SATURDAY NIGHT THE STRANGLERS, BLONDIE.

The Stranglers with Tramp. From the 1981 album La Folie.




At 77, Jet Black must be the oldest active drummer. Though this year he did not tour due to health problems.



Blondie with Call me. From the soundtrack of the 1980 movie American Gigolo. You know - if you're a dinosaur like me - with Richard Gere.




Did you know Debbie Harry once was a Playboy Bunny?


Not that I care. Nite.



MFBB.

INSANITY IN THE UK: MURDERERS AND CRIMINALS FROM THIRD WORLD HELLHOLES WELCOME; AMERICAN, AUSTRALIAN AND CANADIAN FAMILIES FACE DEPORTATION.

Fellow blogger Cambrian Dissenters has an article up that makes your blood want to boil:

"A recent news story concerning hard working families from the civilized world getting deported while tens of thousands of terrorists, murderers, rapists and an assortment of other violent criminals are welcomed with open arms, illustrates perfectly that the erasure of civilization in Great Britain is the cold calculated policy of a government who are determined to fundamentally transform the country on behalf of the UN/EU global elite.

American couple Jim and Vaughn Cavanagh along with their two young daughters have been given notice to leave the country despite supporting local jobs by investing $150K in their small business. They pay for private health insurance, private dentistry and private education for their daughters so they are not a drain on scarce public services. Their crime was 'not meeting the criteria' to remain.





Canadian couple Jason and Christy Zeilsdorf along with their five children, the youngest of which was born in Scotland, have been given notice to leave despite investing some $300K in their small business. Their crime was failing to employ two full time workers for twelve months as their business could only afford one.

In the same article Australian couple Gregg and Kathryn Brain along with their young son Lachlan have been given notice to leave despite the fact that they re-located halfway across the planet via a Home Office immigration program. Their crime was that the Home Office changed the criteria after they had sold up their home and possessions and re-located.

Lower down the page in the same article the shocking truth is revealed about the attitude and the different government criteria they apply to civilized and uncivilized immigrants. If this isn't deliberate de-civilizing, also known as ethnic cleansing, I don't know what is.

While these three law abiding, hard working families are being kicked out a convicted Iraqi child abuser Howri Hamad Garib is being allowed to stay because his crimes are not deemed serious enough by the Home Office to warrant deportation.

If this isn't enough, convicted Al-Qaeda terrorist, Baghdad Meziani, was allowed to remain in Great Britain upon his release from prison after serving only five years of an eleven year sentence despite being recommended for deportation back to Algeria by the judge.

Double murderer, Saliman Barci, an illegal immigrant from Albania, has been allowed to use taxpayer funded legal aid to fight his extradition back to his homeland and a twenty-five year prison sentence.

Despite supposed strict vetting procedures, Barci and his wife posed as Kosovan refugees to falsely claim asylum and eventual British citizenship, a fact that the American people should take note of with respect to their President's promises to vet Syrian so-called refugees...."

The Daily Mail has the goods (or should I say the bads) on the Zielsdorf family:





Jesus Christ. Read, just READ, the names of those five beautiful children: Lochlan, Ariana, Aelwyn, Bryn and Kiernach. Lochlan and Kiernach are Irish in origin, Aelwyn and Bryn Welsh. Through and through wonderfully sounding, ancient European, Celtic names. The only exception is Ariana, which is Greek/Italian but which may also have a Welsh origin (since 'arian' is Welsh for silver). As for the father's name, Zielsdorf, there's clearly some good German blood in his ancestry. The mother's got red hair - a clear giveaway at Scottish or Irish forebears. In any case, you would be hard pressed to find a more quintessentially autochton European family.

And now, the multiculti goons and diversity nazis want this hardworking PRODUCTIVE family GONE...

... and replace it with Howri Hamad Garibs, Baghdad Mezianis and Saliman Barcis. Population replacement, nothing less.

How utterly insane, how horribly immoral is that?



This world has gone stark bonkers.


MFBB.

HAH, TURKEY. WORLD'S OLDEST CHURCH SUFFERS EXTENSIVE DAMAGE IN SUICIDE ATTACK.

