As always, thanks for tuning in/bearing with us/tolerating us!!!
MFBB.
Tuesday, December 31, 2019
HAPPY NEW YEAR 2020!!!
DowneastBlog wishes all its readers of good will a Happy, Prosperous, but most of all a HEALTHY 2020!!!
As always, thanks for tuning in/bearing with us/tolerating us!!!
MFBB.
As always, thanks for tuning in/bearing with us/tolerating us!!!
MFBB.
Monday, December 30, 2019
LONDON AND LEEDS: MULTICULTURALISM, THE GIFT THAT KEEPS ON GIVING.
NOT.
Via David Vance:
MFBB.
Via David Vance:
Here’s a scene from downtown Mogadishu. Hang on, I MEANT to say here’s a scene from Shoreditch, London, from yesterday. Can you feel the diversity? Have you had enough of it? pic.twitter.com/7ajNqjZcYM
— David Vance (@DVATW) December 30, 2019
The scary thing about this? It’s in LEEDS, in England. pic.twitter.com/3XY9Iy11jP
— David Vance (@DVATW) December 30, 2019
MFBB.
Sunday, December 29, 2019
SUNDAY NIGHT ART SNACK: JACQUES-LOUIS DAVID, JOSEPH WRIGHT, JONATHAN EASTMAN JOHNSON
By far the most pleasant and rewarding holiday we ever had was our trip in the States in the summer of 2017. Some four hectic but fascinating days in Washington DC were followed by a trip over Gettysburg and Bethel to the White Mountains in NH (another four days), and we spent the remainder of our fortnight in Hyannisport, with a couple of hours in Boston before boarding the plane back to Europe again.
On the first leg of that journey we visited the National Art Gallery in Washington, and it must be said, they have a mar-vel-lous collection (in particular with regards to impressionist works). Here's just three paintings at random we admired there:
Portrait of a Young Woman in White - Jacques-Louis David
Probably by a pupil of Jacques-Louis David (1748 – 1825) though. David's career spanned cataclysmic changes in French society as he was preeminent during the latter days of the Ancien Régime, during the Terreur (he was a friend of Robespierre), while Napoleon was Empereur and even during the restoration (be it in self-exile in Brussels). David's severe neoclassical style constituted a clear break away from the frivolity of Rococo.
The Corinthian Maid, by Joseph Wright of Derby
Joseph Wright of Derby (1734 – 1797), was an English landscape and portrait painter and has been acclaimed as "the first professional painter to express the spirit of the Industrial Revolution". Two important patrons were Josiah Wedgwood and Richard Arkwright. Wright is notable for his use of the chiaroscuro effect, which emphasises the contrast of light and dark, and for his paintings of candle-lit subjects. As for this painting, the inspiration came from Pliny the Elder (23/24 - 79 AD) who claimed that the first drawing in history was made by a young Corinthian woman. Knowing that soon her husband will be off to war, she draws a line on the wall containing his shadow, so that she will have something to remember him by. Apparently Ole Pliny never visited Lascaux or Altamira.
Lambs, Nantucket (1874) by Eastman Johnson
Jonathan Eastman Johnson (1824 – 1906) was an eminent American painter and co-founder of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York City. He is best known for his genre paintings, paintings of everyday life and of everyday people, but just as well of prominent Americans such as Abraham Lincoln, Ralph Waldo Emerson, and Nathaniel Hawthorne. In his day he was known as the 'American Rembrandt'.
Exquisite, all three of them.
MFBB.
On the first leg of that journey we visited the National Art Gallery in Washington, and it must be said, they have a mar-vel-lous collection (in particular with regards to impressionist works). Here's just three paintings at random we admired there:
Portrait of a Young Woman in White - Jacques-Louis David
Probably by a pupil of Jacques-Louis David (1748 – 1825) though. David's career spanned cataclysmic changes in French society as he was preeminent during the latter days of the Ancien Régime, during the Terreur (he was a friend of Robespierre), while Napoleon was Empereur and even during the restoration (be it in self-exile in Brussels). David's severe neoclassical style constituted a clear break away from the frivolity of Rococo.
The Corinthian Maid, by Joseph Wright of Derby
Joseph Wright of Derby (1734 – 1797), was an English landscape and portrait painter and has been acclaimed as "the first professional painter to express the spirit of the Industrial Revolution". Two important patrons were Josiah Wedgwood and Richard Arkwright. Wright is notable for his use of the chiaroscuro effect, which emphasises the contrast of light and dark, and for his paintings of candle-lit subjects. As for this painting, the inspiration came from Pliny the Elder (23/24 - 79 AD) who claimed that the first drawing in history was made by a young Corinthian woman. Knowing that soon her husband will be off to war, she draws a line on the wall containing his shadow, so that she will have something to remember him by. Apparently Ole Pliny never visited Lascaux or Altamira.
Lambs, Nantucket (1874) by Eastman Johnson
Jonathan Eastman Johnson (1824 – 1906) was an eminent American painter and co-founder of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York City. He is best known for his genre paintings, paintings of everyday life and of everyday people, but just as well of prominent Americans such as Abraham Lincoln, Ralph Waldo Emerson, and Nathaniel Hawthorne. In his day he was known as the 'American Rembrandt'.
Exquisite, all three of them.
MFBB.
THE MARRAKESH PACT AND AFRICA'S DEMOGRAPHIC EXPLOSION.
The Dutch authorities are not shy of letting Biodutchmen and -women know their days as a majority are numbered. Here is a screenshot of a Dutch government website where one can consult the weekly 'asielinstroom' (asylum influx) numbers:
Go back all through 2019 and you will see for yourself that the (official) influx of asylum seekers in The Netherlands is give and take 600/700 per week. Not 30. Not 3,000. Always 600/700. There is a system behind this, that's for sure. There are organizations that are providing resources, that do the planning, the advertising, there's contacts with Dutch and European agencies.
A year ago I wrote on these very pages about the scandal that is the UN 'Global Compact for Immigration', arguing that this horrible document would de facto posit that boundless immigration towards Western countries would become a right. And here it is. The Netherlands are even 'lucky', it's only give and take 700 a week. The numbers for Belgium are appalling.
What we are seeing is Population Replacement on a big scale, in a not even hidden attempt to quell the emerging unrest among autochtons. The most visible aspect of that unrest is the rise of rightwing, anti-immigration parties all over the continent. It is litterally a race against time. Traditional parties - socialists, greens, liberals, 'Christian' 'Democrats' who have practically all embraced the vile ideology of multiculturalism, are all frantically facilitating and organizing Umvolkung as a tool to block the rise of VB in Belgium, Lega in Italy, AfD in Germany, SD in Sweden.
And in their 'Quest for Cosmic Justice', as Thomas Sowell would put it, they have convinced themselves that by ridding Europe of deplorables, they are not only doing Europe a favor, but other continents and regions, especially Africa, a favor.
Consider Africa, for instance. Importing enormous numbers of Africans serves the multiple purposes of:
a.) blocking the rise of what they see as 'xenophobic' parties
b.) realizing the multicultural utopia in the West
c.) atoning for the White 'crimes' of colonization and, wait for it, 'racism'
d.) solving the problem of overpopulation elsewhere, especially in Africa
We have adressed the follies of a.), b) and c.) many times over, but as for d.) one should first of all acknowledge that it's LEFTIST policies that have very significantly contributed to Africa's woes. Indeed, as societies grow more prosperous, so the number of children in a family will gradually decline. Because the most successful export product of the left towards Africa have been its economic recipies, in particular the concept of the centrally guided economy, large parts of Africa have remained destitute. EVERY African country that adopted socialism has failed: Tanzanya, Zambia, Moçambique etc... Consequently, they have remained (very) poor. Consequently, they have runaway population statistics. Of course Africans are themselves to blame just as well, what with tribalism and endemic corruption and all. But Botswana e.g., which never fell for the leftist siren songs and has a solid economy based on capitalistic principles, does not have the problems of most other African countries. Seretse Khama was no closet communist like Julius Nyerere, and Botswana's economy grew at 9per cent per year for thirty years straight since 1966. Today, it is still one of the fastest growing African economies, with a GDP per capita of about $19,000 a year. Botswana has tech hubs and a standard of living comparable to that of Mexico (without the drug wars), and consequently, Botswana has no runaway demographics and there are no Botswanians among the 'refugees' flooding Europe.
