Domestic Violence As A Source Of Amusement ...

Imagine a man who finds his wife is unfaithful and attacks her.

Now imagine he attacks her with a golf club - a potentially deadly weapon.

Imagine she flees the house in terror, bleeding from head injuries, drives away, but because of her injuries crashes the car just a hundred yards away, while her husband follows, club in hand, to smash the car windows.

What would Cath Elliott say ? Or Laurie Penny ? Or the Stroppers ?

I dread to think what punishment would be deemed suitable for the offender - you all know I'm more of a rehabilitation type myself.




It's strange, but reverse the sexes of the protagonists, and both men and women find the idea* hilarious.




(* the idea, not the facts of the Tiger Woods case, which are obscure. Best of order in the comments please)

And Now We Come To The End Of Broadcasting For Today ...

... this station is closing for the night, and we'll be back with you tomorrow. So for now we'll leave you with some going-to-bed music. Did I mention that I love female voices ?

Friday Night Music

As Barack Obama tells it :

More than once, my mother would point out: “Harry Belafonte is the best-looking man on the planet.”

Enfants de la Patrie (again) ?

I've written about this sort of thing before. Now even the Indie is noticing :

"No," he said. "I'm not watching the match. I never watch France play football. The team disgusts me because they are not really French."

What did he mean, I asked (although I knew exactly what he meant). My neighbour mumbled something about not liking the team because they didn't sing the Marseillaise before matches (something that has not been true for more than a decade). What he really meant was that there were too many non-white faces in the line-up (seven out of 11). I pointed out that every single France player in the now infamous main de Dieu World Cup qualifying team was born in France and mostly in Greater Paris. He looked embarrassed, made a "so what" hand gesture and walked away.

That same night thousands of young people from the poorer suburbs of Greater Paris poured on to the Champs Elysées to celebrate the fact that their country had qualified for the World Cup finals in South Africa next summer. These were French kids, born in France, but they were not celebrating France's morally-challenged victory over Ireland. They were celebrating – boisterously, and at times violently – Algeria's victory over Egypt in Algiers.

Guardian :

As the evening went on, more than 12,000 Algerians poured on to the Champs Elysées, which was closed to traffic as youngsters danced on the roofs of cars, chanting "One, two, three, Vive l'Algérie", and throwing fireworks into the dank November night. "I can't believe it," I was told by Samia, a 20-year-old student. "I've never seen anything like it. It's not just about football. It has to be about something else."

About midnight it became clearer what that something else might be. Armed police had by now gathered around the Arc de Triomphe, trying to break up the crowds. They were met with taunts, stones and fireworks. The party soon degenerated into a riot and the cries of "Vive l'Algérie" were replaced by the familiar battle cry of "Nique la police" (**** the police). The police responded with teargas and baton charges.

There were 60 arrests, and similar scenes in Lyon and Marseille. The violence carried on and by Friday morning the police reported that more than 200 cars had been burnt in the suburbs of Paris.

You have to remember that the same night France had cheated their way past Ireland to qualify. Yet the centre of Paris belonged to (violent) young French citizens who identified as Algerian.

Couldn't happen here, of course :

"You can cry now miserable Egyptians! We proudly defeated and humiliated you and we have now qualified for the worl cup 2010 in South Africa. You are the most hated people in the Arab world! Worse than jews."

Mr Indie - a chap called John Lichfield - seems to have been mugged by reality :

I have lived in France for almost 13 years. I adore France and I adore the French. I have to admit, however, that I have found the events of recent days – Sarko's crusade, Henry's handball, my neighbour's comments, the celebrations by French-born Algeria fans and the brutal response of the CRS – rather unsettling.

Eleven years ago, I was one of those who wrote admiringly of the Brown-White-Black France which won the World Cup. I, and many others, suggested that their victory might soften race relations in France; that other brown and black French kids might be encouraged to feel French; that white French kids would grow up with brown and black French heroes.

Since then, we have learned better.