Via Pamela Geller, bad news about Christianity's oldest church, the Church of Saint Mary, situated in Hah, in Turkey's southeast. I suffered serious damage when a muslim terrorist blew himself up near it:

"Erdogan’s Turkey. A homicide bomber killed five and caused extensive damage to the world’s oldest church. Islamic supremacists are happy to die to eliminate any other religious history. Just this week I reported that Muslims in Turkey were demanding to pray in one of the most iconic, historic churches in Turkey, the Hagia Sophia. It’s all about erasing what’s not Islamic.

The whole of the Muslim world stands against Israel — for being Jewish. It’s that simple. Islam cannot and will not tolerate any other faith."

Then there is some background to the story via The Express:

“World’s oldest church where three wise men roamed WRECKED by suicide bomber,” By Katie Mansfield, The Express, Jun 3, 2016:
THE most ancient church in the world, which hosted the three wise men after the birth of Jesus, has been savaged by a suicide bomb.

Five people were killed when a suicide bomber struck at a checkpoint next to St Mary Church in Hah, Tur Abdin, in south east Turkey.

The church, also known as Idto d’Yoldath-Aloho, in the mountainous Tur Abdin region near the Syrian border, is considered the heartland of Syrian Orthodox Christianity.

The ferocity of the blast smashed all the church’s windows, and with the church lying between two Christian villages there are fears of more atrocities from jihadi forces.

Speaking the day after the attack, which happened on Wednesday May 25, Nuri Kino, the founder of advocacy group A Demand For Action, said: “Hah is my heart and soul… it is one of the most important places for our people in the world.

“Yuldath Aloho has faced many wars and genocides and never been destroyed.

“Yesterday all the windows were crashed. We feel with all those that were killed, no human blood, no matter if they are Turks, Kurds or Assyrian/Syrians should be shared.

“The inhabitants in our villages are vulnerable and we are pleading to the world to stop them from being hurt. Yesterday was a day of total shock for us, we are losing our people in Iraq and Syria and now this in Turkey.

“We are tired of tears, tired of being hurt in country after country. The people of Tur Abdin stand not alone.”

It is believed the three wise men visited the site after they had given their presents of gold, frankincense and myrrh to Jesus in Bethlehem.

The temple was later built in the name of Jesus’ mother....

Pope Francis could not be reached for comment. He's too busy telling us that we should celebrate mass muslim migration to Europe.


MFBB.

DUESSELDORF, GERMANY: POLICE FOILS ISLAMIC STATE-ORDERED TERROR ATTACK.

Via PI-News, 2 June 2016:

"Police arrested three Syrian men today suspected of planning an IS-ordered bomb attack in the old town centre of Duesseldorf. Two of the muslims would have had to blow themselves up in the neighborhood of Heinrich Heine Avenue (photo). Other members of the terror cell were tasked with attacking passersby with knives. The plans only came to light because another cell operative was arrested in France and testified about the planned attacks. The arrests took place in Nordrhein-Westfalen, Baden-Wuerttemberg and a "Bundesland" in Germany's East. In the meantime, with regards to the upcoming European soccer championship, the US government issued travel warnings for Europe. German officials however tried to calm things down by quoting "security reports" indicating that the planned terror attack [in Duesseldorf - MFBB] had nothing to do with the European soccer championship. Phew, we can all breathe easier!"

Chancellor Merkel was quoted as saying: "Nya nya nya kann dich nicht hoeren!!! Islam ist eine Religion des Friedens!!!".

I'm sure you don't need a translation.

She also said: "Islam is a part of Germany".

On that count she's definitely right, though not in the way her deluded mind sees it.



MFBB.

BELGIAN NAVY TESTS NEW NH90 "CAIMAN" HELICOPTER.

For what seems like aeons the Belgian Navy used either the light Alouette chopper or the Seaking. These days have finally come to an end, with the introduction of the NH90, NFH version (NATO Frigate Helicopter; the Army version is called the TTH, for Tactical Transport Helicopter).

NHIndustries is a European consortium with shares held by Airbus Helicopters, Fokker Aerostructures, and AgustaWestland. The NH90 is a medium-sized, full fly-by-wire, twin-engined multi-role chopper. In the Belgian Navy, its reached initial operational readiness in August 2015.

