Red Rover

Sadly, I will probably not live long enough to see the first colonists on the Moon or Mars, such has been the slow progress in space travel .....

Latest Mars Rover .... 'Curiosity'

and maybe with the discovery that older ex-astronauts are showing signs of cell damage, maybe that day will never come, but its still some achievement to land rover machines on the Red Planet, and then explore them with images only delayed by 14 minutes.

 

The Price of Victory

What cost medal success? Apparently freedom of expression and democracy.

 As China sweeps all before it on the Olympic medals front, I am reminded that this sort of medal table after just two days, was what we were used to seeing in the days of the Soviet Empire. When, along with their acolyte East Germany (where women really were the equal of men, well at least chemically), the tables were always dominated by Socialist sports, and only challenged by the capitalism of the sponsored US collegiate system.

Olympic Table After Just Two Days

Depressingly, the UK were about 16th in the 1980's as well ..... you don't get much change for £20bn these days.

Near Death Visions Of Heaven

Atheist or believer, we all have a version of whats going to happen when we die. For most of us its speculative at best, often for believers in an afterlife its based on the tunnel of light stories we hear from those who have had near death experiences ..... you know, the  "Go to the light Carol Anne" kinda moment from 'Poltergeist' (1982).

However there are those for whom there is allegedly a more direct experience of heaven and hell ...... they are often children who are revived after 'dying', and then recount wondrous tales of meeting God in Heaven and talking to Jesus etc. They use the familiar themes of being surrounded by light, greeted by relatives and friends who have died, and being given a tour by God, Jesus or Angels.

Needless to say that these people are much in demand on the Christian TV and bible belt circuits in the US. Some have become quasi famous, such as Colton Burpo (really, that's his name) who is the son of a Methodist Pastor, and who appears on TV with his revelations. He even has had a New York Times bestseller 'Heaven Is for Real '.

Colton Burpo on TV

There are web pages defending or debunking these visionaries .... just Google the name and 'debunk' or 'defence' and hundreds of web pages appear. This does apear to be an american phenomena, where Christianity has a harder edge than elesewhere in the world, probably because its not had to bump up against Islam too much as yet.

I don't mind these people having their ideas, however irrational, as long as they don't impact me .... especially as the alternative creed seems to be the sort of Islam that my previous blog post has highlighted. But I can't help pointing out that there are a couple of incongruities in these tales that should be highlighted.

Firstly, these 'heaven visitors' always meet their friends and relatives, looking exactly as they did when they died .... so old people remain 'looking old' and disfigured people still look like that  ..... so heaven is populated by billions of old or maimed people from millenia past.

Secondly, it appears that for most of these 'heaven visitors', Protestant Christianity appears to be the key to the opening of the heavenly gates ... so the rest of us are struggling.

Finally, most modern Christian creeds, including Protestants follow the Trinitarianism belief in the nature of God i.e.  God the Father, the Son (Jesus Christ), and the Holy Spirit.  This was affirmed by the The 'First Council of Nicaea' in 327 AD. However virtually all of these children 'heaven visitors' state that God and Jesus are seperate, with Jesus definitely in the lower ranking, sitting on a seat below that of God.

Emperor Constantine burns Arian books. Oops!

This apparently proves Arius and the 'heretic' creed of Arianism to have been correct when they asserted that God had primacy over the son, and there had been a time when God alone had been in Heaven.

Oops .... that can't be right can it?

'Maria' Islamic TV

I can only believe that many Islamists are actually proud of being socially backward. How else can you explain the fact that the Egyptian Revolution has thrown up the Muslim Brotherhood as rulers, and as a sign of how regressive the revolution has been for women in that land ..... 'Maria' Islamic TV. This is a TV channel where women appear as monsters without faces ......

Maria Islamic TV ..... Egypt

... its hard to credit that they expect that to be taken seriously, and even attract women to become more interested in being hardcore Islamists.

Let's not forget that this is the same country where gangs of men actively chase down and sexually assault and rape women in the streets ..... where women protesters are violated by gangs or even by 'medics' inside police stations.

Muslim women are treated as little more than objects by Islamists, owned by, and available to anyone to be sexually assaulted if they are not 'protected' by men.  A 2008 report by the Egyptian Centre for Women's Rights said two-thirds of women in the country experienced serious sexual harassment on a daily basis, and yet the Islamists consider that they treat their women better in Islamic lands than in non Muslim countries .... it would be laughable if it wasn't so bloody terrifying.

Women in the 'West', you just don't realise the full horror of what is being attempted to be implemented in the mosques of Bradford/Preston/Leicester/Oldham/Luton etc etc ........

Letters From The Dead

I have blogged before about how the past can sometimes speak eloquently to us, even over the millennia, as well as stories of brave soldiers from the US and other countries.

Sergeant Steve Flaherty

So maybe it should be no surprise that letters from a conflict closer in time can do the same.

Lego Wonderlands

I have to admit that despite never having owned any, I am a bit of a sucker for walking in a 'Lego Wonderland', so when I read that a moving replica of a jet engine has been made out of thousands of Lego bricks, I was naturally intrigued. It turns out that the half-size replica of the Rolls-Royce Trent 1000 engine was intended to inspire  teens and kids to become engineers.