It's a different matter for most of the continent however, as its demographics will push world population 10 billion by 2050, and its share in world population is projected to be ... 39 per cent by 2100:
Africa's population conundrum is of such a magnitude that it CANNOT BE SOLVED by siphoning off part of it towards Europe, as our socialist, green, liberal and 'Christian' 'Democratic' politicans seem to think. Africa's population problem has to be solved on African soil. And to illustrate that, to date I have not come across someone who did it better than Roy Beck in this timeless classic of 2010:
Would viewing that video change the minds of our moral betters?
No.
Because they are insane.
We will have to hammer sense into them via other ways.
MFBB.
Go back all through 2019 and you will see for yourself that the (official) influx of asylum seekers in The Netherlands is give and take 600/700 per week. Not 30. Not 3,000. Always 600/700. There is a system behind this, that's for sure. There are organizations that are providing resources, that do the planning, the advertising, there's contacts with Dutch and European agencies.
A year ago I wrote on these very pages about the scandal that is the UN 'Global Compact for Immigration', arguing that this horrible document would de facto posit that boundless immigration towards Western countries would become a right. And here it is. The Netherlands are even 'lucky', it's only give and take 700 a week. The numbers for Belgium are appalling.
What we are seeing is Population Replacement on a big scale, in a not even hidden attempt to quell the emerging unrest among autochtons. The most visible aspect of that unrest is the rise of rightwing, anti-immigration parties all over the continent. It is litterally a race against time. Traditional parties - socialists, greens, liberals, 'Christian' 'Democrats' who have practically all embraced the vile ideology of multiculturalism, are all frantically facilitating and organizing Umvolkung as a tool to block the rise of VB in Belgium, Lega in Italy, AfD in Germany, SD in Sweden.
And in their 'Quest for Cosmic Justice', as Thomas Sowell would put it, they have convinced themselves that by ridding Europe of deplorables, they are not only doing Europe a favor, but other continents and regions, especially Africa, a favor.
Consider Africa, for instance. Importing enormous numbers of Africans serves the multiple purposes of:
a.) blocking the rise of what they see as 'xenophobic' parties
b.) realizing the multicultural utopia in the West
c.) atoning for the White 'crimes' of colonization and, wait for it, 'racism'
d.) solving the problem of overpopulation elsewhere, especially in Africa
We have adressed the follies of a.), b) and c.) many times over, but as for d.) one should first of all acknowledge that it's LEFTIST policies that have very significantly contributed to Africa's woes. Indeed, as societies grow more prosperous, so the number of children in a family will gradually decline. Because the most successful export product of the left towards Africa have been its economic recipies, in particular the concept of the centrally guided economy, large parts of Africa have remained destitute. EVERY African country that adopted socialism has failed: Tanzanya, Zambia, Moçambique etc... Consequently, they have remained (very) poor. Consequently, they have runaway population statistics. Of course Africans are themselves to blame just as well, what with tribalism and endemic corruption and all. But Botswana e.g., which never fell for the leftist siren songs and has a solid economy based on capitalistic principles, does not have the problems of most other African countries. Seretse Khama was no closet communist like Julius Nyerere, and Botswana's economy grew at 9per cent per year for thirty years straight since 1966. Today, it is still one of the fastest growing African economies, with a GDP per capita of about $19,000 a year. Botswana has tech hubs and a standard of living comparable to that of Mexico (without the drug wars), and consequently, Botswana has no runaway demographics and there are no Botswanians among the 'refugees' flooding Europe.
It's a different matter for most of the continent however, as its demographics will push world population 10 billion by 2050, and its share in world population is projected to be ... 39 per cent by 2100:
Africa's population conundrum is of such a magnitude that it CANNOT BE SOLVED by siphoning off part of it towards Europe, as our socialist, green, liberal and 'Christian' 'Democratic' politicans seem to think. Africa's population problem has to be solved on African soil. And to illustrate that, to date I have not come across someone who did it better than Roy Beck in this timeless classic of 2010:
Would viewing that video change the minds of our moral betters?
No.
Because they are insane.
We will have to hammer sense into them via other ways.
MFBB.
Saturday, December 28, 2019
BOEING STARLINER VS SPACEX CREW DRAGON: WHY ARE THERE STILL TWO CONTENDERS?
OK, that was a bummer:
It all began so well:
Quite a setback for Boeing, and I suppose that there may have been some Schadenfreude at SpaceX. To recap:
NASA hired SpaceX and Boeing to design a spacecraft for ferrying crew and cargo to the ISS. For reasons unknown to me, Boeing got almost double that from NASA vs SpaceX under its commercial crew program ($4 billion plus compared to $2.6 billion). Despite that discrepancy (discrimination?) SpaceX took the lead in the race to develop the new shuttle vehicle. SpaceX's Dragon crew capsule successfully completed its first orbital demo last March. You have to hand it to them: such a young company beating an old giant like Boeing, kudos. And not only that, but the Dragon was launched atop another SpaceX product as well, the Dragon 9. The only serious setback was the destruction of a capsule on a Cape Canaveral test stand. But if a launch abort test scheduled for next month goes well, SpaceX may well begin ferrying astronauts to and from the ISS by Spring, thus convincingly beating the competition. It would also mean the end of nine years of relying on Russian Soyuzes to do that.
If Boeing catches up however, and there's every reason to assume they will, it's unclear - at least to me - how the two designs can exist together. Let's compare the Starliner and the Dragon Crew capsule:
First the Starliner:
* Pricetag: Up to $4.9 billion
* Heritage: Apollo, Space Shuttle Boeing and its corporate predecessors have long experience manufacturing space vehicles. North American Rockwell built the Apollo Command Module.
* Seating Capacity: Up to 7. NASA required that each vehicle be able to transport four people to and from the station. A fifth seat is available on both vehicles. Each company advertises a seating capacity of seven.
* Head / Leg Room: Diameter: 15 ft. Height: 16.6 ft. Dimensions include service (propulsion) module.
* Engines: Aerojet/Rocketdyne Engines for abort and for maneuvering the Starliner in orbit are located in the disposable service module.
* Reusability: the crew capsule can be reflown up to 10 times. The service module will be discarded after each flight.
* Launch Vehicle: Atlas V 422 /Centaur Will be compatible with other rockets in future.
* Launch Site: Cape Canaveral Launch Complex 41
* Landing Site: Western U.S. Starliner will parachute to dry land, like Soyuz, and use airbags to cushion the impact. Landing sites at White Sands, NM; Dugway Proving Ground, UT; Edwards AFB, CA; Willcox Playa, AZ.
The Dragon:
* Pricetag: Up to $3.2 billion. Numbers for both companies include total NASA contract awards for developing, building, and certifying vehicles, two test flights, and up to six ferry flights to the ISS through 2024.
* Heritage: Dragon Cargo Vehicle SpaceX has been launching supplies to the space station since 2012. Crew Dragon is based on the Dragon cargo craft.
* Seating Capacity: Up to 7
* Head / Leg Room: Diameter: 12.1 ft. Height: 23.6 ft. Dimensions include Dragon’s cargo “trunk.”
* Engines: SpaceX Draco / Superdraco Engines are onboard. Superdraco engines are used for abort only.
* Reusability: Yes, Dragons are reusable, although test flights will fly new vehicles. Cargo trunk is discarded after each flight.