Guardian ditto :

The sourness surrounding the Algerian victory seemed such a long way away from the famous "rainbow" French team of 1998 that beat Brazil in a glorious World Cup final at the Stade de France... This moment was hailed as the beginning of a new era in French cultural life. Eleven years later, that moment seems to belong to a very distant past. Indeed, the divisions in French society seemed to have hardened since then.

Laban doesn't think the lessons to be drawn are any different from last time :

So what, you may say. Why should we care about what happens in a far-away country of which we know little ?

Because their problems are ours. There's a terrible symmetry between the children and grandchildren of immigrants to France, much more radicalised, violent and discontented than their grandparents, and those to the UK.

Reality 1, Satire 0 (Again)

It's got to be the number one item on every prisoner's Christmas wish-list - their freedom.

But there was incredulity today when it emerged that one convict is actually going to have their wish granted - as first prize in a raffle.

The lucky inmate whose ticket is drawn in the £1 draw will be able to spend a day on the outside, enjoying themselves to their heart's content.

It is a reward being offered at Kirkham open prison in Lancashire in return for helping to prepare a Christmas dinner for elderly residents at a nearby day centre.

More 'Education'

a sad but by no means unusual tale via (of all people) Stephen Fry. No, I don't subscribe but enough people do.

But it's the comments that strike me.

Anyway, I'm one of those supply teachers, freshly arrived from Australia with a few years under my belt and a sense of freedom to supply teach. I ended my first week with a stiff drink and let go of the breath I was holding in for the whole week.
Wow. Didn't expect the utter lack of discipline, planning and chaos that I've so far seen at EVERY school i've been to.
My only slight objection to this very real piece of writing is when you mention about teachers who arn't afraid of taking charge. While I am only speaking on my behalf as a teacher I can see in this day and age when panic and pandemonium about our children's safety is at ridiculous level, teachers hands are, literally, tied behind our back.
I was warned, do not touch a child not even if they are in danger when I went for my interview. Excuse me?! I haven't followed that advice, especially in the half or dozen times so far I have physically squeezed myself in between two boys out and out fighting in the classroom and pulled one off the other.
I think the problem is, there is an absolute disrespect for teachers and the job they do. Students fight back with you, say the most horrible things to eac other explode wit anger at the smallest thing and constant endanger themselves and others with vicious fights and taunts right in front of my face. Now as a supply teacher I take it with a grain of salt, I mean everyone knows when your "proper" teacher is away its time to play, and I employ EVERY behaviour management technique in the book. Most of the time it works, once or twice though its been shaky and then what?
Its hard to control a child's behaviour when he has no respect for the situation or te boundaries, when they would rather hurtle themselves in a blind fit at another student in the class over them answering a question before they could.
The pent up anger and agression that is shown in students is a very worrying thing for me to witness, and I think before we worry about test scores and multimillion dollar equipment and classrooms we need to look at what sort of support can we give these children, and what sort of home are they coming from.
I as always feel sorry for the half or more of the class who have to sit and deal with this daily occurrance, and think what is it like for you??


I am (was) a teacher but found that many of the schools that I did work in it was just as you had described - crowd control and prevention of fights or breaking up fights. I loved teaching but due to physical health problems could not cope with 'THAT' kind of teaching so I now work in a bank!! I so wanted to teach those that wanted to learn - who had a thirst for it and an ever inquisative and enquiring mind - children who constantly questioned - these are the children who needed me - not the ones who could not be bothered or had no interest.

There are schools in inner London which have multiple playgrounds separated by skin colour. The pupils separate themselves this way, and the school has no choice but to supervise the 'black' playground with black staff and the 'white' playground with white staff, otherwise severe disruption occurs.

While I believe my own school isn't as bad as this, I see some of the things you describe regularly. The real trouble-makers are not tackled early enough or with sufficient seriousness. The result is the layer of kids that misbehave because they see others doing it - and would stop if their examples were excluded - remains. And yes, the easy targets are often picked on by some staff instead. I am a teacher. I regard myself as a professional, but the institution that is Education clearly does not agree. I teach in a culture of blame - it's not 'the management' that's at fault, it's those of us at the chalk face. I suspect all the 'good' teachers left the school you refer to a long time ago, probably fed up with the same thing I am.

