too may times, and know all too well what it forebodes. Every one of the guys I forwarded the vid to confessed with a shudder that they could only stand about ten or fifteen seconds of it before having to turn it off, and no wonder; one of them compared its powerful psychological impact to what he imagined having a needle-sharp icicle plunged straight into his heart might feel like. Via our old friend Stephen, whose lovely wife thankfully does NOT resemble the above dictionary in any way, bless herwarm, sweet heart.
As shitlib propagandist Walter Cronkite used to intone gravely: it oughta scaaaare yuh to death. But it does make for a note-perfect segue into tonight’s TuneDamage selection, I do believe.
All Swedish rock bands have a rep for being almost preternaturally precise in their songwriting, performing, and recording too—a rep which is entirely justified, if you ask me. That almost anal-retentive approach to music holds true across genres, too; some Swedish buds of mine have a rockabilly outfit called the Go-Getters, and it’s the exact same way with them. They’re crazy good, almost too perfect, like some kind of clockwork machine when it comes to their music.
But to talk to ’em, Peter and his boys are just the nicest, most polite bunch of tall, blonde, blue-eyed devils you’d ever want to meet. Perhaps unexpectedly, though, they have not a trace of the cold, aloof arrogance that seems to be hardwired into the German musicians I’ve known. They had some swagger onstage, which is as it should always be, but offstage Peter and the other Swedish players I’ve had the opportunity to spend some green-room time with were all diffident and deferential, almost to the point of being downright painfully shy.
Be they arrogant or retiring, those Swedes can sure lay down some mighty fine rock and roll, all of ’em I ever heard tell of anyway.
CA posts a handy threat-level terminology chart.
Sporty: Baseline level of unprecedented behavior; think 2016
Frisky: “Holy cow”; think intel community coup of 2016-2020
Spicy: Getting warmer; “Is that gunfire nearby?”
SPORKY: Shit Pants Or Roof Korean; YOLO (you only live once)
Plan accordingly.
And whatever the Eff you do, don’t freaking lose.
Learn ’em, live ’em, love ’em, that last in particular. There’s also a link to Wilder’s latest CW 2.0 Weather Report installment, which is summed up in his opening caption:
Right now it feels like we’re watching a slow-motion video of a wreck that’s getting ready to happen. We know it’s going to happen, but have no idea how to stop it as physics makes it inevitable.
When I started doing these updates, I wondered if I was being too pessimistic. In part, the original scale was developed based on personal experience – I had visited a “blue” state a few years ago on summer vacation.
A man, apparently looking at birds in a little-used state monument, saw us drive in. He trained his binoculars on our license plate. “Lower-upper Midwestia, eh?” he yelled. “Yes,” I responded.
“Who’d you vote for?” Unusual, but, whatever.
“Well, his name starts with a T,” I replied, grinning.
He then proceeded to call me a name for a portion of the anatomy that was the first thing people panicked about when COVID-19 hit and everyone bought all of that toilet paper.
“What did you say?”
“You heard me.” He then repeated the anatomical description and then scurried, rat-like into his SUV.
The Mrs. had gone to the little bathroom at the historical site, and had missed the interaction. I’m glad. She would have broken him like a stick. She always handles my light work.
But this was a significant data point. Never in my life had I been attacked, in public, for no reason other than my ballot. For most of my life, political differences had been a path to amusing conversations among friends. We had considered moving to this state. Why would we, though, when people acted like that? And now, people are moving out of California for the same reason we didn’t move to that blue state.
Once upon a time, we could talk about our political disagreements and still be friends. That worked, because even though there were things we disagreed about, we agreed about most things. Now? Leftists have largely abandoned the things that made us Americans. We have nothing to say to each other.
When a stranger will insult you in public over nothing more than your ballot? The time of violence is close.
Just one symptom of a much broader national ailment—an incurable, usually fatal one.
Mickey Dolenz lays out the fascinating backstory to one of the most peculiar chapters in rock and roll history.
The odd pairing might have been doomed from the start, given the two artists’ very different audiences. But Dolenz had been a fan of Hendrix since the guitar god was still known as “Jimmy James” and performing in Greenwich Village nightclubs with the Blue Flames. “It was 1966 or so, and the Monkees were in New York on a press junket,” he recalls of the first time he saw Hendrix live. “Someone said, ‘You gotta come down to the Village and check this cat out.’ The actual act was, I think, the John Hammond Band or something. But when we went down there, I remember sitting in the front row and there was this young kid, and he was playing guitar with his teeth! I didn’t even know his name at the time. I don’t even know if he was introduced, but he was going under the name Jimmy James at that point. He was just great.”