* Launch Vehicle: Falcon 9 Block 5
* Launch Site: Cape Canaveral LC 39A (same pad used for Apollo 11 and the space shuttle)
* Landing Site: Atlantic Ocean
I'm at a loss as to why NASA is even contemplating to use both systems, since, despite it being probably a marvel of engineering, a Starliner is no match for a Crew Dragon. It's not only that a Crew Dragon has, apart from room for the astronauts, also plenty of space for (unpressurized) cargo - it started out as a cargo vessel after all. It's the price tag, with the Dragon costing about 3/4 of a Starliner. In my humble opinion, the only thing that the Starliner has going for it is the ability to land on solid ground instead of somewhere on the Atlantic, where anything can go wrong. That, and its compatibility with other launch vehicles. But why a cash-strapped NASA would still be willing to consider a spacecraft on which a seat would cost even more than on a Soyuz is beyond me. Indeed, last November NASA's Inspector General found that a Starliner seat will cost "slightly more" than a seat on a Soyuz, while a Dragon seat will cost only half of that!
Is it perhaps the desire to have at least a modicum of redundancy? So that in case of failures showing up only after a substantial number of flights of either craft, necessitating its grounding, the other type still remains to continue, without having to rely on Russian craft again?
It's weird.
MFBB.
"(CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla.) — Boeing safely landed its crew capsule in the New Mexico desert Sunday after an aborted flight to the International Space Station that threatened to set back the company’s effort to launch astronauts for NASA next year.
The Starliner descended into the Army’s White Sands Missile Range in the frigid predawn darkness, ending a two-day demo that should have lasted more than a week. All three main parachutes popped open and airbags also inflated around the spacecraft to ease the impact.
“Congratulations, Starliner,” said Mission Control, calling it a successful touchdown.
A test dummy named Rosie the Rocketeer — after Rosie the Riveter from World War II — rode in the commander’s seat. Also returning were holiday presents, clothes and food that should have been delivered to the space station crew.
After seeing this first test flight cut short and the space station docking canceled because of an improperly set clock on the capsule, Boeing employees were relieved to get the Starliner back.
Recovery teams cheered as they watched the capsule drift down through the air and make a bull’s- eye landing. The touchdown was broadcast live on NASA TV; infrared cameras painted the descending capsule in a ghostly white.
As the sun rose, close-up views showed the large white and black capsule upright — with hardly any scorch marks from re-entry— next to a U.S. flag waving from a recovery vehicle. The astronauts assigned to the first Starliner crew — two from NASA and one from Boeing — were part of the welcoming committee.
It was the first American-made capsule designed for astronauts to make a ground landing after returning from orbit. NASA’s early crew capsules — Mercury, Gemini and Apollo — all had splashdowns. SpaceX’s Dragon capsule, which made its orbital debut last winter, also aims for the ocean at mission’s end.
Minutes after touchdown, top NASA and Boeing officials poured into Mission Control in Houston to congratulate the team.
The capsule’s first trip to space began with a smooth rocket ride from Cape Canaveral on Friday. But barely a half hour into the flight, it failed to fire its thrusters to give chase to the space station and ended up in the wrong orbit.
The problem was with the Starliner’s internal clock: It did not sync up with the Atlas V rocket, throwing off the capsule’s timing.
The capsule burned so much fuel trying to orient itself in orbit that there wasn’t enough left for a space station rendezvous. Flight controllers tried to correct the problem, but between the spacecraft’s position and a gap in communications, their signals did not get through. They later managed to reset the clock.
Boeing is still trying to figure out how the timing error occurred. The mission lasted nearly 50 hours and included 33 orbits around the Earth.
Last month’s parachute problem turned out to be a quick fix. Only two parachutes deployed during an atmospheric test because workers failed to connect a pin in the rigging.
NASA is uncertain whether it will demand another test flight from Boeing — to include a space station visit — before putting its astronauts on board. Boeing had been shooting for its first astronaut mission in the first half of 2020. This capsule is supposed to be recycled for the second flight with crew; each Starliner is built to fly in space 10 times..."
It all began so well:
Quite a setback for Boeing, and I suppose that there may have been some Schadenfreude at SpaceX. To recap:
NASA hired SpaceX and Boeing to design a spacecraft for ferrying crew and cargo to the ISS. For reasons unknown to me, Boeing got almost double that from NASA vs SpaceX under its commercial crew program ($4 billion plus compared to $2.6 billion). Despite that discrepancy (discrimination?) SpaceX took the lead in the race to develop the new shuttle vehicle. SpaceX's Dragon crew capsule successfully completed its first orbital demo last March. You have to hand it to them: such a young company beating an old giant like Boeing, kudos. And not only that, but the Dragon was launched atop another SpaceX product as well, the Dragon 9. The only serious setback was the destruction of a capsule on a Cape Canaveral test stand. But if a launch abort test scheduled for next month goes well, SpaceX may well begin ferrying astronauts to and from the ISS by Spring, thus convincingly beating the competition. It would also mean the end of nine years of relying on Russian Soyuzes to do that.
If Boeing catches up however, and there's every reason to assume they will, it's unclear - at least to me - how the two designs can exist together. Let's compare the Starliner and the Dragon Crew capsule:
First the Starliner:
* Pricetag: Up to $4.9 billion
* Heritage: Apollo, Space Shuttle Boeing and its corporate predecessors have long experience manufacturing space vehicles. North American Rockwell built the Apollo Command Module.
* Seating Capacity: Up to 7. NASA required that each vehicle be able to transport four people to and from the station. A fifth seat is available on both vehicles. Each company advertises a seating capacity of seven.
* Head / Leg Room: Diameter: 15 ft. Height: 16.6 ft. Dimensions include service (propulsion) module.
* Engines: Aerojet/Rocketdyne Engines for abort and for maneuvering the Starliner in orbit are located in the disposable service module.
* Reusability: the crew capsule can be reflown up to 10 times. The service module will be discarded after each flight.
* Launch Vehicle: Atlas V 422 /Centaur Will be compatible with other rockets in future.
* Launch Site: Cape Canaveral Launch Complex 41
* Landing Site: Western U.S. Starliner will parachute to dry land, like Soyuz, and use airbags to cushion the impact. Landing sites at White Sands, NM; Dugway Proving Ground, UT; Edwards AFB, CA; Willcox Playa, AZ.
The Dragon:
* Pricetag: Up to $3.2 billion. Numbers for both companies include total NASA contract awards for developing, building, and certifying vehicles, two test flights, and up to six ferry flights to the ISS through 2024.
* Heritage: Dragon Cargo Vehicle SpaceX has been launching supplies to the space station since 2012. Crew Dragon is based on the Dragon cargo craft.
* Seating Capacity: Up to 7
* Head / Leg Room: Diameter: 12.1 ft. Height: 23.6 ft. Dimensions include Dragon’s cargo “trunk.”
* Engines: SpaceX Draco / Superdraco Engines are onboard. Superdraco engines are used for abort only.
* Reusability: Yes, Dragons are reusable, although test flights will fly new vehicles. Cargo trunk is discarded after each flight.
* Launch Vehicle: Falcon 9 Block 5
* Launch Site: Cape Canaveral LC 39A (same pad used for Apollo 11 and the space shuttle)
* Landing Site: Atlantic Ocean
I'm at a loss as to why NASA is even contemplating to use both systems, since, despite it being probably a marvel of engineering, a Starliner is no match for a Crew Dragon. It's not only that a Crew Dragon has, apart from room for the astronauts, also plenty of space for (unpressurized) cargo - it started out as a cargo vessel after all. It's the price tag, with the Dragon costing about 3/4 of a Starliner. In my humble opinion, the only thing that the Starliner has going for it is the ability to land on solid ground instead of somewhere on the Atlantic, where anything can go wrong. That, and its compatibility with other launch vehicles. But why a cash-strapped NASA would still be willing to consider a spacecraft on which a seat would cost even more than on a Soyuz is beyond me. Indeed, last November NASA's Inspector General found that a Starliner seat will cost "slightly more" than a seat on a Soyuz, while a Dragon seat will cost only half of that!
