Mad Dogs and March Hares

The threats contained in North Korea's Pyongyang statements about a state of war now being in place with South Korea are nothing new from a state where madness reigns .....

 

Background Maps Show Fanciful
Plans To Attack The USA

.....in fact they have regularly threatened violence and often backed this up with physical attacks.

 

Criminals Miracle Cures

Remember when Ronnie Biggs was let out of prison because he was dying .... 'Not long to live', they claimed, 'compassionate grounds' they said, doctors have said there is "not much hope"

Ronnie Biggs - Still Alive And
Giving Two Fingers To The World.

..... that was June 2009. Well surprise, surprise, he's still alive, and although frail at 83, he still has enough wits to give the newspapers a quote, and two fingers, while attending at the funeral of another of the Great Train Robbers, Bruce Reynolds who he described as 'a good man'. 

The Great Escapes

In Canada, two prisoners made a daring escape from St-Jerome prison, near Montreal, by climbing ropes into a hovering helicopter ...... 

 

Canadian Prison Escape

Police later said they arrested one of the prisoners and two other men. The second escapee was detained several hours later. And that was that ..... 

All Tarred With The Same Brush

In previous reports I have commented on the extreme Muslims attacking Christians, and Hindus, and extreme Jews attacking Christians and Muslims, and now we have reports from Sri Lanka and Burma of extreme Buddhists attacking Christians and Muslims ..... its hard to put a price on the cost of lives and misery that this all results in.

Buddhist Fighting Monks - A New Phenomenon

What struck me particularly was the reasons for the attacks as formulated by the Buddhist monks most responsible "Muslims are trying to convert people, building too many mosques" .... that Muslims had put out the idea that Sinhalese families should become smaller and all the while "Then they started to increase their own population," they argue.

Herod's Colourful Past

Further to my post last week comes the revelation (if that's the right word), that doubts have been raised that Herod actually built the second temple .....

Now I was under the impression that all archaeological excavations on the temple mount were banned by the Arabs (they claim its sacrilege, but its believed to stop Jews uncovering the sites of the 1st and 2nd temples) - although there is suspicion that they have been actively tunnelling underneath, and destroying anything not 'Islamic' that they find. Personally I would have said, 'to the victors the spoils', and evicted the Arabs from the mount in 1967, making it a secular free site (like the Sophia Hague in Constantinople) ... after all, the Arabs only took it by conquest themselves.

However, all that argument aside, apparently archaeologists have found a Roman coin under the walls which was dated from a Proconsul 20 yrs after the death of Herod, and working the on the basis that whatever is built on top of a coin, must have gone up later than the date of the coin, this suggests that the wall was built during or after that Proconsuls service. So maybe I was giving him too much credit ..... still, out of curiosity, I have tried to find out whether the walls of the second temple and the surrounding complex would have been painted (as so much of antiquity was ....).

Its seems inconceivable that they were just white (in an age when every other building and temple was painted but ......) ... it may have been white walls of marble, and resting on pink coloured stones ........ but while the inner temple and the temple veil are described in detail by the Jewish historian Josephus, who would have been familiar with the Temple before the destruction in 70 CE, the rest of the building isn't..

The Second Temple - Jerusalem

What he said in 'Wars of the Jews, Book 5', was that .... "it had golden doors fifty-five cubits high and sixteen broad. Before these hung a veil (katapevtasma) of equal length, of Babylonian tapestry (Babul!nioÍ poikilto;Í), with embroidery of blue,and fine linen, of scarlet also and purple, wrought with marvellous skill. Nor was this mixture of materials without its mystic meaning: it typified the universe. For the scarlet seemed emblematical of fire, the fine linen of the earth, the blue of the air, and the purple of the sea; the comparison in two cases being suggested by their colour, and in that of the fine linen and purple by their origin, as the one is produced by the earth and the other by the sea. On this tapestry was portrayed a panorama of the heavens, the signs of the Zodiac excepted. . . . The innermost recess measured twenty cubits, and was screened in like manner from the outer portion by a veil (katapetavsmati). In this stood nothing whatever: unapproachable, inviolable, invisible to all, it was called the Holy of Holies". (J.W. 5.5.4 §211–5.5 §219 LCL).

But no one really described the complex buildings outer appearance in such detail .... although the Temple itself is described as a building of shining white marble and gold, with bronze entrance doors. It was said that you could not look at the Temple in daylight as it would blind you. It even had gold spikes on the roof line of the building to prevent birds sitting on the Temple and soiling it. Josephus also speaks of the doors being “covered with variegated veils”, which may not be a reference to the main temple veil on the 'Holy of Holies' and refer to other doorways and walls.