When Dolenz witnessed Hendrix’s iconic performance at the Monterey Pop Festival (a year later), he recalls, “All of a sudden this act comes on, not very well known yet, but very flamboyant — the clothes, the music. And I said, ‘Hey, that’s the guy that plays guitar with his teeth!’ I recognized him. And so simultaneously, just by coincidence really, we were looking for an opening act for our first tour. So, I suggested the Jimi Hendrix Experience to our producers, because obviously it was incredible music, but also very theatrical. And the Monkees were a theatrical act, if you really examine it. I guess that’s why it made sense to me. I just thought it would make a great mix.”
Apparently the admiration wasn’t mutual at first, as Hendrix had previously blasted the Monkees in the U.K. press, describing their music to Melody Maker as “dishwater” and saying, “Oh God, I hate them!” But once the Monkees’ “people went to his people,” says Dolenz, “Chas Chandler and everyone thought it was a good idea.” And so, on July 8 — less than a month after Hendrix had been the breakout star of Monterey Pop — the Jimi Hendrix Experience joined the Monkees for their first joint tour date in Jacksonville, Fla.
While the audience was vicious and unwelcoming, Dolenz was too wrapped up in watching Hendrix’s electric stage show to actually notice what was transpiring in the venue. “I didn’t even pay attention to what the audience reaction was, because I was just mesmerized by Jimi and his art,” he confesses. “We were just blown away by him every night — I know Nez [the Monkees’ Mike Nesmith] especially was. We would just stand in the wings in awe. I was fascinated by Jimi’s showmanship, by his persona. All I knew was, I liked it. And to this day, I don’t care much what people thought.”
Hendrix apparently did care what people thought, as he decided to quit the Monkees’ tour just eight days later, after dates in Miami, North Carolina, and a three-night run at New York City’s Forest Hills Tennis Stadium. Later, a seemingly bitter Hendrix told British music paper the NME that he’d been replaced by “Mickey Mouse.” Dolenz can neither deny nor confirm the longstanding rumor that Hendrix flipped the bird at the combative crowd during that final NYC show, though he quips, “I’ve never seen evidence of that rumor, but if it’s true, he certainly ain’t the first person to flip off an audience.”
In retrospect, Dolenz says he “wasn’t totally surprised” that the Monkees/Hendrix tour didn’t work out. “It was just night and day,” he admits of their clashing musical styles. “And we all knew, because he was fairly unknown at the time, that those thousands and thousands of kids were there to see the Monkees. Jimi knew that too.” As for whether he thinks the negative reaction Hendrix received had anything to do with racism, he insists, “No, it had to do with the fact that these fans had spent so much of their money to see the headliners. And if fans like that are really, really anxious and passionate, they’ll make their feelings known.”
Despite Hendrix’s poor reception, reservations about joining the tour in the first place, and that NME shade, he and the Monkees did hit it off, getting up to all sorts of rock ‘n’ roll adventures during their week on the road. “We spent a lot of time together. We went to clubs and wandered around aimlessly, and sometimes non-aimlessly,” says Dolenz fondly. “We got along great and had a great time. We partied; we hung around in the hotel rooms jamming and just singing, having little aftershow parties. I remember once we went to the Electric Circus in New York, a very famous psychedelic place back then.
The article comes complete with a cool photo of Hendrix sitting on a hotel-room bed beside Mike Nesmith, with one of Nesmith’s beautiful Gretsches in hand and Peter Tork looking on in what could only have been stunned delight. A friend of mine, a big Monkees fan back in her pre-teen years, told me once about how her mom had taken her to the disastrous Charlotte show, although she claimed to have little recollection of any details now. I kinda felt sorry for her, actually.
The story of horribly ill-considered combinations of headliners and support acts is a long and old one in the music biz, at just about every level. I’ve been on both sides of that same brand of miserable mismatch more than once my own self, just as any other road-dog touring act either has or will sooner or later. It’s almost inevitable if you’re out there long enough, just part of the game, and can even be looked back on with a certain fond amusement once the passage of time has healed the painful wound. But the legendary Hendrix/Monkees misfire is definitely one for the ages.