Lego Jet Engine

I on the other hand was more inspired by stories and creations like that of Gerry Burrows, 'Garrison of Moriah' a blend of Star Wars and Lord of the rings, it took 250,000 Lego pieces and  many months ....

Garrison Of Moriah

...... inspired by 'Helms Keep' in Lord Of The Rings, and the 'Battle Star' from Star Wars, this great creation is pure magic.

There are many more pictures on this link as well as links to other Lego Wonderlands.

Greek Villains

As many of us have grown to expect from the BBC's 'PC' culture these days ......... Western culture and history is no longer acceptable and we have to take the history of the middle east as the 'real' history, and our own as a 'colonialists' view. Of course these third world countries, which are in the main Islamic and where the populations generally believe in witchcraft, and also that Sharks, Vultures and various other animals are Israeli spy's, also fabricate history to fit their current needs.

But hey, what the heck, that's no more than the BBC does with British myths and legends.

So it was no surprise to find that in the wars between the nascent cultures that eventually became the West and the Middle East, the BBC now suggests that from outside Greece, it was the Greeks, and their proto - democratic traditions, which incidentally informed the BBC's charter, who were essentially in the wrong. The Persian (Iranian) tradition ... which has resulted in the Mullahs, was really the good guys. Alexander the Great was a villain of the first order, in fact one of a string of Greek villains, who caused the cultural rift between East and West by their boorish behaviour towards the civilised Persians.

Alexander The Great - Basileus of Macedon

Of course this being the middle east, where history is always re-written to claim that they are supreme, the story adds that "in the great Iranian national epic, the Shahnameh, written in the 10th Century AD, Alexander is no longer a wholly foreign prince but one born of a Persian father". Ah that explains it, a Greek is really half Persian, and thus another Myth and legend becomes the reality .... much like the BBC's view of Britain.

So there we are then .... what a waste of 2,500 yrs. All we had to have done to reach a state of civilisation and bliss was for the Greeks to have surrendered to the Emperor God Kings, Darius or Xerxes, and it would have been the making of us, living under these despotic god kings for millennia would have taken us to the same state as Iran, or Saudi Arabia, which is obviously a better one than our own.

That course would have been bound to end up with democracy and the BBC ...... so what are we all waiting for, lets turn towards the Middle East and prostrate.

Summers Washed Out

Anyone living in Britain knows that we have the worst climate in the world .... summers are like winters and it rains and rains and rains. Despite this, we often get told we are in drought conditions and need to stop watering our gardens, and this happened this year. But everyone gave up trying to enforce these hosepipe bans after months and months of rain .... 

Not So Funny Joke ......

We are all confidently expecting the Olympics to be washed out, in yet another national humiliation which will please the French and many others of our 'friends' in Europe.
 
The only weather in Britain is whether its ever going to stop raining ........

Google Blog Thefts

Apparently all my posts since the start of this Blog, up until this year have been stolen by an Indonesian thief, who has done the same to a number of English language blogger sites. This person has probably done so to try and generate traffic to their own crappy little web pages, in order to make money from Google's AdSense.  I wouldn't mind so much, but they have stripped all reference to my Blog site from the content, and are therefore passing the content off as their own, kinda (as if anyone really would be taken in when it refers to the West, and not Asia).

Of course the irony is that this blog can hardly be described as a friend of Islam, so my Indonesian friend may be risking a visit from the Mullah and his mates, if they ever read some of the posts he claims are his ......    

We all plagiarise to some extent on the web .... but most of us don't copy sites verbatim or steal others images and bandwidth ..... but there are totally unscrupulous people out there who think other peoples work is fair game. There is apparently nothing that I can do about it, Google are not interested in this kind of theft, although ultimately it must be in Google's interest to encourage unique content, in order to maximise their own revenue from advertisers and discourage theft.

So from now on all my posts will carry back links to No PC Views within them either at the bottom, and or within the text ...... and I have also turned off and disabled the RSS feeds to hopefully stop further scraping. Its a pity, but we all have a duty to fight back.

Cat's Skeleton Up A Tree

What happens when  a cat is spotted up a tree?

Cats In Tree Are Not Stuck!

Well usually there is an assumption that its stuck. Followed by a 999 call to the fire brigade who are then expected to 'rescue' the cat. This often involves a lot of spitting, bared teeth and scratches .... and that's just the fireman.

Now the fire brigade in the UK have said enough is enough ..... cats in trees will come down when humans go away. Last year alone in London they were called out to rescue a chimp in a chimney, a parrot trapped in its cage, an iguana stuck on a roof and a hamster trapped in a disabled lift. They want people to stop wasting their time and in what has to be quote of the week. The RSPCA (animal protection in UK) inspector Klare Kennett, said ....

"After all, when was the last time you saw a cat's skeleton up a Tree?"