Between 18 and 24 May, a Caiman, as it is commonly referred to instead of the NH90, conducted tests on board the frigate Leopold I: takeoff/land, dataconnections during flight, a simulated crash, manoeuvring in the hangar, and recce flights. Pic taken somewhere on the North Sea:





Some specs:

* a crew of 2 pilots, with possibly a sensor operator (not on TTH)
* capacity: 20 seated troops; or 12 medevac stretchers; or 2 NATO pallets; or 4,200 kg (9,260 lb) external slung load
* Length: 16.13 m (52 ft 11 in)
* Rotor diameter: 16.30 m (53 ft 6 in)
* Height: 5.23 m (17 ft 2 in)
* Empty weight: 6,400 kg (14,100 lb)
* Useful load: 4,200 kg (9,260 lb)
* Max. takeoff weight: 10,600 kg (23,370 lb)
* Powerplant: 2 × Rolls-Royce Turbomeca RTM322-01/9 turboshaft, 1,662 kW (2,230 shp) each, or:
Powerplant: 2 × General Electric T700-T6E turboshaft, 1,577 kW (2,115 shp) each
* Maximum speed: 300 km/h (162 knots, 186 mph)
* Range: 800 km, 497 mi (TTH); 1,000 km, 621 mi (NFH) ()
* Service ceiling: 6,000 m (20,000 ft)
* Rate of climb: 8 m/s (1,574 ft/m)
* Armament: anti-submarine and/or air to surface missiles for the NFH version, 2x door gun for the TTH version


I recall that some two years ago some concerns were raised regarding the naval types' reportedly excessive corrosion problems; this was following a deployment of the first two Dutch NH90's to the Carribean. But these problems seem to have been solved. At any rate, the corrosion issues can't have been in either airframe or rotors, since these are made of advanced composites.


MFBB.

HAPPY MEMORIAL DAY 2016.

On this Memorial Day 2016, DowneastBlog honors one among many, PFC Paul E. Conlon. He was 21 when he fell in Afghanistan.

Via the MilitaryTimes:

"... of Somerville, Mass.; assigned to the 1st Battalion, 506th Infantry Regiment, 4th Brigade Combat Team, 101st Airborne Division (Air Assault), Fort Campbell, Ky.; died Aug. 15 in Wardak Province, Afghanistan, when his vehicle struck an improvised explosive device and then received small-arms and rocket-propelled-grenade fire. Also killed was 1st Lt. Donald C. Carwile."

I have a graph for you.






Let us thank Paul, and so many others, for bringing hope in a wretched part of the world through his sacrifice.

Pray for him and his loved ones. God bless.



MFBB.

EASTER HOLIDAY IN SOUTH WEST ENGLAND.

- All over the last summer, autumn and winter I had read about the migrants making a terrible nuisance of themselves near the Eurotunnel entrance, so I figured that for our Easter holiday to the south of England this year round, it might be safer to take the ferry Calais-Dover instead. And since there's no backflow, I also reckoned that taking the Eurotunnel to get back to France would pose no problems. So the plan was, France to the UK: the P&O Ferry. UK back to France: Eurotunnel.

The photo shows us approaching Calais port with the ferry terminals. Notice the barbed wire to keep migrants from climbing over the fences and disrupting the traffic. At regular intervals there were police vans with officers on guard. Welcome to European holidays in 2016!

Except that we did not board a ferry to go to England after all.

At the check-in terminals, they told us the storm in the Channel was so bad, Dover Harbour was closed. Earliest departure was scheduled for three pm, which meant waiting for four hours and ruining our afternoon schedule. Eurotunnel apparently cooperating with P&O Ferries however, they offered us the possibility to trade in our ferry tickets for Le Shuttle tickets for the same price, if only we took the risk to not be able to board the train immediately.

We took our chances and to our surprise, fifteen minutes later - the Chunnel entrance is right to the west of Calais, as opposed to the ferry terminals which are right to the east - we were waved through to the Le Shuttle loading platforms right away.

Half an hour later we were in Folkestone!