Is it perhaps the desire to have at least a modicum of redundancy? So that in case of failures showing up only after a substantial number of flights of either craft, necessitating its grounding, the other type still remains to continue, without having to rely on Russian craft again?
It's weird.
MFBB.
Thursday, December 26, 2019
CHEMNITZ, GERMANY. ARAB SCUM NEARLY KILLS AID WORKER DISTRIBUTING XMAS PRESENTS TO THE NEEDY IN PREACHER'S HOUSE.
Via MDR Sachsen (Mitteldeutscher Rundfunk), 25 DEC, 2019:
Gist of the story:
* the evangelical-Lutheranian church community Saint Nicholas of aue-Bad Schlema invited the needy in the preacher's house on DEC24
* a 53 yo Syrian showed up, and got into a word fight with the preacher or his helpers when they distributed stuff to those present
* he was told to knock it off and got out...
* ... only to return shortly thereafter with several arab men. There was again a fight, only this time not only with words. There was physical violence between the arabs and a 34-yo Iranian
* a volunteer who was distributing presents to those present wanted to intervene and tried to talk sense in the arabs and the Iranian
* for this, he was rewarded with a knife in his stomach.
* he was gravely wounded and rushed to a hospital, where he underwent an emergency operation
* the Iranian was lightly wounded
* Police is looking for the perps...
And good luck with THAT.
I want to apologize for the very light blogging over the past couple of months. There's several reasons for that. First of all, I discovered Twitter, and although that medium doesn't allow for in-depth stories or elaborate posts, you can quickly reach huge numbers of people with the multitude of alarming stories re islamization/immigration now so rampant in Europe. Time spent on Twitter is time not spent on Blogger.
Secondly, more than anything else biz has been consuming my time. We have gone thru very, very hard times over the past couple of years - in fact, since autumn 2012 (not that before that, it was easy). I hope we'll be out of the red by the end of March 2020, when my company's fiscal year ends. Normally we should be.
Thirdly, I am having some health issues again.
Anyway, I loved the blogger medium from the start and I don't think Twitter will ever replace it. If I had to choose between the two, it would definitely not be Twitter.
The important thing here is to keep in mind that the absence of blog posts does not mean things are looking brighter in Europe. Totally not. If anything, it's far worse. Europe, at least Western Europe, is dying. And it's a death of its own making. The story above is not a fait divers. It's ALL OVER THE PLACE. The fabric of our society is mercilessly being torn apart.
Nite.
MFBB.
"In Aue-Bad Schlema ist es am Heiligabend in einem Pfarrhaus zu einer Messerstecherei mit zwei Verletzten gekommen. Die evangelisch-lutherische Kirchgemeinde St. Nicolai hatte am 24. Dezember Bedürftige ins Pfarrhaus geladen. Keiner sollte allein den Weihnachtsabend verbringen müssen. Wie die Polizeidirektion Chemnitz mitteilte, gab es jedoch Streitigkeiten mit einem 53-jährigen Mann aus Syrien, der daraufhin der Veranstaltung und des Pfarrhauses verwiesen wurde. Offenbar hatte es eine Auseinandersetzung während der Ausgabe von Geschenken gegeben.
Schlichtungsversuch endet blutig
Kurze Zeit später tauchten mehrere Männer aus dem arabischen Raum im Pfarramt auf. Es entfachte sich ein erneuter Streit, welcher in Tätlichkeiten gegen einen 34-jährigen Iraner eskalierte. Ein 51 Jahre alter Mitarbeiter der Kirchgemeinde wollte den Streit schlichten und wurde dabei niedergestochen. Bisherigen Erkenntnissen zufolge wurde ihm ein Messer in den Bauch gerammt. Er wurde schwer verletzt. Der Mann sei noch in der Nacht notoperiert werden, sagte der Außendienstleiter der Polizeidirektion Chemnitz gegenüber einem MDR-Reporter vor Ort. Der Iraner erlitt leichte Verletzungen. Die Polizei fahndet nach den flüchtigen Tatverdächtigen..."
Gist of the story:
* the evangelical-Lutheranian church community Saint Nicholas of aue-Bad Schlema invited the needy in the preacher's house on DEC24
* a 53 yo Syrian showed up, and got into a word fight with the preacher or his helpers when they distributed stuff to those present
* he was told to knock it off and got out...
* ... only to return shortly thereafter with several arab men. There was again a fight, only this time not only with words. There was physical violence between the arabs and a 34-yo Iranian
* a volunteer who was distributing presents to those present wanted to intervene and tried to talk sense in the arabs and the Iranian
* for this, he was rewarded with a knife in his stomach.
* he was gravely wounded and rushed to a hospital, where he underwent an emergency operation
* the Iranian was lightly wounded
* Police is looking for the perps...
And good luck with THAT.
I want to apologize for the very light blogging over the past couple of months. There's several reasons for that. First of all, I discovered Twitter, and although that medium doesn't allow for in-depth stories or elaborate posts, you can quickly reach huge numbers of people with the multitude of alarming stories re islamization/immigration now so rampant in Europe. Time spent on Twitter is time not spent on Blogger.
Secondly, more than anything else biz has been consuming my time. We have gone thru very, very hard times over the past couple of years - in fact, since autumn 2012 (not that before that, it was easy). I hope we'll be out of the red by the end of March 2020, when my company's fiscal year ends. Normally we should be.
Thirdly, I am having some health issues again.
Anyway, I loved the blogger medium from the start and I don't think Twitter will ever replace it. If I had to choose between the two, it would definitely not be Twitter.
The important thing here is to keep in mind that the absence of blog posts does not mean things are looking brighter in Europe. Totally not. If anything, it's far worse. Europe, at least Western Europe, is dying. And it's a death of its own making. The story above is not a fait divers. It's ALL OVER THE PLACE. The fabric of our society is mercilessly being torn apart.
Nite.
MFBB.
Tuesday, December 24, 2019
MERRY CHRISTMAS 2019!!!
Like every year, DowneastBlog wishes its readers of good will all across the globe a Merry Christmas!!! May you find solace, rest, peace and happiness.
“Nativity” by Jean-Baptiste Marie Pierre, 1714-1789. He was a talented painter, draughtsman and administrator in the latter days of the Kingdom of France, becoming Premier peintre du Roi in 1770 (until his death in 1789). Among his students was Etienne-Louis Boullée, the mystical visionary architect with the grandiose neoclassical designs.
MFBB.
“Nativity” by Jean-Baptiste Marie Pierre, 1714-1789. He was a talented painter, draughtsman and administrator in the latter days of the Kingdom of France, becoming Premier peintre du Roi in 1770 (until his death in 1789). Among his students was Etienne-Louis Boullée, the mystical visionary architect with the grandiose neoclassical designs.
MFBB.
Saturday, December 21, 2019
SATURDAY NIGHT SLADE, THE PRETENDERS.
Gonna be Xmas now real soon - unbelievable, our summer holiday in Tuscany seems like it was only last week and yet...
... so I thought we might as well get in the mood:
Here's Slade with Merry Xmas Everybody. Released as a single in 1973.
Iconic English glam rock band from Wolverhampton, West Midlands. Formed in 1966, STILL AROUND despite a few hiccups along the way. But Don Powell (drummer), Noddy Holder (vocals, guitarist) and Dave Hill (lead guitarist) were there already back when the Saturn IB was first launched and a B-film actor by the name of Ronald Reagan was elected Governor of CA. How about THAT?
Ten years later The Pretenders released their Xmas song, 2,000 miles, as a single. It appeared on the album Learning to Crawl in 1984.
Well okay, this is actually rather an homage to James Honeyman-Scott, first lead guitarist (an co-founder) of The Pretenders, who died of a cocaine overdose the year before. But it will do.
Good night.
MFBB.
... so I thought we might as well get in the mood:
Here's Slade with Merry Xmas Everybody. Released as a single in 1973.