I currently work as a bus driver. The level of abuse that myself and my colleagues have to tolerate on a daily basis from school children in our local area is obscene. If these renegade bullies talk to their elders in such a manner, what hope to the more vulnerable children in the classroom have?

Calm Down, Yazza !

Yazza has two personas for her two main media outlets

Indie : "I blame white men"

The world only feels right when women are removed from the public space. We know that is what the Taliban believes. The discouraging truth is that all nations would dearly like it if women went back indoors again to seek and find total fulfilment in babies and baking and these days 24-hour sexual availability.

Chance would be a fine thing. But not 24 hours. One wouldn't like to be doing a 10-hour day and worrying about the Home Front.

But of course, on the big picture Yazza is right. Throwing acid in the faces of schoolgirls Taleban-style is exactly like criticising the appointment of Baroness Ashton as EU foreign minister.

Daily Mail : "I blame the permissive society"

(And I love persona 2 as much as I hate persona 1)

But it's not just Belle de Jour who (for a good price) gives the punters what they want, is it ?

(via Julia M)

Monbiot - "Phil Jones Should Resign"

I presume readers are already aware of "Climategate", the leaking of a large number of emails from the University of East Anglia's servers - which mails reveal a pattern of highly dodgy activity among professional warmists, particularly Phil Jones of the Climate Research ("then hide the data or tweak it") Unit. Refusing 'unbelievers' access to the raw data, including attempts to work round FOI, trying to get editors sacked and sceptical researchers' access to university resources withdrawn - that is just appalling. My emboldening below :

At 09:41 AM 2/2/2005, Phil Jones wrote:

Mike,
I presume congratulations are in order - so congrats etc! Just sent loads of station data to Scott. Make sure he documents everything better this time ! And don't leave stuff lying around on ftp sites - you never know who is trawling them. The two MMs [McKitrick, McIntyre] have been after the CRU station data for years. If they ever hear there is a Freedom of Information Act now in the UK, I think I'll delete the file rather than send to anyone. Does your similar act in the US force you to respond to enquiries within 20 days? - our does ! The UK works on precedents, so the first request will test it. We also have a data protection act, which I will hide behind. Tom Wigley has sent me a worried email when he heard about it - thought people could ask him for his model code. He has retired officially from UEA so he can hide behind that. IPR should be relevant here, but I can see me getting into an argument with someone at UEA who'll say we must adhere to it ! ...

UPDATE - all the mails and files (and many news stories) linked to from here.

I'm not an AGW sceptic, btw, but an agnostic. That doesn't mean I think that chucking large amounts of CO2 into the air is a wise thing to do without knowing the possible consequences. And I agree that the consequences could be apocalyptic (the fate of Mars, which it is now believed once had huge oceans, is ever before me), so a precautionary approach is wise. I'm sure human activity makes a difference - the crucial question is 'how much difference' - and 'how much difference compared with 'natural' changes' ?

In the Guardian, noted warmist George Monbiot :

It's no use pretending this isn't a major blow. The emails extracted by a hacker from the climatic research unit at the University of East Anglia could scarcely be more damaging. I am now convinced that they are genuine, and I'm dismayed and deeply shaken by them.

Yes, the messages were obtained illegally. Yes, all of us say things in emails that would be excruciating if made public. Yes, some of the comments have been taken out of context. But there are some messages that require no spin to make them look bad. There appears to be evidence here of attempts to prevent scientific data from being released, and even to destroy material that was subject to a freedom of information request.

Worse still, some of the emails suggest efforts to prevent the publication of work by climate sceptics, or to keep it out of a report by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. I believe that the head of the unit, Phil Jones, should now resign.

and in the comments :

I apologise. I was too trusting of some of those who provided the evidence I championed. I would have been a better journalist if I had investigated their claims more closely.

contrarian2:

But if the science is that "settled," why refuse to disclose the data? If global warming so obvious and incontrovertible, why be in such a panic about FOI, why talk openly about re-defining "peer review", why threaten to (or actually) delete data?