There was a stiff breeze and rough water (for landlubbers) but imho no waves that warranted closing a harbour.




We had booked three nights at the Imperial Hotel in Torquay, and one night in the Shore View Hotel in Eastbourne. When we left Folkestone there remained an estimated five hours of driving to Torquay, and it was only 1pm local time or so, so I figured there was sufficient time to visit two places - even if it had to be in a hurry. Place No. 1 was the house in Chawton where Jane Austen had spent the final eight years of her life. Jane Austen (1775-1817) is a quintessential British Romanticism writer and a contemporary of literary giants like William Wordsworth, Samuel Coleridge and Lord Byron. She wrote but a small number of books, and by the time she settled in Chawton she had written two of her best known masterpieces in draft form already: Sense and Sensibility and Pride and Prejudice. Before publishing them, she may have revised them here. Completely new works written in Chawton were Mansfield Park, Emma and Persuasion. A bit to my surprise I also discovered, upon coming across several naval displays, that two of Jane Austen's brothers made it Admiral in the Royal Navy: Sir Francis Austen became Admiral of the fleet and Charles Austen reached the rank of Rear Admiral.


O'er here at DowneastBlog, we have touched on the subject before. In 2009, that is. Pride and Prejudice is perhaps Austen's best known work, a novel of manners first published in 1813 and destined to become on of the most successful novels in English literature, with over 20 million copies sold to date. There have been several film and TV adaptations, of which the 2005 version, directed by Joe Wright and starring Keira Knightley as Elizabeth Bennet and Matthew McFadyen as Mr Darcy, is possibly the best so far. Here is what I wrote at the time, and this is the soundtrack exerpt 'The Living Sculptures at Pemberley':





From Chawton it was but a short hop to Winchester, which boasts a magnificent gothic cathedral. What English gothic cathedrals lack in height compared to their continental counterparts they make up in length, and indeed Winchester Cathedral, dedicated to the Holy Trinity, has the longest nave and greatest overall length of any Gothic cathedral in Europe. Work began in 1079, and the consecration took place in 1093 already, but for centuries there would be alterations and additions.




View of the nave looking eastwards towards the choir. Under William of Wykeham (1367–1404) the nave, until then in Romanesque style, was recased in Caen stone and remodelled in the Perpendicular style, the third phase in English Gothic Architecture, with an emphasis on vertical lines...





... The ceiling is spectacularly embellished by those vertical lines converging into an intricate pattern: Winchester Cathedral's vault is a veritable poem in stone!





After that it was off to Torquay, focal point of the English Riviera. That's not exaggerated: temperatures are said to be the highest in the UK (although I would wager the Scilly Islands are still warmer) and there are palm trees galore. This town of around 65,000 was also home to Agatha Christie, and around the harbour there's a so-called Agatha Christie Mile, a walk with successive plaques and a bust highlighting specific events in her life and work.




At night, I took strolls through Torquay. It was still March and somewhat chilly, but the town centre was not exactly deserted. One one of my walks I came across "Hole in the Wall", Torquay's oldest pub, established circa 1540. The text reads: "For hundreds of years Smugglers . Men of the Sea . Businessmen . Locals . Visitors alike have enjoyed drinking at the Hole in the Wall."




On our second day, we visited Jurassic Coast, so called because there fossils dating from the Jurassic Epoch are supposedly omnipresent. Alas, for me the harvest was meagre... Pic taken in Charmouth, just east of Lyme Regis. Charmouth seems to be the place where you have the biggest chance to come up with decent fossils.




The day after, we intended to visit The Eden Project in Cornwall. History buff that I am - freak, rather - I could not resist stopping in nearby Brixham where I knew a replica of the Golden Hind was moored, Sir Francis Drake's flagship with which he circumnavigated the world between 1577 and 1580. He set sail with five ships and came back with only one. Originally it was called the Pelican, but while underway he rebaptised it in Golden Hind, to honor Sir Christopher Hatton, his patron, whose heraldic emblem contained a golden hind. It is hard to believe that Drake survived the perils of the world's oceans with this small galleon, which had a water displacement of a mere 100 tons!