Iconic English glam rock band from Wolverhampton, West Midlands. Formed in 1966, STILL AROUND despite a few hiccups along the way. But Don Powell (drummer), Noddy Holder (vocals, guitarist) and Dave Hill (lead guitarist) were there already back when the Saturn IB was first launched and a B-film actor by the name of Ronald Reagan was elected Governor of CA. How about THAT?
Ten years later The Pretenders released their Xmas song, 2,000 miles, as a single. It appeared on the album Learning to Crawl in 1984.
Well okay, this is actually rather an homage to James Honeyman-Scott, first lead guitarist (an co-founder) of The Pretenders, who died of a cocaine overdose the year before. But it will do.
Good night.
MFBB.
Friday, December 20, 2019
THANK ALLAH IT'S FRIDAY!!!
Ever heard about the July 30, 1916 Black Tom Island Explosion? It is ranked among the largest 'anthropogenic' non-nuclear explosions the planet has ever known. It was actually two explosions, of which the first one was the most devastating. An ammo dump destined to be shipped to Russia on an artifical island in New York Harbor blew up, resulting in the destruction of $20,000,000 worth of military goods. The Statue of Liberty was damaged, and as far away as Maryland and Philadelphia people thought there was an earthquake.
For a long time I thought it was an accident.
However, yesterday I learned it was actually an act of sabotage by German agents. Vox's Coleman and Phil explain:
Hat tip OutlawDaughter.
MFBB.
For a long time I thought it was an accident.
However, yesterday I learned it was actually an act of sabotage by German agents. Vox's Coleman and Phil explain:
Hat tip OutlawDaughter.
MFBB.
Monday, December 16, 2019
STILL BELIEVE IN THAT "97 PER CENT CONSENSUS" AMONG CLIMATE SCIENTISTS RE MMGW? CHANGE YOUR MIND.
First a quick recap from 2016, a Prager U video featuring Professor Richard Lindzen:
Now check this out:
This is indeed true, and has been documented in, a.o., Climate Change: The Facts (editor Alan Moran).
There is some arguing as to the exact number of scientific studies re climate sensitivity in particular, but that the number is rising is a fact.
Nobody is contesting the fact that CO2 is a greenhouse gas. And global mean temperatures may have risen by 1 degree over the past 150 years. And we cannot even rule out that anthropogenic CO2 has, indeed, played a role in that phenomenon. Although, given that natural CO2 emissions far outweigh man-made ones, and because the uncertainties re the size of the (sinks of the) natural emissions are so huge, any policy proclaiming that global temperature can be kept under this or that treshold if only we spend this or that insane amount of money had to be regarded with the utmost scepticism.
The growing number of publications like these ones are therefore a welcome antidote to the ever more frantic efforts of an almost tyrannical EU that wants to spend 11,500 billion EUR (!) to 'fight climate change' in the course of the following years. If it is not kept in check, its horrendously costly anti climate change antics risk to plunge Europe in a man made socio-economic crisis not seen since WWII. The biggest charlatan in this regard is the EU's new 'Climate Pope', the Dutch socialist Frans Timmermans. More on this odious charachter later.
MFBB.
Now check this out:
"Within the last few years, over 50 papers have been added to our compilation of scientific studies that find the climate’s sensitivity to doubled CO2 (280 ppm to 560 ppm) ranges from <0 to 1°C. When no quantification is provided, words like “negligible” are used to describe CO2’s effect on the climate. The list has now reached 106 scientific papers."
This is indeed true, and has been documented in, a.o., Climate Change: The Facts (editor Alan Moran).
There is some arguing as to the exact number of scientific studies re climate sensitivity in particular, but that the number is rising is a fact.
Nobody is contesting the fact that CO2 is a greenhouse gas. And global mean temperatures may have risen by 1 degree over the past 150 years. And we cannot even rule out that anthropogenic CO2 has, indeed, played a role in that phenomenon. Although, given that natural CO2 emissions far outweigh man-made ones, and because the uncertainties re the size of the (sinks of the) natural emissions are so huge, any policy proclaiming that global temperature can be kept under this or that treshold if only we spend this or that insane amount of money had to be regarded with the utmost scepticism.
The growing number of publications like these ones are therefore a welcome antidote to the ever more frantic efforts of an almost tyrannical EU that wants to spend 11,500 billion EUR (!) to 'fight climate change' in the course of the following years. If it is not kept in check, its horrendously costly anti climate change antics risk to plunge Europe in a man made socio-economic crisis not seen since WWII. The biggest charlatan in this regard is the EU's new 'Climate Pope', the Dutch socialist Frans Timmermans. More on this odious charachter later.
MFBB.
Sunday, December 15, 2019
SUNDAY NIGHT ART SNACK: ETTORE DE MARIA BERGLER (1850-1938).
Ettore De Maria Bergler (born Naples 25 december 1850, died Palermo 28 February 1938), was an Italian Art Nouveau painter with strong links to Sicily.
The ruins of the Temple of Jupiter at Syracuse
Taormina
Taormina is a popular tourist destination on Sicily's East Coast, quite close to the Etna volcano. Although Goethe was an early visitor, it was only in the second half of the 19th century that it began to attract considerable numbers of artists, intellectuals and writers, quite a few of them gay (Oscar Wilde, and in later times Tennessee Williams and Truman Capote), so that by the turn of the century it had gained quite a reputation in this regard. Curiously, Friedrich Nietzsche also settled down here to write Also Sprach Zarathustra.
Nite.
MFBB.
The ruins of the Temple of Jupiter at Syracuse
Taormina
Taormina is a popular tourist destination on Sicily's East Coast, quite close to the Etna volcano. Although Goethe was an early visitor, it was only in the second half of the 19th century that it began to attract considerable numbers of artists, intellectuals and writers, quite a few of them gay (Oscar Wilde, and in later times Tennessee Williams and Truman Capote), so that by the turn of the century it had gained quite a reputation in this regard. Curiously, Friedrich Nietzsche also settled down here to write Also Sprach Zarathustra.
Nite.
MFBB.
Saturday, December 14, 2019
SATURDAY NIGHT PORTISHEAD, THE CHARLATANS.
Portishead with Sour Times. From their debut album Dummy (1994).
Last year during our Easter Holiday we stayed in Hutton, a little village close to Weston-Super-Mare, UK. On taking the M5 towards Bristol where we intended to visit the SS Great Britain (a.o.), I noticed the roadsigns towards Portishead and briefly wondered whether there was a connection with the band. Only now did I find out, yup, there is. The band, trip hop pioneers, is from Bristol and for some reason they called themselves after the town of the same name, eight miles west of Bristol near the sea.
The Charlatans with Tremelo Song. Album Between 10th and 11th (1992).
English rock band from the West Midlands, formed in 1988. Current line-up comprises lead vocalist Tim Burgess, guitarist Mark Collins, bassist Martin Blunt and keyboardist Tony Rogers, all of whom are vets, although only Blunt has been there from the very beginning.
Slaap wel.
MFBB.
Last year during our Easter Holiday we stayed in Hutton, a little village close to Weston-Super-Mare, UK. On taking the M5 towards Bristol where we intended to visit the SS Great Britain (a.o.), I noticed the roadsigns towards Portishead and briefly wondered whether there was a connection with the band. Only now did I find out, yup, there is. The band, trip hop pioneers, is from Bristol and for some reason they called themselves after the town of the same name, eight miles west of Bristol near the sea.
The Charlatans with Tremelo Song. Album Between 10th and 11th (1992).
English rock band from the West Midlands, formed in 1988. Current line-up comprises lead vocalist Tim Burgess, guitarist Mark Collins, bassist Martin Blunt and keyboardist Tony Rogers, all of whom are vets, although only Blunt has been there from the very beginning.
Slaap wel.
MFBB.
Monday, December 09, 2019
CORE STAGE OF 1ST SLS COMPLETED.
Via Spacedotcom:
All of that may be true, but it is clear that great progress has been made.