The Second Temple Would Have Been Colourful

Personally I suspect that outside of the inner sanctum (which as described above, was white and gold), that the rest of the complex was painted much like the palaces of Herod and temples in Rome, Greece and Egypt, but there is no proof of this.

Herod's Palaces - As Grand As The Emperor Augustus's

Herod The Great Builder

While Israel worries about what to do about its growing population of the ultra orthodox, who harp back to an earlier era in Jewish history, using religious practise as an excuse not to work for the state, or anybody else.

 

Herod The Great

Ironically, all the latest archaeological evidence is that long before the advent of 'socialism', and the welfare benefits that allow the ultra orthodox men to not work, ancient Judaism was place where hard work was actually the norm for all but the elite.

Ultra Lazy

I once wrote about the ultra Orthodox Jews who were exempt from National Army service and lived off welfare benefits in Israel ... they were the fastest growing group in the country and threatened its very existence (with predictions that they would make up 20 % of the population by the end of the decade) .... well in one of those strange quirks of fate that seem to haunt 'peoples of destiny' they may be in for a very rude awakening.

After decades of being in government (as part of various coalitions and alliances), the recent election has thrown up a centre right alliance which is largely secular, and has excluded the 'ultras' their say in government .... one of the new parties who have joined the alliance, insisted that the ultra Orthodox exemption from the Army be revoked and that they no longer be eligible for state handouts if they don't want to work.

Ultra Orthodox Jews Argue With Non Orthodox Jews

Many middle-class Israelis support the change. "We have a growing sector in the Jewish majority who are not productive economically, they do not take part in civic operations and even have an ideology of looking after themselves not the state," says Dan Avnon, a politics professor at Hebrew University. This echoes the comments of Yair Lapid (leader of the centrist Yesh Atid party) who has said that "This has generated a lot of resentment. It came to a crisis point because Israel has financial strains. Now this is something that will change, it seems, over the next few years."

Apparently this change will start with the state subsidies to Jewish seminaries being cut and ultra Orthodox schools forced to include non-religious subjects in their core curricula ..... hmm we will see about that last part.

As we have remarked before these ultra groups are hardline, violently noisy (with accusations of physical assaults on women), and they are not going to take this lying down (which is ironic for a group who won't work) .... they have already issued statement condemning the alliance partners and the terms underpinning it ..... MP Rabbi Nissim Zeev of the 'Shas' party said that "The reason they got together was just to remove the ultra-Orthodox parties from the coalition. This is really very ugly." ... however its not likely that he and his hat wearing friends will have to wait long ..... the coalition is unlikely to be as stable as the last one (In power for four years) with many predicting that it will not last for more than two years.

Then the Mad Hatter will shout 'time for tea', and all the seats will be rearranged, with every possibility that the ultra's will be back as 'King Makers', and back on welfare again.

Sinful Compassion

When an Iranian politician shows some compassion to a woman, who also happens to be non Muslim and not related to him, he runs risks, and this is what happened to Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. He was photographed partially embracing the mother of Hugo Chavez (a political friends and ally), at his funeral in non Muslim Venezuela.

Natural Human Compassion or Islamic Sin?

So what looked like simple human kindness and compassion to most of the world ..... is condemned as 'sinful' and 'un-Islamic' in Iran, where all hell broke loose with photo shop claim, and counter claim, made. They even blamed the 'The Daily Telegraph' newspaper for faking the picture at one point, while publishing a faked one of him kissing some Iranian politician (who they claimed was one of Chavez's uncles .... you can't make this stuff up).

Which is Photo-shopped?

However what I took from this story is what it said about those Muslims, who complained that he was 'Un-Islamic' and had 'committed a sin' by comforting a woman in her grief ....and they believe they are superior.

Weird Anniversary

In a damning milestone in a nations history .... Pakistan People's Party (PPP) has completed its full five-year term in office - the first time a civilian government has managed this feat in Pakistan's 66-year history ... Of course the army are actually a government inside a government and so technically the civilian government has no power over vast tracts of the economy, foreign policy and law and order. In particular, the I.S.I determines the policy towards India and Afghanistan - both of which are troubled by the ongoing support towards the Taliban in Kashmir and Afghanistan ... a policy which breeds terrorism at home.

An attempt in 2008 by the government to place the maverick ISI intelligence service under civilian control was rejected by the military and that set the scene for the weak regime ever afterwards. Strangely, they now have an interim government until the elections expected in May, so plenty of time for an upset, but its still thought that they may well manage to do the first ever civilian to civilian regime change in its history as well ..... although once again, judicial activism threatens to destabilise matters.