I agree. It is exactly for those reasons that Phil Jones should resign. There's a word for his lack of openness and control of the data: unscientific.

"But where is it now?"

Sarah harks back to the days when 'people kept the laws and were polite and courteous. We didn't have much money, but we were contented and happy.

'People whistled and sang. There was still the United Kingdom, our country, which we had fought for, our freedom, democracy. But where is it now?!'

Sarah Robinson, who joined the Royal Navy when she was 18, says the Britain she once knew no longer exists.

The feelings of Sarah and others from this most selfless generation about the modern world have been recorded by a Tyneside writer, 33-year-old Nicholas Pringle.

Curious about his grandmother's generation and what they did in the war, he decided three years ago to send letters to local newspapers across the country asking for those who lived through the war to write to him with their experiences.

He rounded off his request with this question: 'Are you happy with how your country has turned out? What do you think your fallen comrades would have made of life in 21st-century Britain?'

What is extraordinary about the 150 replies he received, which he has now published as a book, is their vehement insistence that those who made the ultimate sacrifice in the war would now be turning in their graves.

There is the occasional bright spot - one veteran describes Britain as 'still the best country in the world' - but the overall tone is one of profound disillusionment.

Read the whole thing.

Nick, if you want to improve that website, (where you can buy the book) drop me a mail.

'If my fallen comrades could return to this country today, they would wonder who the victors were'

'They were the people we fought for - our folk and our country. For today's society I would not have done it.'

Fear And Loathing ....

in Staines, as the suburb awaits the arrival of Millwall's travelling support and the possible destruction of the borough. 462 comments so far.

Left Voices Outrage At Betrayal of Working Class

Working class white boys are officially the worst-performing group in English primary schools, official figures show. Fewer than half of white British boys from the poorest homes started secondary education with a decent grounding in the basics last summer, it was disclosed. Only 48 per cent of 11-year-olds eligible for free school lunches reached the standard expected of their age group in English and maths. Figures published by the Government on Thursday show they fell further behind their classmates over the last 12 months. The disclosure comes amid fears that thousands of white British boys from deprived areas risk being turned into an educational “underclass” as they fall further behind their classmates. They are already less likely to get good GCSEs, go to university and get a good job than most other pupils.

Almost 600,000 children took Sats in English and maths this summer. Figures published by the Department for Children, Schools and Families on Thursday represent an official breakdown of results by ethnicity, gender and deprivation. White British boys on free meals were the lowest achieving group behind Gypsy, Roma and traveller pupils, although they account for fewer than 700 children. Nationally, some 71.8 per cent of pupils reached level 4 – the standard expected of their age – in the two subjects. It meant working-class white British boys were 23.8 percentage points behind. The gap has grown since last year when it stood at 23.1 percentage points.

There are 31,237 white British boys that are eligible for free meals – the Government’s standards measure of poverty. Among white British boys who are not eligible for free lunches, 74.2 per cent reached level 4. Some 51.6 per cent of poor black boys hit the target, along with 54.7 per cent of poor boys from a Pakistani background and 54.2 per cent of boys with a mixed heritage. Boys and girls from Chinese backgrounds were the highest performers, with 81.8 per cent of pupils hitting official targets in English and maths.

Naturally the left bloggers are in uproar about these figures.

Socialist Unity

* tumbleweed blows across road *

Liberal Conspiracy

* you wait. Time passes. Thorin sits down and starts singing about gold.*

Bloggers4Labour

* a bus passes the Radcliffe Road end *


Hmmm. Must be 'mission accomplished'.


(the only coverage I can see is at Conservative Home, FWTW.)

Nasty ...

I blogged a while back the state-facilitated thievery of Russian 'capitalism' as experienced by asset manager Hermitage.

Foreign investors get ripped off all the time in many countries. What makes this story unique is the state officials working together to steal $230m from the Russian state itself. The sharks have started to feed on their own blood.