You gotta let that sink in. NASA caught me, and doubtlessly many others, by surprise. For years I knew that the actual spacecraft, Orion, was being worked upon, with success, so I thought 'that's not gonna be the bottleneck. When are they ever gonna start work on the rocket?' I had a faint grasp of the gigantic work that had gone into the Saturn V and to the best of my knowledge NASA actually still has to start working on taking that hurdle of hurdles.
And then all of a sudden to hear that it's actually almost ready!
I still think that 2024 is pretty unlikely to be the year Man sets foot on the Moon again. But that we are much closer to that goal than we thought is certain.
MFBB.
"NASA Administrator Jim Bridenstine showed off the completed core stage of the first-ever Space Launch System rocket during a news event held today (Dec. 9).
The event was held at NASA's Michoud Assembly Facility in New Orleans, where the core stage of the rocket that will launch the first Artemis mission was recently completed. That flight, the first step toward NASA's goal of landing humans on the moon in 2024, will carry an uncrewed Orion capsules around the moon in 2021.
"Think of it as NASA's Christmas present to America," Bridenstine said, referring to the core stage's imminent departure for testing at another NASA facility, Stennis Space Center in Mississippi.
All told, the core stage is 212 feet tall (65 meters) and includes four engines and two liquid- propellant tanks. "I'm going to call it the ninth wonder of the world," Douglas Loverro, the new head of NASA's Human Exploration and Operations Mission Directorate, said during the event.
Bridenstine's speech was more about celebration than announcements, but the discussion left in the air several concerns that NASA is facing about both the rocket and the larger Artemis program.
NASA has contracts with Boeing for only the first two SLS rockets, Bridenstine said, not later iterations of the launcher. But it's the third rocket in the series that will send astronauts to the moon in 2024 to meet the agency's much-touted goal.
The agency also continued to avoid offering a schedule for Artemis flights or a cost estimate for the SLS rockets. Bridenstine has been demurring on offering a launch date for the uncrewed first Artemis mission, deferring that question to the new director of human exploration. Although he called Loverro up to the stage at the event, no date was announced.
Similarly, NASA has deflected questions about the anticipated price per rocket of the SLS program. In his comments, Bridenstine argued that cost will depend on how many rockets NASA ends up commissioning — the more rockets, the lower the individual price will end up. In October, the agency expressed interest in as many as 10 SLS rockets for the Artemis program..."
All of that may be true, but it is clear that great progress has been made.
You gotta let that sink in. NASA caught me, and doubtlessly many others, by surprise. For years I knew that the actual spacecraft, Orion, was being worked upon, with success, so I thought 'that's not gonna be the bottleneck. When are they ever gonna start work on the rocket?' I had a faint grasp of the gigantic work that had gone into the Saturn V and to the best of my knowledge NASA actually still has to start working on taking that hurdle of hurdles.
And then all of a sudden to hear that it's actually almost ready!
I still think that 2024 is pretty unlikely to be the year Man sets foot on the Moon again. But that we are much closer to that goal than we thought is certain.
MFBB.
Sunday, December 08, 2019
INSANE: SWEDISH CHURCH INSTALLS ALTARPIECE WITH TRANSGENDER/SAME SEX COUPLES.
Via RT:
Malmo you say, Malmo? Where have I heard about Malmo before?
Oh... yes.
And so, as every day offers fresh and indisputable evidence of what colossal mistakes multiculturalism, the opening of the borders and leftist/green worldviews in general are, our Moral Betters engage even more frantically in spreading their insane ideas of what society should look like. There are accounts that it was Emperor Nero who ordered Rome be set alight, and that he played the fiddle while admiring the fireworks. I do not know whether that is true. Nero, as someone who wasted money, raised taxes, left his wife and took the wife of another, and murdered his mother (they call it euthanizing these days), certainly fits the profile of an Antiquity leftist. If it's true, well yes...
... I see today's leftists and greens and their handiwork, and I understand.
MFBB.
"A church in Malmo has a new altarpiece meant to celebrate inclusivity by replacing Adam and Eve in paradise with gay couples in suggestive poses, while depicting the serpent tempting them as a transgender woman.
The controversial work of art is not new. Photographer and artist Elisabeth Ohlson Wallin painted it in 2012 and tried to donate it to the Skara Cathedral just before the church was preparing to conduct the first same-sex wedding in its 1,000-year history.
The openly lesbian artist, who has a history of blending religious imagery with pro-minority activism, said at the time that she wanted to test if the Church of Sweden was as gay-friendly as it claimed to be when it embraced same-sex marriage in 2009. The Skara Cathedral politely declined the gift, saying it was about political activism and not faith.
But over seven years have passed, and now Wallin has got her way, even if it isn’t in her home city. St. Paul’s Church in Malmo accepted the painting called “Paradise” as its new altarpiece and unveiled it on Sunday, the first day of Advent. Helena Myrstener, the pastor, said that “history was written” in the hanging of the “LGBT altarpiece” as she tweeted a photo of the painting..."
Malmo you say, Malmo? Where have I heard about Malmo before?
Oh... yes.
And so, as every day offers fresh and indisputable evidence of what colossal mistakes multiculturalism, the opening of the borders and leftist/green worldviews in general are, our Moral Betters engage even more frantically in spreading their insane ideas of what society should look like. There are accounts that it was Emperor Nero who ordered Rome be set alight, and that he played the fiddle while admiring the fireworks. I do not know whether that is true. Nero, as someone who wasted money, raised taxes, left his wife and took the wife of another, and murdered his mother (they call it euthanizing these days), certainly fits the profile of an Antiquity leftist. If it's true, well yes...
... I see today's leftists and greens and their handiwork, and I understand.
MFBB.
Saturday, December 07, 2019
RECOMMENDED READS: MARK STEYN'S "TOO STUPID TO SURVIVE."
Mark Steyn's piece nails it, but then I'm repeating myself:
One of the victims was Joshua Kaleb Watson, from Enterprise, Alabama. He was a recent graduate of the US Naval Academy where he served as a wrestling coach and captain of the school’s rifle team. His father said that he dreamed of becoming a Navy pilot one day and that he reported to flight training in Pensacola two weeks ago.
Rest in peace Mr Watson. God bless. What-a-waste.
I have opined many, many, many times before on this blog that islam is cancer.
As long as not enough of us acknowledge that simple and basic truth, and act accordingly, more Watsons will die.
It's your choice. I have made mine a long time ago.
MFBB.
"...I can no longer remember when I first used the line, but, as I've said many times before, sometimes a society becomes too stupid to survive.
Back when President Trump was Candidate Trump, he famously proposed a soi-disant "Muslim ban" on entry to the United States "until our country's representatives can figure out what the hell is going on".
Which was a rationale to which I was rather partial - because a failure to "figure out what the hell is going on" is a big part of why we're where we are a generation after 9/11. Mohammed is now in the Top Ten boys' names in America, which means it will sooner than you think be, as it is in Europe, among the Top Five boys' names, and eventually the Number One. [UPDATE: See Michelle Stone's comment below.]
Well, the "Muslim ban" never happened, after being struck down by judges and filleted into meaninglessness by the lawyers of the permanent bureaucracy. But you would think, given the mountain of corpses piled up on 9/11, that at the very minimum Saudi nationals would no longer be being given pilot training in Florida. After all, fifteen of the nineteen 9/11 hijackers were Saudis, and half of those who flew the planes received their lessons in the Sunshine State.
Yet today Americans pick up their papers to read:
PENSACOLA, Fla. — A Saudi Arabian military pilot training in the United States opened fire Friday morning at Naval Air Station Pensacola, leaving three people dead and several others wounded before Florida sheriff's deputies shot and killed him.
Or as The New York Times headlined it:
~ Florida Shooting Updates: Authorities Say It's Too Early to Know if It's Terrorism
We know it's a Saudi national gunning down Americans, but it's "too early to know" if it's terrorism. Could be just "mental health issues" or "workplace violence" or "pre-traumatic stress disorder" or "involuntary self-radicalization" or whatever. Nothing to worry about and always remember (to reprise another old line of mine) that "Allahu Akbar" is Arabic for "Nothing to see here".