After a relatively smooth ride, apart from a huge traffic jam before and in Totnes, we arrived at The Eden Project, which is situated in a disused kaolinite quarry two kilometres from the town of Saint Blazy, just inside Cornwall. The Eden Project is the brainchild of a certain Tim Smit and consists mainly of two gigantic biomes in which vegetation typical for a Rainforest and the Mediterranean has been recreated. Indeed it is said that the largest of the two biomes contains the largest piece of Rainforest outside the Amazon! Apart from the biomes, there are substantial outdoor gardens including a walk back in time for Earth's vegetation, the "Core", a building for educational purposes, and a visitor centre.




What the Rainforest Biome looks like from the inside. The biomes' "shells" consist of a skeleton of tubular steel cladded with hexagongal (mostly) and pentagonal thermoplastic ETFE panels. ETFE stands for ethylene tetrafluoroethyle, a polymer. It was chosen because it maintains it's strength over a wide temperature range, is self-cleaning, and has a high melting temperature. Also, it's resistance to ultraviolet radiation means it will lose its transparency only after a very long time.




On Thursday it was time to go back. The plan was to head back to Folkestone in two stages: Torquay-Eastbourne (you may recall we had booked one night there) and Eastbourne-Folkestone. WITH some serious sightseeing on the way of course. I calculated that we could make it to Eastbourne in the not too late evening AND visit both Greenway House and Stonehenge. Greenway House was the summertime residence of Agatha Christie. She once described it as "the loveliest place in the world" and on this glorious Spring morning it was hard to disagree!




Greenway House, the magnificent summer residence of Agatha Chrisie and her second husband Max Mallowan, an archaeologist. They actually got to know each other in Iraq, where Mallowan was overseeing excavations.




... This particularly sunny day made the splendid views on the river Dart and the surrounding hillsides all the more enjoyable...





On heading back in the afternoon, we passed through Wiltshire, and of course we could not resist stopping at Stonehenge, some 13 kloms north of Salisbury. A lot had changed here since our last visit, which was during our honeymoon in 1999.




Most archaeologists agree that Stonehenge was built between 3000BC and 2000BC. Stonehenge is a wonderfully accurate cosmic clockwork. Sunset at the winter solstice, the shortest day of the year, is perfectly aligned with the axis composed by the "horseshoe" of the five central trilithons, the heel stone at the periphery, and the embanked avenue leading up to the site from the northeast. Similarly, this same axis is also perfectly aligned with the rays of the rising sun at summer solstice, the longest day of the year. Construction-wise, transporting, carving and finally arranging the five trilithons of three sarsen stones each, each stone weighing some 50-odd tons, must be considered a major technical feat for the time. The outer ring sarsens originally crowned by lintels are hardly less impressive. And placing the smallest bluestones can't have been a laughing matter either. Still... Brits may not like to hear this, but upon walking around the site, it struck me that for all Stonehenge's evidence of technological and cosmological marvels, Egypt's Great Pyramids, built in the same timeframe, dwarf this ancient project by many orders of magnitude.




I always try to cram as much as possible in a day, and in 2014 we had such a wonderful time in and around Eastbourne, so I thought that before heading for Down House we could just as well make a slight detour and once again take in the view at Beachy Head, just west of Eastbourne...




... and while in the neighborhood, why not stop in Berwick to check out again the beautiful murals in Berwick Church, painted in, IIRC, 1943 by the artist pair Vanessa Bell and Duncan Grant, prominent members of the Bloomsbury Group. This pic from outside the church was taken on a spectacular early Spring morning; you may recall the same view from one year ago when we visited the place in the early evening.




Then it was off to Downe and Down House, the home of Charles Darwin, just SE of London. He wrote On the Origin of Species in this very study!




View on Down House from the garden. Behind my back is a path that leads to Darwin's greenhouses, where he also conducted experiments. Both the house and garden are kept in immaculate condition.




After this thoroughly satisfying visit - including a simple but decent lunch in the house's cafeteria - it was time to go back. In the evening we boarded Le Shuttle again at the Coquelles terminal, near Folkestone. A smooth 25-minute ride brought us back in Calais. Yet another great holiday in the UK!



MFBB.