Credit to the politicians for actually getting this far, but their inability to finally get a grip on the military means that that there is no guarantee that the country will do nothing but slowly slide into chaos .... the country is actually breaking up, but in a glacial manner, with no one able to take decisive action on the several crisis ... the Baluchistan separatist insurgency is not dampening down, the economy (where virtually no one pays taxes - leaving the country reliant on US 'aid'), and the energy situation (power Blackouts are a daily occurrence), have generally worsened. All of this is exacerbated by a population growth that is out of control.

Democracy In Pakistan - Only Skin Deep

The military could tackle the internal militancy, stop the running sore that's Afghanistan and Kashmir, and improve relations with India and other neighbours at a stroke, but refuses to do so .... this means that the other issues can't be addressed either. The Asian Development Bank has warned that Pakistan faces a severe balance of payments crisis and has to borrow at least US $9bn (£6bn) from the IMF before the year is out ... it may not get it and the country's foreign exchange reserves have fallen to cover only two months of imports.

All the mainstream parties are fiddling while Rome burn .... many of them actively support the terror groups who destroy the country in an orgy of sectarian ethnic cleansing.

A Sad Day For Freedom and Democracy

Yesterday was a sad day in British history, as for the first time in 200 years, the politicians (and a lobby group in favour of curbing the press), decided in secret negotiations in the middle of the night, that we should reintroduce legislative controls over the British press. 

 

John Milton Called For Press
Freedom In 1644 In Areopagitica

 

Licensing of the press in Britain was abolished in 1695 ....

Cane Toads Forever

The cane toad story is one that we have followed with much interest and not a little amusement for a number of years .... whilst I am aware that the cane toads are not really a laughing matter .. the fact is that toads are essentially funny (toad of toad hall et al) in the Western culture.

So the latest cunning plan, which is to reintroduce the tadpoles of a small green frog, into the breeding ponds of the cane toads is mildly amusing ... apparently the tadpoles of this frog (a native to Australia), are better competitors for the food supply in the ponds than cane toad tadpoles, and it means that less cane toads reach a size big enough to leave the tadpole stage .... the green tree frog spawn can't actually eat the cane toad tadpoles, but the restriction in the food supply they cause, cuts their overall numbers.

Its been party time for Cane Toads

However I can't help thinking that a toad that migrates 40 km per annum, has so far crossed every barrier except total desert, and conquered the north east of Australia, is not going to be beaten back by some competitive tadpoles ..... so we won't hold our breath.

More Labour Immigration Lies

It's laughable how the Labour Party still try to pretend that 'mass immigration' hasn't been a disaster ..... Yvette Cooper will admit that Labour 'has not always got it right on immigration' - (How about never?), and that it should be "fair for all" - (How about fair for the indigenous population, not to the immigrants?), and that her party hasn't always been "ready to talk about problems" ... not once admitting that it was actually a deliberate act of social vandalism intended to change Britain forever.

However it now says that it gets it (shutting the stable gates after the horse has bolted), and will say it knows that it "that needs to change". This will not mean a "move to the right" she argued - but will be an effort to distinguish between "immigration that works and immigration that doesn't .... as Ed Milliband has said, we know Labour got some things wrong on immigration in government."

She even claims that "We will support the government where it introduces sensible policies and we will point out where they are getting things wrong. But we won't enter an arms race of rhetoric on immigration - and we hope the prime minister won't either. That's not honest, or good for Britain." So in other words, they still want to control and set the agenda, and declare parts of the subject as out of bounds, and beyond debate.

Of course we all know that part of the current reduction in net migration by 72,000 since the election, has been caused by more Britons leaving the UK or choosing not to return, as well as a drop of 38,000 in students coming to study in the UK, is partially achieved by ever more white Britons fleeing the UK.

But she can't even be honest about that, merely adding that "Few think the answer to Britain's immigration challenges is to persuade more Brits to go away."

Laughable  ... as mentioned earlier 'white flight' is a direct result of a Labour Party decision to let rip with immigration as a matter of policy in the 1990's ..... a decision to "open up the UK to mass migration".  One that Labour Government Ministers were 'reluctant' to discuss such a move publicly, for fear it would alienate its "core working class vote". Andrew Neather, a former adviser to PM Tony Blair, and Home Secretaries Jack Straw and David Blunkett, has admitted publicly that it was a politically motivated attempt by ministers to radically change the country and "rub the Right's nose in diversity".

Labour Party Still Proud Of Mass Immigration

The Tory Immigration Minister, Mark Harper, responding to Ms Cooper's comments, said that "I don't think I heard an apology for Labour letting immigration get out of control while they were in power. We saw net migration of 2.2 million when they were in power." ..... many of these were semi skilled third world immigrants, many of whom actually dislike us and our culture.