On "the day that everything changed" nothing changed - except the rate of Muslim immigration to the west, which doubled. A US immigration bureaucracy both cruel and stupid enough to ban a World War Two RAF pilot for life for staying with his wife until her death when she was stricken ill in the US and taken to a New Jersey hospital cannot stop itself admitting Saudi trainee pilots to kill Americans...."
One of the victims was Joshua Kaleb Watson, from Enterprise, Alabama. He was a recent graduate of the US Naval Academy where he served as a wrestling coach and captain of the school’s rifle team. His father said that he dreamed of becoming a Navy pilot one day and that he reported to flight training in Pensacola two weeks ago.
Rest in peace Mr Watson. God bless. What-a-waste.
I have opined many, many, many times before on this blog that islam is cancer.
As long as not enough of us acknowledge that simple and basic truth, and act accordingly, more Watsons will die.
It's your choice. I have made mine a long time ago.
MFBB.
Friday, December 06, 2019
PARKER SOLAR PROBE RETURNING SURPRISING FINDINGS. UPDATE.
Last year the Parker Solar Probe, NASA's robotic spacecraft to explore the Sun, was launched. More specifically, it is to probe and observe the Sun's outer corona. A corona (Latin for 'crown') is a plasma aura surrounding stars. Our Sun's corona extends millions of kilometres into outer space and can be observed during a total solar eclipse. It is strongly ionized and the plasma's temperature is in excess of 1,000,000 kelvin (!), which is far, far hotter than the surface of the Sun itself (about 6,000 K).
Two days ago several key findings were made public, this video offers some background:
That probe has got to be a tough bastard! Kudos to the scientists, engineers and technicians who built this thing!
UPDATE: some more info. Via The Guardian, no less!
Yes indeed. Withstand 1,400 degrees Centigrade and survive and function! Like I said, a tough bastard:
The probe is named after Eugene Parker, an astrophysicist from the University of Chicago who in the 1950s predicted solar wind.
Solar wind constitutes of a stream of charged particles released from the corona. It consists mostly of electrons, protons and alpha particles with kinetic energies between 0.5 and 10 keV. Solar wind plasma also includes trace amounts of heavy ions and the atomic nuclei of C, N, O, Ne, Mg, Si, S, and Fe. Embedded within the solar-wind plasma is the interplanetary magnetic field. The solar wind varies in density, temperature and speed over time and over solar latitude and longitude. Its particles can escape the Sun's gravity because of their high energy resulting from the high temperature of the corona, which in turn is a result of the coronal magnetic field. At a distance of more than a few solar radii from the Sun, the solar wind reaches speeds of 250 to 750 kilometers per second and is supersonic, meaning it moves faster than the speed of the fast magnetosonic wave.
MFBB.
Two days ago several key findings were made public, this video offers some background:
That probe has got to be a tough bastard! Kudos to the scientists, engineers and technicians who built this thing!
UPDATE: some more info. Via The Guardian, no less!
“The first three encounters of the solar probe that we have had so far have been spectacular,” said Prof Stuart Bale, a physicist at the University of California, in Berkeley, who led the analysis from one of the craft’s instruments. “We can see the magnetic structure of the corona, which tells us that the solar wind is emerging from small coronal holes; we see impulsive activity, large jets or switchbacks, which we think are related to the origin of the solar wind. And we are also surprised by the ferocity of the dust environment.”
Over the next six years, the car-sized spacecraft will follow an ever-closer elliptical orbit, eventually swooping so near that it will technically “touch” the sun. A drawback of being at such close quarters is that Parker will not be sending pictures home. If it swivelled towards the sun its camera would melt, so the spacecraft’s instruments gaze sideways, measuring the stream of supersonic charged particles that make up the solar wind.
Previously, scientists observed that the sun’s wind appears to have two main components: a “fast” one that travels around 700km per second (and comes from giant coronal holes in the sun’s polar region; and a “slow” wind, travelling below 500km per second, whose origin is unknown.
The Parker probe traced the slow wind back to small coronal holes dappled around the sun’s equator – solar structures that had not previously been observed. Coronal holes are cooler, less dense regions, through which magnetic fields stream out into space, acting as channels for the charged particles to flow along.
The observations also point to an explanation for why the corona is so blisteringly hot.
“The corona is a million degrees, but the sun’s surface is only thousands,” said Prof Tim Horbury, a co-investigator on the Parker Solar Probe Fields instrument at Imperial College London. “It’s as if the Earth’s surface temperature were the same, but its atmosphere was many thousands of degrees. How can that work? You’d expect to get colder as you moved away.”
Parker’s sidelong observations revealed that the particles in the solar wind appeared to be released in explosive jets, rather than being radiated out in a steady stream. “It’s bang, bang, bang,” said Horbury.
This rapid release of energy from the sun’s interior into its atmosphere could help explain why the atmosphere is so staggeringly hot compared to the solar surface, he said.
Another surprise was the dustiness of the area close to the sun. During the nearest approach of its orbit, the probe was peppered with a fine dust, chipping tiny pieces off its heat shield that showed up as white streaks in images captured by the high-resolution camera. It is thought to be the remains of asteroids and comets that came close to the sun, causing them to evaporate, leaving behind just a dusty haze.
The new observations were made when Parker was about 15m miles (24m km) from the sun, but it will eventually fly to about 6m km of its surface — more than seven times closer than the previous closest mission, the Helios 2 spacecraft in 1976.
The extreme conditions faced by Parker has required the use of unconventional materials and spacecraft design. The craft’s white ceramic heat shields will reach a temperature of nearly 1,400C (2,552F) during the mission’s closest approach. As it passes close to the sun, its solar panels are retracted into the shadow of the heat shield, with just a tiny area remaining exposed to generate power. The craft has also broken the record for the fastest moving spacecraft, relative to the sun. It will reach speeds of nearly 435,000 mph (700,000 km/h) in 2024.
“It’s a very bold mission, it’s really extreme and it’s an enormously impressive engineering effort,” said Horbury."
Yes indeed. Withstand 1,400 degrees Centigrade and survive and function! Like I said, a tough bastard:
The probe is named after Eugene Parker, an astrophysicist from the University of Chicago who in the 1950s predicted solar wind.
Solar wind constitutes of a stream of charged particles released from the corona. It consists mostly of electrons, protons and alpha particles with kinetic energies between 0.5 and 10 keV. Solar wind plasma also includes trace amounts of heavy ions and the atomic nuclei of C, N, O, Ne, Mg, Si, S, and Fe. Embedded within the solar-wind plasma is the interplanetary magnetic field. The solar wind varies in density, temperature and speed over time and over solar latitude and longitude. Its particles can escape the Sun's gravity because of their high energy resulting from the high temperature of the corona, which in turn is a result of the coronal magnetic field. At a distance of more than a few solar radii from the Sun, the solar wind reaches speeds of 250 to 750 kilometers per second and is supersonic, meaning it moves faster than the speed of the fast magnetosonic wave.
MFBB.
Wednesday, December 04, 2019
"GERMAN" RAPPER K.I.Z. RELEASES "MUSIC" VIDEO IN WHICH AFD POLITICIANS ARE BUTCHERED.
The "German" rapper KIZ (aka Tarek Ebéné) released a 'music' video last Friday in which three actors play top AfD politicians: Bjorn Hoecke, Alexander Gauland and Chairwoman Alice Weidel.
Imagine the outrage if this were a video in which AfD militants would butcher Turks in Germany:
It should be noted that just a couple of days ago, Angela Merkel publicly and forcefully claimed that there are limits to freedom of expression and that those limits start where hate begins.
Apparently, releasing a video wherein you cut open an AfD woman's belly is not "hate".
Here is the video directly on YouTube :
If anything remotely like that would have been posted in the reverse situation, it would have been pulled before you could say "Sauerkraut". Now however...
PI News' Markus Wiener weighs in: "UNERTRAEGLICHE POLITISCHE DOPPELMORAL":
In der Tat (indeed).