What the hell, why not.
A transgender woman who describes herself as a ‘Satanic anarchist’ has won the Republican Party nomination for sheriff in a New Hampshire county after running on a platform of ‘F*** the police.’
‘I can’t imagine they’re happy about this,’ Aria DiMezzo told Inside Sources when asked about the reaction from Republicans.
DiMezzo captured the GOP nomination for Cheshire County sheriff on Tuesday night after she ran unopposed in the party primary.
She won despite the fact that she received no support from the county or state GOP.
DiMezzo will have an even more formidable task as she will face off against a four-term incumbent, the Democrat Eli Rivera.
The head of the Cheshire County Republican Party, Marylin Huston, misgendered DiMezzo by referring to her as ‘he’ when she offered congratulations.
“Misgendered”? In a pig’s eye. “She’s” a he, just another mentally-ill transvestite LARPing as something he ain’t. Looks like he might not be quite the Satanist he purports to be, either.
DiMezzo also identifies as a ‘high priestess’ of the Reformed Satanic Church, which describes itself as ‘an organization dedicated to the sovereignty of the individual, and to the principle of non-aggression.’
Unlike the Church of Satan, the Reformed Satanic Church doesn’t define itself as a religion.
‘We are an anti-religion,’ the organization’s website claims.
‘Religion is authoritarian; we reject all proclaimed authority as arbitrary and, at best, backed by threats of force and violence.
Not sure where a “high priestess” might fit into all that, and I don’t care enough to check and find out. But the title alone sounds somewhat, umm, authoritarian to me.
Yes, there are pictures, and dude looks exactly like you’d expect him to.
At first I was intrigued. Then it seemed kinda creepy. Then it seemed downright alarming.
On the International Space Station, clusters of nerve cells called mini-brains are developing in ways that scientists didn’t previously think was possible.
The organoids were grown from stem cells at the University of California, San Diego lab of biologist Alysson Muotri, before being packed into a box and shipped to space, where Muotri told The New York Times they’re likely “replicating like crazy.” Now, his team has found that the organoids are giving off brain waves — complex patterns of neural activity — similar to those of premature babies. It’s a bizarre finding that could force scientists to revisit the limitations of lab-grown mini-organs and the ethical issues surrounding them.
Muotri hooked the mini-brains up to spider-shaped robots to read their neural activity, according to the NYT. The findings could be a sign that scientists are approaching the capability to generate at least partially-conscious life in the lab — a development that’s long been little more than a speculative horror story in the field.
“The closer we come to his goal, the more likely we will get a brain that is capable of sentience and of feeling pain, agony and distress,” Christof Koch, chief scientist and president of the Allen Brain Institute, told the NYT.
Greeeaaaat. Cause, y’know, there just isn’t nearly enough pain, agony, and distress going around these days already. Right, genius?
“There are some of my colleagues who say, ‘No, these things will never be conscious,’” Muotri told the NYT. “Now I’m not so sure.”
Oh, this is just BOUND to end well.
If these brain waves are a sign that organoids could be capable of consciousness, neuroscientists will need to grapple with a major ethical dilemma — as continued experimentation would potentially mean creating and destroying self-aware, human-like life. But we may not be there yet, cautioned University of Southern California biologist Giorgia Quadrato, who wasn’t involved in the new study.
“It’s pretty amazing. No one really knew if that was possible,” Quadrato told the NYT, before clarifying that it didn’t conclude that the mini-brains reached human levels of activity.
“People will say, ‘Ah, these are like the brains of preterm infants,’” she said. “No, they are not.”
Like you really, truly know that. Like you could EVER really know it for certain. Like you can predict where it will all lead in the end.
I’m by no means opposed to science and research, of course. And in research, a certain amount of risk is essential, a certain boldness a fundamental job qualification. But in this instance, I suspect these folks might be messing around with things that are probably best left alone.
Q: What happens if Trump loses? A: More, and worse.
In modern America, hypocrisy and double standards aren’t merely part of the business climate; they’re endemic to the whole society. Former Heritage Foundation scholar and Washington Times writer Sam Francis dubbed this system “anarcho-tyranny”: complete freedom—even exemption from the gravest laws—for the favored, maximum vindictive enforcement against the pettiest infractions by the disfavored.