You Don't See These Very Often

Killer Clowns BBC

Talking of 'Evil' Organisations ..... I saw a strange message from the BBC websites today. They were having server problems and this prompted this screen display.

BBC Server Problems ...

 

There is something creepy about the picture ..... And why the hell flames?

Chrome's Commissars

I once asked the question  .....

"Are Google Bad Guys, Or Good Guys?"

Well today I got the answer, when once again as a blogger, I opened up to edit a post, only to be greeted by the message

Isn't this An Evil Thing?

 

So in the last 12 months or so, Google Bloggers have been expelled from 'Internet Explorer', and now pushed off the worlds best browser, 'FireFox'. All in the name of Google trying to force users to take up their rather over hyped 'Chrome' browser.

This is flatly contrary to Googles informal 'Motto' of "Don't be evil" ....

Of course I will have to use Chrome for editing my blog (for the time being), or risk losing my blog after all these years .... but I can tell the commissars down at Google, that as a result of this communist tactic of forcing people to have no choice, I will never ever use Chrome for browsing or any activity other than blog editing.

Chromes Commissars

So in answer to my original question, I am now forced to declare that

Google Is Evil

 

........... possibly. It could be that I have to just update FireFox.

Update: Normal service resumed when Firefox patched an update a few days later. As to to content scraping issue mentioned in the comments. I have just lived with it ... that particular scraper has gone.

 

'Sorry, the blog at nato6.blogspot.com has been removed.'

The Court Of The Mad Hatter

In a sign that South Africa really is now just another Black African nation, it announced that Zenani Mandela-Dlamini (a Daughter of Nelson Mandela), has been been appointed as ambassador to Argentina.

Practising For The Court Of The Mad Hatter

Nepotism is running rampant in South Africa these days .... the new royalty is being created as we watch.

 

Still she will be in good company, with El Presidenti Kirchner ruling the roost, in a manner that an African politician would be proud of ..... the court of the mad hatter is being assembled.

The Road To Sickville

The USA has set a lot of trends over the last century, and California was often the place where these trends started ...... sadly, these trends have changed over the last 30 years, and now Stockton in California, is part of a new trend: When it became the largest city in the US to go broke ..... yes it became part of a modern phenomena, of American cities that have gone broke and declared themselves bankrupt.

The affects of this are catastrophic, firstly Stockton has earned the title of "America's most miserable city", with an unemployment rate twice the national average, and a murder rate that allows it to be considered amongst the contenders for being declared "America's murder capital", with gangs battling it out for control of the cities streets.

This is in direct response to police numbers having been cut by one-third (along with their pay) ....with the city not even able to afford to prosecute many offences. Many of those who have been arrested have been let out of jail early .... in fact many US cities are on the verge of collapse, and another California town, 'Mammoth Lakes', has just filed for bankruptcy.

It'll Take More Than An Enema To Cure US Cities

A lot of this can be laid at the door of the (admittedly extremely expensive) health care, and decent pensions that public sector workers used to be able to expect as part of their conditions, for working in the public service. But the US mania for cutting taxes using such devices as Proposition 13, which swept across the US from California in the 1970's and 1980's, meant that the many cities and states in the US no longer pay for their public sector by the income from property taxes. The belief that decent affordable health care is 'socialism' is patently stupid, but many Republicans in the 'Tea Party' believe that 'freedom', is paying no taxes and having no government.

But the real result of this idea, once put into practice by bankruptcy, is crime, squalor, and violence, with dirty streets and no social cohesiveness. 'White flight' from cities and towns like Stockton is a reality ... The ideals represented by "Bedford Falls" and "Mayberry" in the media, weren't built on the Tea Party principles, but rather on Presidents Roosevelt's ideals of a public conscience, where each paid his due. The US seems a long way from the dream now ...

Wasn't it Kris Kristofferson who wrote: "Freedom is another word for having nothing else to lose"? Well there are a lot of people with freedom at the moment in towns like Stockton California.

UK Self Defence Force

The world must be a safer place than ever before, and the UK safer than at any time since Wellington was supreme commander. That's the only conclusion one can draw from the fact that every UK 'defence review' (usually at the behest of the 'Chancellor of the Exchequer') in the last 60 years has concluded that the British Armed forces would somehow be better for being pruned, and would always result in a "forward-looking, modern fighting machine", or words to that affect.

The Army has been cut decade after decade.

We now have been left with a 'self defence force' rather than an army .... as its been cut to its smallest size since the Napoleonic wars, with most analysts considering that at least 100,000 men is the minimum size for a national army.

The shame is great, and to think it was a Conservative government that dealt the British Army the mortal  blow that Napoleon, the Kaiser, Hitler and Stalin couldn't.

Summer Madness

Following on from an earlier post on Health and Safety madness in the UK, there has been a story from the USA which matches, or even exceeds, the PC lunacy that has infected us in the UK. In that post, I half jokingly suggested that it wouldn't be too long "before the firemen refuse to enter buildings to rescue people because of Health and Safety concerns, or police let criminals escape because riding a motor bike was too dangerous?".

Tom Lopez - Lifeguard

Well, little did I realise that it would only be a month ....