UKIP waits in the wings for the wary ............

War Machines

In most Sci-Fi movies these days, the humans face at least one android or robot in combat (usually the human wins) e.g. 2001 - A Space Odyssey (HAL 9000), 'The Terminator' series, 'Attack of the Clones', 'Cyborg', 'Screamers', 'Universal Soldiers', 'IRobot', and 'Soldier' to name but a few. There are also the mandroids (part organic intelligence, in machine bodies), with villains such as the 'Daleks', 'Cybermen', and the 'Borg'

Well it appears that the days when this may come true are getting ever closer, with the use of war drones in Pakistan / Afghanistan, and pilot-less war-planes being trialled as I write. In fact, apparently over 70 countries world wide now have some sort of military drone or robot developments under way, and this includes Iran and North Korea.

This has worried some anti war campaigners, who rather strangely believe that this development is somehow more terrifying, than what's currently going on places such as Syria, Iraq, and Pakistan .... that somehow being killed by a robot or drone, is somehow more terrible than when a human does the killing face to face (so to speak).

Daleks Invasion of Earth - who needs the Terminator?

I beg to differ with this viewpoint ... robots are not cruel 'per se', they simply follow the orders they were programmed with .... the human killers operating in places like Syria, Iraq, and Pakistan, will not just kill, but will torture as well .... and worst of all, they also enjoy it.

Buddha, Barbie and Bart

Its always a surprise that the militant religion of peace, is so insecure .....

Hijab Barbie - Banned.

..... it never allows proselytising by other religions for fear of losing adherents.

 

Pope Francis I - Jorge Bergoglio

A new Pope has emerged from a conclave .... leader of the Roman Catholic world, and the most powerful figure in the Christian world.

HABEMVS PAPAM

"I bring you news of great joy ..... we have a pope" 

Pope Francis I - Jorge Bergoglio

A momentous day for South America, Argentina, and the south, and the first time the old pope has witnessed his on successor being enthroned in hundreds of years.

No doubt reams of press and coverage will be about, but this is one of the first posts .... 1.2 billion Catholics and the world are expectant. He takes over at a time when the Christian world is under assault by another 'world religion', and where in the developed world, belief in religion has fallen (except where immigration has brought Islam lapping at the door), in fact to the point where Western governments (including the UK), legislate against Catholic beliefs ..... indeed Argentina is one of these countries where the secular law has clashed with those church teachings e.g. Gay Marriage.

A time of change for the Church in the West, but not in the South ..... maybe the centre of the church is about to move away from Europe for ever, as this Popes age means that there will likely be another conclave inside the next decade, and that may mean another South American or African Pope.

Batman Forever

Ah, how we at PC towers love these 'superhero' stories .... I thought that they had all but disappeared, after a spate of them a few years ago, and then suddenly, faster than you can say "Pow, Chop and Splat", the caped crusader springs back into action, and in Bradford of all places.

Batman - "Pow, Chop, Splat"

He appeared in the dead of the night (well in the early hours of the 25th of February), at Trafalgar House Police Station, and has handed over a wanted man at a Bradford police station before disappearing into the night.

Its Just Not Cricket

A young man develops a serious drug habit, being described as a habitual cocaine user .... he then drives his car at night, after at least a heavy drinking session, and possibly after taking cocaine as well. The inevitable happens and the police spot him. 

Cricket and Drugs

He drives off and after a chase he then abandons the car. Finally he then runs down some railway lines in his efforts to evade the police, where he apparently steps on the electrified middle line and is either killed outright, or blacks out, in any event he is then run over by a train and dies.

 

UKIP Ammunition

It's rare that anyone ever tells us exactly how many people from abroad live in the UK ..... but the BBC has provided the figures via the Office of National Statistics.

The Number Of EU Residents in the UK (possibly)

The reason for all this honesty is that UKIP are on the rise ..... and the Politically Correct chattering classes of the left and the media are suddenly fearful that instead of the tame Tories, they will get the wild card UKIP party, pushing an agenda that they find anathema  .... leaving the EU, and stopping immigration. 

Social Engineering

The Left Wing spent many years in trying to ensure that the UK ceased to remain a 'white' European nation .... this self loathing for their own nation and ethnic group has almost certainly led to issues that will wreck their dreams of  Britain free of white males ..... because this sort of ethnic social engineering, has consequences, and most of them apparently total surprises for the self styled 'Left Wing Intelligentsia' ....