Rarely has an analysis been so vindicated by events. Even before the 1619 Riots began in May, anarcho-tyranny was already the de facto law of the land. Can you remember the last time anyone in Antifa was punished for anything? I can’t. But I do remember community college adjunct philosophy professor and Antifa thug Eric Clanton walloping three people on the head with a five-pound iron bike lock—and the Alameda County, California district attorney letting him go with probation.
I also remember, in pre-apocalypse New York City, Antifa goons getting into a fight—it’s hard to say who started it—with a group of men calling themselves the Proud Boys. Although no one was seriously injured, the NYPD expended significant time and resources tracking down the Proud Boys, but none whatsoever looking for any Antifa figures involved. Two Proud Boys were sentenced to four years in prison. No Antifa members were ever identified, much less charged with any crime, still much less tried or convicted. At most, the incident was a mutually idiotic brawl for which only one side was punished. The real distinction here is that the Proud Boys are regime dissidents while Antifa thugs are ruling-class shock troops.
All that, though, was child’s play compared to the nightly horrors Antifa—and their BLM allies—have wreaked on America’s streets for three straight months with close to zero official attempt to rein them in, and often with officials cheering them on. Examples—from Joe Biden and Kamala Harris to Governors Gavin Newsom, Andrew Cuomo, and Tim Walz, to Mayors Bill de Blasio, Eric Garcetti, Lori Lightfoot, Jenny Durkan, Ted Wheeler, and Jacob Frey—are too numerous to catalog fully. The latest atrocity came from Wisconsin Governor Tony Evers, who, the instant a career criminal wanted on an active warrant was shot while resisting arrest and, it appears, reaching into his car for a knife, took to Twitter to fire up the mob. His state’s fourth-largest city has burned every night since. It took him days to make even a token appeal for calm.
Then consider the fates of those not destroying America in the name of “social justice.” This story is still “developing” as they say, but as of Friday, August 28, a young man who appears to have had a Molotov cocktail thrown at him, a loaded pistol pointed at his face, and his head bashed with a skateboard after being chased by three Antifa thugs is currently in jail on a charge of first-degree murder.
The fundamental right of self-defense—the bedrock foundation of all our other rights—increasingly is not honored if you’re a member of a disfavored group and your attacker is not.
Our officials—at least in all the Democratic Party-controlled state and local governments—operate in the precise opposite way that they are supposed to. Instead of enforcing the law and maintaining order, they encourage riots, refuse to enforce the law, and then leap into action only when a victim defends himself. This is not incompetence or misguided idealism; it is evil. Should it continue, it will lead either to the collapse of the country or to revolution.
To return to more prosaic matters, should Trump lose, the repowered thought police will greatly expand its “enemies list.” Those deemed “dangerous” by the wokerati will be dogged by authorities. Any suspected dissident not as scrupulous as Caesar’s wife in his every interaction with the state will get the book thrown at him for minor, technical infractions of some law, executive order, or administrative rule. As the poor sucker is hauled away in cuffs by a heavily armed team of feds in windbreakers, CNN and MSNBC reporters—tipped off in advance to get it all on camera—will intone that this “dangerous white supremacist” with “ties to neo-Nazi groups” was “planning attacks.” Months or years later, after being held without bail, the unfortunate target will be convicted of something like mail fraud and given the maximum sentence.
All of this is easy enough to predict because it is either what the Left is already doing where it has the power, or what it says it wants to do.
The lessons of California and New York show that when leftists no longer face opposition, they do whatever they want—or try to. The problem (for them, for now) is that they still face opposition from the red elements still extant in the federal government, from red states, and from red communities in their own states. Once the whole country has gone blue, though, things will be…different.
Don’t kid yourself for one moment that things couldn’t possibly get worse. The above is excerpted from the great Michael Anton’s latest book—at 14.99 for the Kindle version, not exactly cheap, but I’m gonna have to somehow scrounge up the wherewithal to get it nonetheless—and, sobering though it most definitely is, you very much need to read it all. There’s also a fine review of the book by no less a light than Angelo Codevilla which is well worth looking in on, too.
Don’t call it paranoia, they really ARE out to get you.
“Traitors everywhere. [D] leadership in joint ops w/China [CCP] in effort to regain power? It was never about the virus,” wrote Q on July 31st.
