Paranoia Alley

In the land where Psychotics are in power, then Paranoia is normal ... should be an old Chinese adage, but isn't because I just made it up. However what else can you say about a country, where the religious establishment put up billboards on the capitals main highways before a recent election, that warned the electorate in large letters that if the turnout was less than 50%, the US would attack Iran. To be fair they seem to say this at every election.

No Mistaking The Message In Iranain Elections

 
Its hard in the sane world, to truly understand the madness of the cult that rules a quarter of the planet at the moment. They even talk like madmen .... after the elections, Interior Minister Mostafa Mohammad Najjar declared that the election turnout was 64% (with no verification), he then gleefully proclaimed it a triumph and said it was an "iron fist and a hard slap in the face for the arrogant powers that will keep them confused and perplexed for a long time".

No PC Multicultural Nonsense In Iran - Advocating Genocide Is An Electoral Policy

Oddly he didn't care who the electors voted for because all the candidates had been vetted by the regime beforehand, with 36% disqualified. So all the candidates standing were religious conservatives and nationalists and their differences were only over who got their noses in the gravy train, the Mullahs or them. 

Its hard to even understand how an apparently intelligent people like the Persians can be so easily led by people who should be locked up .... but then after listening to the utter garbage coming out of Argentina about their 'rights' to the Falklands recently (which by the way are 'none'), maybe we shouldn't feel too smug.
 

Argentina Has Never Stopped Threatening The Falklands

So maybe with electoral turnout worries in the West, we could all try this tactic: In Australia it could be the Aborigines reclaiming  the continent, and of course in the Americas, the Mexicans still long to get California (or parts of it) back, and maps like this one below are still jokingly produced by advertisers - Actually if they wait 100 yrs, then linguistically this may well come true.

Some Mexicans Dream That One Day This Will Be True

So this 'vote now, or else we will be invaded', wheeze could be tried in many places. In the UK we could try something similar at the next elections, and put up billboards on the UK's main roads that warn the electorate in large letters that if the turnout is less than 60%, the Argentines would invade the Falklands .... that should get the socialist votes dowm!

Lunar Larceny

Once upon a time in America, there was an organisation called NASA, and the US of A was very proud of its achievements.  In fact so proud of its achievements were they, especially as it had eclipsed the bad boys of the CCCP, that when it reached its peak and sent men to the Moon, they wanted to show the world of its prowess.

Apollo landings - the peak of US space achievements.

The question was how? Then some eager beaver in the US State Department  noted the words of the crew of the Apollo 17 mission in December 1972, when Eugene Cernan and Harrison Schmitt (still incidentally the last men to have set foot on the Moon), picked up a rock and turning towards the cameras Cernan announced: "We'd like to share a piece of this rock with so many of the countries throughout the world."

What better way they thought, to trumpet American technological and military superiority, than by handing out to various national leaders, little pieces of the very brick-sized rock that Mr Cernan had been holding in his hands? And so throughout the early 1970's, under the orders of President Richard Nixon, fragments of the rock were sent to 135 foreign heads of state, and the 50 US states. Each of these "goodwill Moon rocks" was encased in a lucite ball and mounted on a wooden plaque with the recipient nations' flag attached.

Truth be known they were rather tatty gifts .... but then this was the 1970's, when taste reached an all time low ...

The Goodwill Moon Rock given to Britain.

Two hundred and seventy were given to nations of the world, and one hundred to the fifty US states. Not much thought was given to what happened to these rocks .... it was assumed that they had all gone to national and local museums, until one day in 1998 one of these rocks, the Honduras goodwill Moon rock, was offered up for sale to a NASA investigator.  He had been hunting for fake 'moon rocks' which were being sold in various scams. The rock he was offered weighed 1.142g and the seller wanted $5m (£3m) for it, and the FBI recovered it in a sting operation.

The investigator then made it a personal mission to find out where all the bits of rock were .... he found attempts to sell both Spain's and Cyprus's moon rocks, and that the two Moon rocks Gaddafi's government was given are both missing. Romania is also missing its Apollo 17 goodwill Moon rock, as is the rock given to Malta. The Irish rock is under tons of waste on a landfill following a fire at its housing site.

In all the US gathered and distributed a large number of rocks to various national states, scientific institutions and domestic states ..... and a total of 160 of all the moon rocks gathered by the Apollo 11 and 17 missions are currently unaccounted for or missing (including 24 in the US alone). It has to be assumed that many of these were sold on the black market ..... the hunt is now on to find them all.

Biblical Imagary

I have knocked the ultra orthodox Jewish community for their aggressive intolerance in the past, but I have to say that this series of photographs from one of their marriage services are simply stunning. They were taken at the marriage of a couple of members of the Vizhnitz Hasidic sect in Petah Tikva near Tel Aviv.