What makes it even more worrying is that the Russian government took no action to recover the money when we reported the crime. Rather than going after the rogue officials and criminals, the government turned the full weight of the law enforcement apparatus against us for reporting it. They arrested our lawyer, Sergey Magnitsky, who uncovered the tax rebate fraud. He has since been kept in pre-trial detention on cases I believe were fabricated.

Telegraph :

A lawyer representing Hermitage Capital Management, the fund manager, has died in jail amid a dispute between the fund's co-founder Bill Browder and Russian authorities. The death of Sergei Magnitsky, a 37-year old father of two, is set to reignite concerns about investing and doing business in Russia. Irina Dudukina, a spokeswoman for the investigative committee of the Interior Ministry in Moscow, told The Moscow Times that Mr Magnitsky had died of heart failure and toxic shock.

I don'ty know what the word is for this sort of political system. It's got some medieval features, some gangster features, some free(ish) market features heavily moderated by the gangsterism and powerbroking, all wrapped in something marked 'democracy'.


UPDATE - more here and details of Magnitsky's formal complaint (in September) to the prison authorities over his treatment here.

Gangsters

I mentioned a while back City Journal's piece on The Mexicanization of American Law Enforcement as drug cartels extend their corrupting influence northward, helped by the porous border and the lack of political will to deal with millions of illegal immigrants.

In fact Obama is reviving GW Bush's amnesty plan.

With unemployment in the double digits, Americans losing their homes and borders that remain unsecured, Janet Napolitano, Department of Homeland Security Secretary has decided to resurrect the 2007 McCain/Kennedy/Bush immigration reform failure to pay off Obama’s political debts to certain special interest groups.

As a result, on Saturday there were more than 50 anti-amnesty rallies held around the nation protesting the Obama’s Administration’s attempt to shove another unwanted program onto Americans who are struggling to stay afloat.

The number one issue on American’s mind is “it’s the economy stupid.” A lagging economy coupled with a withering job market hardly seems like the ideal time to dump an estimated 20 million illegal aliens into the U.S. job market.

The Secure Communities program is another agenda DHS touts as a success. However, many look to the program as another reason amnesty is doomed to fail. Immigration Customs Enforcement (ICE) nabbed more than 111,000 criminal aliens in one year. Great. But the new program has only deported 9,500 criminal illegal aliens. This leaves more than 100,000 criminal aliens in America.

The statistics in the state of California are even more staggering. The illegal inmates residing in California prisons tally 30 percent, one-third of all births are to illegal immigrants and the FBI reports most of the Latino MS13 gang members are here illegally. Los Angeles’ sanctuary city status forbids Los Angeles police officers to question the legal status of the most violent gang members in the country.

That bit about not deporting foreign criminals feels awfully familiar. But the point is that the south-western United States in becoming more like Mexico. The Latino gangs north of the border are forging links with the cartels to the south.

The BBC report on La Familia (on the western, LA side of Mexico) and the Guardian on the Zetas (eastern, Houston side) - but this is not only a Mexican problem :

Within the US, the Zetas' influence is widespread – cells operating across the country, distributing drugs, their contacts laundering money through established banks and other channels.

Across the Rio Grande, in the burgeoning Texan city of McAllen, a businessman with family roots in the area for 150 years said that not only had the Zetas sealed off the bridges around Reynosa, but international bridges into the United States as well.

"The Americans do nothing, the press says nothing, but they do it to show us all – this side and that – that they can control traffic across the border. I get a call sometimes, ahead of time, telling me, 'Get what you need shipped over before noon, we're shutting it down.'

Via FaceRight, who I'm glad to see posting again, In The Hat blog chronicles the LA/Mexico connections.

What we're talking about here is a developing phenomenon that first showed up along the border and making its way into our local neighborhoods. Based on information from reliable sources, border cops making their usual intercepts of migrant workers are also coming across Mexican nationals already tattooed up with U.S. gang identifiers. Basically these individuals already have some working or personal relationships with U.S. street gangs even though some of them have never been north.