Q then proceeded to explain the many advantages the virus brought the Democrats: It decimated the booming economy and laid off millions of workers, wrecking Trump’s great economic achievements. It stopped Trump’s huge campaign rallies, which showcased his popularity, and sheltered Biden from public appearances, limiting public exposure of his mental condition.
The lockdown also shifted focus from Biden’s burgeoning Ukraine scandal and offered him an excuse to refuse to debate. It encouraged state bailouts for New York and California, and increased the national debt, placing China in a controlling debt position in which it could regain leverage.
And, of course, the lockdown allowed the Democrats to relentlessly insist on mail-in ballots as the only safe voting option, thereby setting the stage for record-breaking fraud.
Q focuses on the significant date of January 15, 2020 on which three linked events happened: 1) After long delays, the House finally delivered impeachment articles to the Senate. 2) Trump and China signed a trade deal, which disadvantaged China. 3) The first COVID patient in America arrived from China at Seattle-Tacoma Airport.
The net effect of these developments was that the Democrats put on a big impeachment show, which drew attention away from the silent spread of COVID in America. And the Chinese, who had lost face and money, were reassured that they would soon prevail again.
Helping COVID to spread across America, Democratic politicians in New York and California, such as Nancy Pelosi and Mayor DiBlasio, urged crowds to come out and celebrate the Chinese New Year. Democratic governors like Andrew Cuomo and Phil Murphy forced COVID patients into nursing homes, quickly killing thousands of seniors, thereby driving up the death count that justified the lockdown. And, of crucial importance, Democratic politicians and their allies in the media and medical establishment demonized hydroxychloroquine and denied its use, cutting off access to life-saving treatment.
One of Q’s big themes is “Infiltration not invasion,” the notion that America has been sold to its enemies by powerful politicians and their donors, who gave China access without alarming the American people.
Preposterous; I’m SURE it’s all coincidence, every bit of it. Hey, who you gonna believe: the people who told you the Deep State didn’t exist? Or your own lyin’ eyes?
Add Q to the list of folks who need to be constantly checking their six.
And he has a “D” after his name.
In Christopher Nolan’s 2012 film, “The Dark Knight Rises,” Bane the mercenary revolutionary emerges from the shadows after Gotham City has been at peace for eight years with a clear agenda: Destroy Gotham. He cannot abide seeing Gotham thrive.
A master of psychology and deception, Bane does not just ride into town with an army of evil henchmen. He does do that, and he even robs Gotham’s Wall Street, but mere financial gain is not his motive. He wants to turn Gotham inside out so that it devours itself, discrediting everything Gotham once stood for in the process.
Bane cloaks himself in the enticing language of social justice: “We come here not as conquerors but as liberators, to return control of this city to the people.”
He says this after commandeering a football stadium full of terrified citizens he is “liberating” from their freedom, after he has already murdered the mayor: one noble-sounding sentence in a paragraph of threats. He intends to liberate nothing, and destroy everything. He knows the language of social justice will fool enough gullible people long enough to keep them from stopping him.
Social justice language is powerful because it tugs at our human desire for fairness. It’s also a terrible lie. Selina Kyle—Catwoman—is initially won over by Bane’s tricks. At a lavish Wayne Manor party at the beginning of the film, Kyle tells billionaire Bruce Wayne whose side she is on. “There’s a storm coming, Mr. Wayne,” she says seductively. “You and your friends better batten down the hatches, because when it hits, you’re all gonna wonder how you ever thought you could live so large and leave so little for the rest of us.”
Kyle could have been a speechwriter for the Democratic Party. So could Bane. They both sound like a pastiche of Antifa, Occupy Wall Street, Black Lives Matter, and socialist Bernie Sanders, who lost the Democratic primary battle but has won the ideological war for the party’s soul.
Shhhyeah, right. Like that coven of Commie bloodsuckers has a soul.
If you are, like me, stuck in a state where coronavirus restrictions have turned your life upside down, bankrupted your business, and traumatized your kids, and there’s no light at the end of the tunnel, you might be considering a big relocation. There are plenty of states that are retaining liberty in spite of the Chinese flu virus that has a 99% recovery rate. If you are considering fleeing your state for a new one, then look into the following five states that scored the highest in a data-collection study by the financial site WalletHub, showing which states have the fewest coronavirus restrictions. (Please note that coronavirus restrictions change daily. It is possible that by the time this is published one or more of these guidelines will have changed so verify before you pick up and move.)