• We now have Jihadists, and Islamic terrorists, brought up in the Muslim ghettos that litter our northern towns, and London.
• Muslim women in the UK, risk forced marriages, denial of education (many girls simply 'disappear' from schools), honour killings..... which oddly we were told we had sent soldiers to Afghanistan to stop.
• Estimates suggest that there are as many as 10,000 'slaves' in the UK, most of them Black or Asian (Muslims) ..... although not all, as the recent conviction of Irish travellers for having slave workers proved.
• The population of the UK is predicted to raise to 78 million (almost all attributed to immigration decisions), just at at time (2050) when being able to feed ourselves would be very useful as the world reaches mass starvation time ... We will need another planet to resource us by 2030.
• Migration Watch estimates 550,000 extra school places will be needed by 2015 at a cost of £40bn because the number of children born in the UK to parents from abroad has more than doubled in 10 years and is expected to keep rising, just when we need to cut public spending.

Social Engineering

All this is a social disaster on a massive scale for the UK, but not one word of apology from the architects of mass non European immigration, who are still leaders of the Labour Party.

Why do I suspect that I will never hear a real one either ....... just some semi justifications, couched in terms like 'we didn't get everything right'  .... 'we have to be fair to immigrants' etc etc.

The Curious Ape

Apparently we are curious because our great ape ancestors were curious creatures. Scientists at Whipsnade Zoo in Bedfordshire set up tests ....

Clever Chimps Share Our Ancestors

.... and found that Chimpanzees enjoy trying to solve brainteasers, even when there is no obvious rewards. In other words the challenge and the satisfaction of meeting it were the reward in themselves.

We Are Wot We Speak

Keeping on the language discussions .... it appears that the language you speak, and how well you speak it are indicators of your likelihood to save, exercise or even smoke.

Doesn't sound plausible does it? But according to Yale University behavioural economist, Keith Chen languages can be split into two groups: strong and weak Future-Time Reference (FTR) languages. Examples given in each group are:

Strong FTR languages: Chaha, English, French, Fula, Gamo, Hausa, Igbo, Italian, Moore, Russian, Tigrinya, and Tamil.
Weak FTR languages: Amharic, Dyula, Estonian, German, Malay, Mandarin, Oromo, Sidamo, and Yoruba.

Being a member of a strong FTR language means that you are more like to differentiate or disassociate between the present and the future e.g. 'I will go, am going, or have to go to the pub', whereas a weaker FTR may say 'I go pub' or 'morgen regnet es' - it rains tomorrow.

So? Well apparently our old friend statistics show that speakers of languages which only use the present tense when dealing with the future i.e. Weak FTR languages, are more likely to save money, than those who speak languages which require the use a future tense i.e. Strong FTR languages.

He offers figures which seem to show that weak FTR users are:

• Likely to have saved 39% more by the time they retire.
• 31% more likely to save in a year.
• 24% less likely to smoke.
• 29% more likely to be physically active.
• 13% less likely to be obese.

And the reasons according to Professor Chen are that "If your language separates the future and the present in its grammar that seems to lead you to slightly disassociate the future from the present every time you speak. That effectively makes it harder for you to save." ... or give up cigarettes, or exercise etc etc.

All Languages are either FTR Strong or Weak

Of course economists, linguists and social anthropologists are already arguing against his findings, saying that there are a number of cultural, social, or economic reasons why different language speakers behave differently .... and yet I find this argument superficially compelling. The English speaking world is generally poorer at saving, and long-term planning etc than the German speaking world. However on the negative side, our CHAVS are renowned for not being able to get tenses correct - the classic is "Can you borrow me some money" .... so you would think that they would save more than the rest of us .... which of course they don't.

In fact you could argue that the fact that the UK faces winters of blackouts and other infrastructure issues is down to the fact that our politicians find it easy to disassociate the present from the future when its only the future that benefits. Tony Blair was aware of the need to set the nuclear reactors building programme in motion to save the UK from issue 25 yrs later .... but he flimflammed and kicked it down the path .... now we still haven't started the building and face an energy gap in which we may have to reopen coal and gas fired generating plants, to stop us huddling in the dark.

Who would have thought it was partially down to language, and not just political cowardice .....

Chai Boys - Afghanistan

The BBC have reported this week on the corruption in the Afghan security forces in Helmand province and elsewhere in Afghanistan ..... in particular they were apparently shocked that young boys are taken by force for the personal pleasure of police commanders .....

 

"Chai Boys" - An Afghan Tradition

.... They are known colloquially as "chai boys," and the practise as 'bacha bazi', literally “boy play". Gosh, Muslim homosexuals everywhere, in a land where its illegal .... who would have thought it after reading the Quran and Hadiths.