I was recently sent some unpublished photos of the aftermath of the big Tijuana shootout between Mexican Federal Police and some cartel shooters. At least two of the cartel guys appeared to have been shot in their vehicles while trying to blast their way out of the perimeter. It's interesting to note that both vehicles wore California license plates. That's a fairly clear indication that the cartels are operating freely on both sides of the fence and probably have allies they can count on to run whatever business needs to be run.

All the indicators are pointing to some troubling times ahead for local and Federal U.S. law enforcement.

In The Hat blogger Tony Rafael is the author of The Mexican Mafia and he's a worried man.

The massacre at Fort Hood this week has made headlines around the world. As it should. Contrast this event, however, to the massacre of union leader Margarito Montes Parra and 14 family members and associates in Sonora, Mexico last week. The Parra event barely broke through the background news noise. The Times and some other big papers covered it but it barely caused a blip on the average American's radar screen.

We're at a point where wholesale slaughter in Mexico is the norm rather than the exception. We've slowly been de-sensitized to Mexican drug violence to a point where it will take a 9/11 type event to finally wrap the public's head around the fact that Mexico is augering in like a lawn dart. And if it goes, we'll be sharing the border with a nation that resembles Afghanistan more than it does Canada.

...

The big fear, or course is that this level of paramilitary organized violence will eventually seep across the border. As Mexico has been de-sensitized, we're been also being immunized to body counts. Eight years after the Twin Towers fell, we've got a significant portion of the population that has already given up the fight and urging the administration to do something other than kill the Islamists responsible for 9/11. If 3,000 plus dead isn't enough to sustain a vigorous search and destroy mission, how quickly will those same people shy away from a fight when only a dozen or so civilians are cut down by a cartel assassination squad on U.S. soil?

He also recommends this book.

For the student of the subject, this book is a no brainer for acquisition. You just gotta have it in the library if you're going to speak with authority on the subject. For cops, correctional officers and prosecutors, the book is invaluable for doing the job. The people who should be forced to read this book, or have it read to them while jetting around the country or riding in the back of chauffered limos are the politicians and policy makers. Policy decisions and laws cannot and should not be made based on information filtered through staff panels, social scientists, mis-informed or biased "advocates, " or groups who have a financial interest in the outcome of policies.

Algeria Wuz Robbed ?

I don't know. Algeria only needed to win, draw or lose to Egypt by less than two goals to qualify for the World Cup.

Algeria arrived in Cairo two days ago. As their bus left the airport, it was attacked with rocks :

“They struck our bus with large bricks,” said a distraught Antar Yahia. "Players have open head wounds with blood. We were lying down in the bus. All the windows were broken. It makes you fear for your life. As long as our lives are not assured we’re afraid to play this match."

Yahia then went on to say that the security guards dispatched for the team did nothing in response to the attacks.

“They let them do it. You can’t launch five kilo rocks from 50 meters. They let them do it and watched. It’s shameful. In our home game we welcomed them with flowers,” he continued.

The Egyptian press accused the players of faking their head injuries.


In the game ? 1-0 to Egypt at the end of normal time. Six minutes added time awarded.

Egypt score in the fifth minute of added time to draw level with Algeria at the top of the group. Egypt 2 Algeria 0. They'll play off in Sudan on Wednesday. Khartoum ? Or Omdurman ?



Apparently the last time they met in similar circumstances, in 1989 :

As an Egyptian player who took part in the match in 1989 recently recalled:

It was an incredible atmosphere. The stadium was full five hours before the game [...] The Algeria team was full of stars and on the pitch it was very crazy; 11 fights between every player. Everybody forgot what the coaches had to say and just fought instead. It was a battle, not a football match. It was like our war against Israel in 1973.

The already tense atmosphere that day got worse when the Algerian team concluded that Egypt’s winning goal was scored by a player in an offside position (although video of the goal available on the Internet today seems to show that it was correctly allowed). After the match, the Algerians surrounded and harassed the referee and then fought with Egyptian supporters — one of whom was blinded by broken glass.