After the list, she appends a “Whither Texas” update at the bottom that is, frankly, quite depressing.
Sadly, shockingly, Texas does not make the list of places I would move anymore. The left has taken over the major cities in Texas. Invaders from California, bringing their politics with them, have made Texas a place that needs major rehab. Coronavirus restrictions are also quite stringent and Texas ranked as the 46th-worst state for restrictions on freedom in the WalletHub study. That’s hard to believe, isn’t it? We should all consider that winning a presidency without Texas is going to be damn near impossible. So for that reason alone, it might be a place to move if your goal is moving to politically strategic places. But don’t expect an abundance of freedom in Texas. Those days are over.
It would seem so, alas. Progtard locusts have the most amazing ability to destroy our liberty, independence, and dignity no matter where the swarm ends up.
I hereby demand MY reparations check.
Welcome to 2020. The New York Times wins a Pulitzer Prize for its “1619 Project,” which depicts slavery as a distinctly American phenomenon and as the very foundation of American civilization. For several weeks, a half-dozen all but unreadable books seeking redefine the concept of racism hover at or near the top of the bestseller lists. Meanwhile, the cities of America become battlegrounds in a race war waged by young people, many of whom think that America invented the institution of slavery.
This is but one of many historical facts about which they’re wrong. The truth is that fewer than 4 percent of the slaves who were transported across the Atlantic Ocean from Africa ended up in the territory of what is now the United States. More slaves were shipped to the small island of Barbados than to the vast areas that started out as British North America and then became the United States.
The same applies to Trinidad and the Windward Islands (Saint Lucia, Saint Vincent and the Grenadines, Grenada, Dominica, and Martinique). Ditto the Guianas (now Guyana, Suriname, and French Guiana). Ditto the Spanish-speaking mainland of Latin American. Over 8 percent of transatlantic African slaves—twice the number sold between Maine and Georgia—were sold in St. Domingue, a French colony in what is now Haiti. Over 8 percent of slaves also ended up in the Spanish-speaking Caribbean. The largest numbers of all are for Jamaica (over 11 percent) and Brazil (over 30 percent).In recent years, as schools and universities increasingly focus on racial issues, young Americans’ heads are filled with heaps of information—much of it from books like A People’s History of the United States—about the American legacy of racism and, in particular, the history of slavery and Jim Crow. But virtually none of them know that the slaves who were shipped to the present-day United States were a small fraction of the victims of the African slave trade.
Ignorance also surrounds another aspect of slave history. The other day I posted on Facebook a quotation from Thomas Sowell. “More whites were brought as slaves to North Africa than blacks brought as slaves to the United States or to the 13 colonies from which it was formed. White slaves were still being bought and sold in the Ottoman Empire, decades after blacks were freed in the United States.”
Facebook users responded in disbelief. “This can’t possibly be true! What’s he talking about?” commented one, whose Facebook page identified him as a “senior research fellow.” Another, a filmmaker, wrote: “Seems dubious.”
In fact, the white slave trade was a terrifying reality for generations of Westerners from the 1400s to the 1800s. Several sovereign North African entities—the Sultanate of Morocco, and the independent Ottoman provinces of Algiers, Tunis, and Tripoli—were all active in the capture and sale of European and American slaves. Some whites were taken from ships on the high seas in acts of piracy; others were captured during coastal raids on the European mainland and Newfoundland.
As usual, it’s not that liberals don’t know anything; it’s that so much of what they think they know isn’t so. You’re bound to love this next bit:
During the later phase of the white slave trade, European powers paid large sums to the North African powers to protect their citizens from enslavement. After the United States declared its independence, it refused to make such payments, which resulted in the taking of American seamen by Arab pirates. In 1786, Thomas Jefferson and John Adams met in London with the ambassador from Tripoli to discuss the matter. When they asked why Tripolitanians would “make war upon nations who had done them no injury,” the ambassador replied “that it was written in their Koran, that all nations who should not have acknowledged their authority were sinners, that it was their right and duty to make war upon them wherever they could be found, and to make slaves of all they could take as Prisoners, and that every Musselman who should be slain in battle was sure to go to Paradise.”
Sounds all too familiar, doesn’t it? Guess some things really never DO change. Read all of it.