An Almost Biblical Scene

19th century Dress Is De Rigueur

The Bride Wore White

Really great photos which deserve to be given prominence and a wider audience  .... credit to the photographer (who was unnamed). They are almost like a classical painting by an old master in their composition and use of light and colour.

Peter Paul Rubans and Rembrant Would Admire The Photographs 

Legalised Theft

Greece has just stolen 172bn Euros worth of  private lenders money, by forcing them to accept a 74% down grade in the value of the money they will get back, for lending them money. This is a state organised theft, whereby the Greeks will not pay back private lenders, while they will pay back the EU governments and the EU central bank who have lent them money.

So are they ashamed? Well no, the Greek Finance Minister, Evangelos Venizelos, hailed the theft as an "exceptional success". And their confederates in this crime? Well they are just as happy .... French President Nicolas Sarkozy said, "Today the problem is solved. I would like to say how happy I am that a solution to the Greek crisis, which has weighed on the economic and financial situation in Europe and the world for months, has been found." The German Chancellor Angela Merkel said it was "encouraging".

Three Masked Bandits - Wanted Across Europe

So now that we have removed 172bn Euros from the Greek debt what as we going to do? Why, we are going to give them a new 130bn-euro (£110bn; $173bn) bailout ot taxpayers money. In other words we are re-saddling them with nearly as much debt as we took off them by stealing it from the private lenders ...... its a very strange and disturbing world.

It's A Gay Old Life

A Catholic Bishop, Cardinal Keith O'Brien, has set the PC Brigade into overdrive by his suggestion that plans allowing homosexuals to be classed as 'married' was a "grotesque subversion of a universally accepted human right", and would "shame the United Kingdom in the eyes of the world". He has joined other church clergy, such as the Anglican Archbishop of York, John Sentamu, who in January insisted governments did not have the moral authority to 'redefine marriage'. Interestingly the word 'Gay' was also defined differently until the homosexual lobby forced it into another usage ..... so the fact that 'Gay' people are 'Unhappy' about the Bishops comments strikes no one as faintly ludicrous.

In the interests of clarity, I should point out that the proposed change is not to religious marriages and is not to be imposed on religious groups. Its just a change to call what is now called 'Civil Partnership' to be classed as 'marriage'. Sadly for the Bishop, the Catholic churches moral standing has been much dissipated by cover ups associated with the child abuse scandals of the last decade, so he is hiding behind a very small moral figleaf when he starts arguing against 'gay marriages'.

My interest in this is that in opening up the debate like this, the Bishop has raised some interesting questions, not least of which is do the government have the right to redefine marriage without asking everyone? For several thousand years (in both pre and post Christian times), marriage has been defined pretty much as the social institution under which a man and woman establish their decision to live as husband and wife by legal commitments, religious ceremonies, etc. No society before has ever permitted the definition to apply to same sex partners.

All the evidence shows that when governments start to tamper with the common rules that have bound societies together for millennia, then it has unforeseen consequences .... unmarried pregnancy was frowned upon before the law changes of the 1960's, and now we have 44.4 per cent of live births outside of marriage. We also have very high single parent rates (especially amongst teen girls) .... society is paying a very high price in terms of crime, civil disorder and a low level permanent degradation of values for that bit of social engineering.

Once the homosexual lobby could argue that it was them who were being discriminated against in the West, but increasingly its now the gay activist wing of the PC brigade who are practicing legal discrimination and harrassment, against anyone who stands against them. Its now the gay activist lobby who is usually the first to call the police as soon as anyone disagrees with them. How many people have lost their jobs after being dragged before a tribunal or court for "homophobia?

Gays In The West Fare Far Better In West Than Middle East - Gay Marriage Definitely Not An Option.

One final thought, there has been marked silence in all this anti religious (Christianity) rhetoric about the thoughts of the self claimed 'fastest growing religion' in the UK and West. You know the one, the one whose adherents believe that homosexuals should be hanged (and even have the tacit support of the UN). Being denied 'married status' would be the least of the 'Gay' communities worries if they had their way. 

All those calling for the end of Christian churches influence in the UK and elsewhere, should be careful what they wish for, and what might replace Christianity as the moral authority in the vacuum of the West.

Tough As Wood

The expression "Tough As Wood" has taken on new meaning, after scientists in Scandinavia reported that many of the trees in that area of the world are direct descendants of trees that inhabited those lands before the last Ice Age .... they had always thought the trees all migrated back in to the area 9,000 yrs or so ago.

The researchers came to this conclusion by studying the DNA of both the modern spruce (which distinctly show two Scandinavian types), and by analysing the composition of pine and spruce DNA contained in the sediments taken from lake-core samples from before the ice age.