UPDATE - on consideration, the female of the species .... far from the passions of Cairo, New Mexico's defender Elizabeth Lambert displays 'some questionable plays' ... nasty. I'm not sure I've seen much rougher than that - and I don't mean her looks.

Friday Night Is Music Night

The man can sing ...

Meet The New Boss ...

A PR company called Open Road has put together a Guide to Blue Labour (pdf). No dirt-digging here, just a list of potential movers and shakers as seen by said PR company, doubtless with an eye to the future (via Clive Davis' new blog).

Charles Murray ...

has a blog.

Here he is on the shambles of US healthcare reform :

There is a sound argument for treating health insurance the way we treat life insurance. We can buy life insurance at a constant affordable payment when we are young because our young unlikely-to-die-soon selves subsidize our old certain-to-die-soon selves. Similarly: If we were to go to a health insurance company at age 21 and say, “I will commit to a policy from now until I die,” the health insurance company could give us an affordable rate because our young healthy selves would subsidize our old unhealthy selves. We haven’t treated health insurance that way, but there’s no economic reason we couldn’t.

The bill the Finance Committee passed originally applied a variant of that principle, requiring young people to buy insurance, thereby subsidizing the costs of requiring insurance companies to accept everyone, including those with pre-existing conditions.

Then, for political reasons, the Finance Committee gutted the requirement for young people to buy insurance, making the penalties so low that it destroys the coherence of the bill. Of course large numbers of young people won’t buy insurance if the penalties are a few hundred dollars. Of course large numbers of them will wait, knowing that they can apply once they’ve got a health problem and the insurance companies will have to accept them. This is not a “plausible possibility.” It is 100 percent sure to happen. And because it will happen, health insurance premiums will rise dramatically—because the legal requirement that health insurance companies accept everyone will not be modified no matter what. And then the whole system will break down, and Congress will come back in to try to repair a program that was transparently, obviously unworkable from the outset.

I’m not writing as a libertarian who doesn’t think government should run healthcare. I’m writing as a citizen who is sick unto death of politicians being stupid.

Major Hasan on Islam in the US Military

His 2007 Powerpoint presentation to the US Army. Hmm.

Do You Like Good Music ?

Good black music ?

Milk Crate Breaks has oodles of obscure stuff. I'd tried to buy Gil Scott-Heron's 'Bridges' a year or three back, and it was no longer available, so it was wonderful to discover it here. Not what you'd call militant Gil, and all the better for it IMHO. The man is laid back to the point of horizontality.

(Mea culpa - you can get it as from May 2009 on Amazon UK)

UPDATE - Sgt Troy isn't too pleased with the black music he hears these days. Neither's the great John McWhorter, here on video or here in print.

I Do Hope This Is True ...

... but it seems too good for words.

The remains of a legendary 50,000-strong army which was swallowed up in a cataclysmic sandstorm in the Sahara Desert 2,500 years ago are believed to have been found. Italian archaeologists Angelo and Alfredo Castiglioni, twin brothers, have discovered bronze weapons and hundreds of human bones which they reckon are the remains of the lost army of Persian King Cambyses II. According to the Greek historian Herodotus (484-425 BC), Cambyses, the son of Cyrus the Great, sent the soldiers from Thebes to attack the Oasis of Siwa in 525BC. Their mission was to destroy the oracle at the Temple of Amun after the priests there refused to legitimise his claim to Egypt.

If they really have found the remains of Cambyses' army, it would be one of the greatest archaeological discoveries of all time. The dry desert should have hopefully preserved weapons and armour - and what of the paymasters' bullion, and the loot ?

There's only one slight problem. According to Capt W.E. Johns, the lost army was discovered by Biggles, Algy and Ginger in the late 1930s. It was also discovered by oil prospectors in 2000.

Australia's Daily Grind reports that the 2500 years the Persian force has spent in the sands of the Sahara Desert is being seen as a warning against a policy of ‘stay the course’, and that "Iran has denied intending to destroy the Temple of Ammon, saying the 50,000-strong army was part of its civilian nuclear programme".