One of my oldest and dearest friends, fella named Tom King, a riding partner of mine since the 80s, nearly lost his life in a serious motorcycle crash over in Charlotte a month or so back. After lapsing into DOA status on the way to the hospital—fortunately, the accident happened within a mile or so of what used to be known as Charlotte Memorial Hospital, who the hell knows what they’re calling it now—he was revived, but suffered the multiple broken bones, abrasions, and brain-rattling skullcracker of a concussion that seems to go hand in hand with most bad bike spills.
The docs say his recovery since has been nothing short of miraculous, considering the extent of his injuries. I’ve told him he had an angel riding on his shoulder that night.
Tom has always been a damned goofball; I pick on his ass all the time about his advanced-level dorkitude, which ribbing he’s always accepted with grace and good humor, along with the occasional subtle jabs back. He’s a truly serious Ironbutt, though, and a damned skillful rider. I won’t say he’s a better rider than I am, mind, because in my own humble and honest opinion (ahem) almost nobody in the whole world is. But there’s not much argument to be made that he’s put more miles under his ass than I have, even though I started riding at a much earlier age than he did. I harbor no illusions of ever catching up, either.
Whenever we’d make the annual trek to Myrtle Beach for the spring rally, which for a long time was every year without fail, we’d go in a large group of ten or fifteen of our biker buds, with Tom as Road Captain in the front-left position and me solid and unflappable on his right. Those rides and rallies are some of the fondest memories of my life. I really oughta write them down one of these days, before I’m too old to remember ’em all. Don’t know why that never occurred to me before.
Did I say Ironbutt? Tom has never thought a thing about making a run up to Lake Lure just to have breakfast, then heading on up to east Tennessee or some other hours-away place just for the sheer hell of it. He always loved to ride fast as hell on his highway jaunts, too. I never was any kind of shrinking violet myself when it came to the Need for Speed—one of my earliest internet nicks, one I still use here and there, was “speedfreek,” and nobody ever claimed it was inapt—but Tom was so incorrigible about it he used to piss me the hell off blasting down the interstate doing the ton, with me lollygagging behind not even trying to keep up. He’d slow waaaaay down once he’d lost sight of me in his mirrors, and exact his revenge for my ribbing by taunting me, “You gonna keep up or what, Grandma? Jeez!”
Tom worked as a journeyman printer at the CLT Observer for more than twenty years, which means he was around long enough to have made the transition from lead type to the digital age. But after the McClatchy buyout, the Observer did some serious downsizing, and Tom’s entire department was eliminated. Understand: Tom has been a worker his whole life, and it about killed him to suddenly find himself on the street. He found another job at a small printing concern up in Davidson fairly quickly after a couple of piddling pick-up gigs, making considerably less money…and with no insurance benefits at all.
Maybe you can see where this is going, I’m thinking.
It ought to be fairly obvious that Tom is up against it here. So a friend put together a GuFundMe campaign to help defray his horrific medical costs, which will be ongoing as he undergoes an extended course of therapy. I thought I’d mention said fundraiser here, since I am too damned perennially broke myself to offer much else in the way of help for him. If you can afford it in these uncertain times, please do consider tossing whatever you can manage in the pot. My thanks to you, and Tom’s and his wife Jen’s as well.
Oh, and why not take this opportunity to get in an additional jab at him, right? I DID say goofball, I believe. First: me, Tom, and his wife Jen at one of those great Myrtle Beach rallies, at our hotel bar at the Ocean Drive Golf Resort.
Next: a shot of me, Tom, and my ravishingly beautiful late wife Christiana—same day, same location.
Hm. Okay, looking at it again, I see that there is just the merest of possibilities that Tom might not be the only goofball in that one. Which is the only comment I’m going to make on exactly where my bleary, blurry gaze seems to be locked. Last one, of us two boys confirming our coveted Master Goofball status for all time.
A chilling echo of an abhorrent past, even as it repeats itself.
After leaving China for America two decades ago, my father only returned to his homeland once. I had turned 18, and I think he wanted to show me something of his youth, of which he spoke little. In the dusty village where he grew up, we met an endless stream of old men who wanted to see the village’s prodigal son. Gifts were offered and extravagant greetings were swapped. Then, after each visitor had departed, my father would tell me, matter-of-factly, what they did to him during the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution.