Scandinavian Forests - Ice Age Survivors

The exact mechanism for this amazing survival in the middle of the ice sheets for tens of thousands of years is not known, but its speculated that trees could have survived on nunataks (mountain tops and other bits of land sticking out above the miles of ice sheet), and then were able to spread once the ice retreated.

Nature never ceases to amaze in its abilities to survive the worst, but whether it can survive mankind is another matter.

Auxiliary Compassion

Report after report, and horror story after horror story, show that health care for the elderly in the UK is now an advert for voluntary euthanasia  .... it frightens me, and millions more to feel themselves on the foothills of old age.  The latest report suggests that compassion should be the main key for working with the elderly.

Auxiliary Care For The Elderly

This should be a no brainer with all the money pumped into the NHS, but lets be honest, the 'upgrading' of nurses to become 'mini me' doctors in the NHS (to justify the higher wages Labour gave them), has simply made many 'too posh to push' a commode. Its the auxiliary helpers who now do the cleaning up and compassion (such as it is) for the elderly. ..... even if they come from abroad.

We need to have a new grade of geriatric nurses trained purely to comfort and spend time with the elderly .... maybe paid for by sacking nurses who so singularly fail to provide this care anymore.

Mermaid ?

I have briefly discussed Merfish (aka Fiji Mermaids) amongst other things on previous blog posts but never seen how to make them.

Typical Monkey Fish

 
The BBC have posted  the results of an investigation by St George's University and Horniman Museum in London that has finally revealed how mermen and mermaid relics (also sometimes referred to as monkey fish) may have been made.

Making A Mermaid

 
Sadly they won't let you post the video, so I have merely linked to the film here.

First To Last Cut

One story above all others caught my attention  this week ..... in Germany (along with the Czech Republic), they still medically castrate sex offenders ..... but only if they want it. Now you might think that anything that made the world safer for women and children would be applauded, especially as this is an entirely voluntary process.

And it works .... recent research revealed that of the 104 people operated on between 1970 and 1980, only 3% re-offended, compared with nearly half of those who refused castration or were denied it by the authorities re-offending. So by my reckoning, castration meant there were 101 women and children who were not raped, compared to just 52 who were safe when the uncastrated offenders were released from prison.

Sex Offenders US

When you consider that in the USA for example 'The National Center for Victims of Crime' states that the odds of a child becoming a victim of a sex offender is 1 in 3 for girls, and 1 in 6 for boys, then we need to consider radical approaches.

In October Russian lawmakers gave first-round approval to a bill that would impose chemical castration on repeat sex offenders. Poland legalized the procedure in 2009 for offenders who rape minors or close relatives. Britain, Denmark and Sweden offer chemical castration drugs to sex offenders on a voluntary basis.

But of course the human rights brigade is all over it, with the 'Council of Europe' (europes leading human rights watchdog) complaining. Of course in these PC times the 'human rights' of a rapist and pedophile to retain the equipment to offend again on their release, is higher than the 'human rights' of women and children not to be victims of these animals. But then that's just the norm in the west now.

We really have lost our moral compass, when sex offenders 'rights' to be able to re-offend are of more importance than those of their victims rights to be safe  ....

Arab Spring Or Arab Winter

'Shabiha prisoners lay face down on the ground, hands tied behind their backs.

One-by-one, their heads were cut off. The man wielding the knife said, tauntingly, to the first: "This is for freedom." As his victim's neck opened, he went on: "This is for our martyrs. And this is for collaborating with Israel." ' ....... this is an extract from a BBC report on the capture and execution of government forces, by the rebels in Syria. The Shabiha (or ghosts) are the government paramilitary forces, and are apparently always executed by the Free Syrian Army (FSA).

The West should really be careful of what they wish for, the 'Arab Spring'  was at its best fraught with dangers, and like all revolutions, at its worst will throw up the worst kind of animals .... remember the French and Russian Revolutions both threw up monstrous systems (the Guillotine and the Gulags for example), and its not hard to imagine the kind of Sunni theocracy that may end up running every state in the Arab world (apart from Iraq, which is Shia and aligned with the persians of Iran).

The Free Syrian Army (FSA) are no angels

These Sunni 'freedom' fighters, the Free Syrian Army (FSA), in Syria have already started attacking the Christians and the Alawites, and like in Egypt, will soon start the process of ethnic cleansing in non Muslim areas once we have helped them get into power. We have opened a Pandoras box in the Arab world, and much like that in the post communist Balkans, we may well live to regret what we have done.

The 'Arab Spring' is turning ever darker, and the liklihood is that the Sunni's will attempt to drive out the remnants of Christianity from the region - ethnic cleaning or genocide, call it what you will, but once the Muslims have expelled or killed every 'Non Believer' from the Middle East or 'Muslim lands', then their expansion into other areas is inevitable.