The harmless-looking retired cadre, now an amiable old man who pinched my cheeks, had been the village party secretary who forced my father to perform manual labour — running after cows with a basket to pick up the droppings — because, as the son of a landlord, he could not be trusted with an education. The local businessman, now on his second wife and third Audi, had belonged to a gang of high school children who beat him for being descended from counter-revolutionaries.
Some of my father’s tormentors were blood relatives, who were especially keen to display their revolutionary credentials through violence, a situation that was sadly not uncommon: it was rumoured that Bo Xilai, who nearly supplanted Xi Jinping before being imprisoned, had broken his own father’s ribs as a Red Guard. Only the death of Mao Zedong in 1976 saved my father, who took the university entrance examinations a few years later, and never looked back.
Since the beginning of — shall we call it our 2020 cultural moment? — much ink has been spilled on whether there are similarities between the current protests-cum-riots and China’s Cultural Revolution. Even though some of its cheerleaders openly make the comparison, most commentators dismiss the idea, including UnHerd‘s Daniel Kalder.
To my father, and indeed to many of his contemporaries, the answer is clear. They had lived through it, and although they cannot put their finger on the why, they can feel a certain febrility in the air which reminded them of the events of half a century ago. But with their accented English and unfashionable politics (few, for some reason, are especially well-disposed toward the western Left), they have been largely excluded from the conversation. Or they could be biased, as western Marxist academics used to say of the testimonies of eastern European refugees who had been in Communist prisons.
The parallels are indeed nothing short of chilling, and unless you’re a serious student of this sort of thing there might be even more of them than you previously thought. Admittedly, though, there was one aspect of Red China’s horrifying and brutal societal purge that even as rock-ribbed an anti-Communist as myself can’t find a whole lot to argue with:
In America, students aren’t beating their teachers to death yet, as they did in 1960s China.
Well, hey, let’s not just abandon all hope for that quite yet. Hell, if Real Americans had been beating them to death since they went Red en masse back in the 60s, we wouldn’t be in the mess we’re in now.
Tailgunner Joe, though you may loathe his methods, was perfectly correct, one of many discrete pieces of evidence that add up to only one conclusion: no free society can coexist with Communism, nor even tolerate its propagation if it intends to retain its freedom. That may appear to contradict the traditionally-professed American values of free speech and a broad tolerance for dissent, sure enough. But at some point a firm line must be drawn and enforced, lest the Constitution be converted into a suicide pact for real. That line sits well to the right of Red.
(Via Insty)
I repeat: hey, sure, why the hell not.
Fort Rucker in flames after Black Hawk Lives Matter protest
What began as a peaceful demonstration by Black Hawk pilots frustrated after years of being marginalized by Chinook pilots turned suddenly violent.As crowds of aviators were shouting, “Justice for Igor Sikorsky!” a few broke away and began vandalizing CH-47s spray painting “Black Hawk Lives Matter!” on their fuselages. “That’s when it all hit the fan,” said an anonymous warrant officer who was used to remaining anonymous. Suddenly offended by the presence of fixed-wing aircraft and any design that deviated from the main rotor/tail rotor configuration, the swelling mob descended on Fort Rucker’s aviation museum toppling and burning anything with a propeller or more than one main rotor.
In an effort to deescalate the situation, the base commander, Lieutenant General Durkan, ordered military police to evacuate the museum until things cooled down. Almost immediately barricades were erected by angry Black Hawk pilots who began spray painting “AMPAB” and “F*** 31B” on the museum walls and displays that were still standing. Declaring the museum an independent country, the pilots called it the “Black Hawk Autonomous Landing Zone” and posted signs reading, “NO MP LZ.” The name was then changed to the “Black Hawk Organized Protest” or BHOP for short. In an effort to show solidarity and understanding, Captain Carpenter who is an Apache pilot, joined the crowd but was shortly beaten into a coma.
Meanwhile, Brigadier General Cathy, a career CH-47 pilot, offered to shine the boots of a Black Hawk pilot and urged other CH-47 pilots to follow his example. His efforts were hampered when he realized that nobody in the army any longer wears boots that can be polished. Nevertheless, General Cathy maintained that his offer was sincere.
“This isn’t ending,” said Lieutenant King, “until everything that flies looks like a Black Hawk and every former Chinook driver buys us a beer whenever we walk into the officers’ club.”
Makes as much sense as anything else does these days.
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