MFBB.
Imagine the outrage if this were a video in which AfD militants would butcher Turks in Germany:
Vandaag heeft de Duitse rapper K.I.Z. een muziekvideo gepubliceerd waarin hij AfD-politici Weidel, Höcke en Gauland afslacht.
— K. Elias (@KolyavB) November 29, 2019
Deze linksextremist trad 1,5 jaar geleden op in Chemnitz tijdens het concert voor "tolerantie en diversiteit" n.a.v. onrust daar.
Erg tolerant hoor 🤨 pic.twitter.com/w4SNHUMCYV
It should be noted that just a couple of days ago, Angela Merkel publicly and forcefully claimed that there are limits to freedom of expression and that those limits start where hate begins.
Apparently, releasing a video wherein you cut open an AfD woman's belly is not "hate".
Here is the video directly on YouTube :
If anything remotely like that would have been posted in the reverse situation, it would have been pulled before you could say "Sauerkraut". Now however...
PI News' Markus Wiener weighs in: "UNERTRAEGLICHE POLITISCHE DOPPELMORAL":
"... Ein Deutschrapper namens “Tarek K.I.Z.” produziert ein Musikvideo (siehe oben), in dem er einige unschwer als AfD-Spitzenpolitiker erkennbare Personen auf widerwärtigste Art und Weise abschlachtet. Das Blut spritzt und fließt in Strömen, während einem alten Herrn mit Gauland-Hundekrawatte der Kopf abgeschlagen und einem Alice-Weidel-Double der Bauch aufgeschlitzt wird. Auf weitere Schilderungen dieser abartigen Mordphantasien sei an dieser Stelle verzichtet und auch das Video sollte sich niemand mit empfindlichen Magen antun.
Aber was ist nun die politisch-mediale Reaktion auf diesen eklatanten Ausbruch von Hass? Umgehende Löschung des Machwerks auf Youtube und allen sozialen Netzwerken? Sperrung der Social-Media-Kanäle der rappenden Volksverhetzer? Anzeigen empört-schockierter Gutmenschen? Twittersaltos von Stegner bis Söder? Sondersendungen in Funk und Fernsehen mit vor Empörung bebenden Kommentatorenstimmen? “Wut, Abscheu und Entsetzen”?
Natürlich nicht, leider alles wie erwartbar, wenn man das miese politische Spiel im Lande durchschaut hat. Auf Youtube hat man sich gerade mal dazu durchgerungen, vor dem Abspielen des Clips einen Warnhinweis vor expliziter Gewaltdarstellung anzuzeigen. Ansonsten “buiseness as usual”. Keine Löschorgien trotz Netzwerkdurchsetzungsgesetz. Beredtes Schweigen bei der etablierten Politik. Keine “aus Worten werden Taten”-Statements.
Betont neutrale Berichte im GEZ-Fernsehen, in denen ganz entspannt über das Video und die Rolle der Kunstfreiheit sinniert wird. Zaghafte Kritik in manchen Zeitungen, wenn sie denn überhaupt einen “Nachrichtenwert” in diesem politisch motivierten Mordaufruf erkennen wollen: Klar sei es gut, überall und immer gegen die AfD zu agitieren, aber muss man dafür jemanden gleich noch den Kopf abschlagen …? Und der “Künstler” selbst erhält großzügig PR und darf via Medien treuherzig beschwichtigen: Alles nur “Movie”, entspannt euch wieder!
Auch wenn das Bild abgedroschen ist: Man stelle sich nur eine Sekunde das gleiche Szenario unter umgekehrten Vorzeichen vor. Undenkbar – und deshalb ein weiterer Beweis für die unerträgliche politische Doppelmoral im Lande, die einer Seite (fast) alles erlaubt, während der anderen Seite die Luft zum Atmen abgeschnürt wird. Und die diesen Zustand dann auch noch klaglos hinnehmen und nicht “wieder auf Opfer machen” soll. Was für eine perverse Situation."
In der Tat (indeed).
MFBB.
Tuesday, December 03, 2019
MOLENBEEK, NOVEMBER 2019.
Video courtesy Sam Van Rooy, a young Vlaams Belang politician and MP in the regional Flemish Parliament.
That's what Umvolkung looks like.
MFBB.
Deze video laat zien waarom wij vandaag #Molenbeek niet in mochten. #islamisering pic.twitter.com/dsBJysKuKJ
— Sam van Rooy 💛 (@SamvanRooy1) November 3, 2017
That's what Umvolkung looks like.
MFBB.
Monday, December 02, 2019
EU NOW FAST EVOLVING INTO EUSSR.
And who better to convey that message than that horrible Merkel creature?
Hmmmm. I have seen that body language before:
Once again I implore on Americans, or any freedom loving people on the face of the Earth, to stick to your guns.
MFBB.
Angela Merkel saying that freedom of expression ends once someone engages in "hate speech" or "extreme speech" and that this is necessary for preserving a "free society".
— BasedPoland (@BasedPoland) November 29, 2019
Who gets to define what "hate speech" is?
1984#NewSpeech#MinistryOfTruth pic.twitter.com/bmMpIPjXG2
Hmmmm. I have seen that body language before:
Once again I implore on Americans, or any freedom loving people on the face of the Earth, to stick to your guns.
MFBB.
Sunday, December 01, 2019
SUNDAY NIGHT ART SNACK: GUSTAV KLIMT, ALPHONSE MUCHA.
First two works by Gustav Klimt (1862-1918), the Austrian symbolist painter and key figure in Vienna's Secession Movement.
Pallas Athena (1898)
Stiller Weiher (Egelsee bei Golling, Salzburg) (1899)
The prolific output of Alphonse Mucha (1860-1939), a Czech Art Nouveau illustrator and graphic artist who often used dreamy, voluptuous goddesses for subjects, tends to obscure the fact that he was just as much - perhaps more - a history painter who used his art to pay homage to the Slavic People. His key work in this regard is The Slav Epic, a monumental cycle of 20 canvases. Much less ambitious, but just as intriguing, are several smaller works, among them Woman in the Wilderness (1923), aka Star or Siberia.
Young Mucha was strongly influenced by Pan-Slavism and had a high regard of Czarist Russia as the epitome of Slavic values. Woman in the Wilderness, which I happened to come across in the small Mucha Museum in Prague in the summer of 2018, can be regarded as Mucha's evocation of the horrible sufferings inflicted upon the Russians under the bolsheviks, in particular the Great Famine of 1921. An emaciated Russian peasant woman sits exhausted in the snow, unable to move any further. Wolves, savouring an easy prey, lurk over the berm. The hungry woman, symbolising Mother Russia under the yoke of communism, stretches her arms in a gesture of resignation. But the shining star above her head offers not only spiritual salvation but also hope for better times.
Come to think of it. When in Prague, really try to visit that museum. Woman in the Wilderness is about halfway through it, to the right. Seeing the painting as a picture in a book or onscreen is one thing. Seeing it for real is a... well, I can only speak for myself of course, but for me it was a mesmerizing experience.
Good night, and have a lucky an productive week ahead.
MFBB.
Pallas Athena (1898)
Stiller Weiher (Egelsee bei Golling, Salzburg) (1899)
The prolific output of Alphonse Mucha (1860-1939), a Czech Art Nouveau illustrator and graphic artist who often used dreamy, voluptuous goddesses for subjects, tends to obscure the fact that he was just as much - perhaps more - a history painter who used his art to pay homage to the Slavic People. His key work in this regard is The Slav Epic, a monumental cycle of 20 canvases. Much less ambitious, but just as intriguing, are several smaller works, among them Woman in the Wilderness (1923), aka Star or Siberia.
Young Mucha was strongly influenced by Pan-Slavism and had a high regard of Czarist Russia as the epitome of Slavic values. Woman in the Wilderness, which I happened to come across in the small Mucha Museum in Prague in the summer of 2018, can be regarded as Mucha's evocation of the horrible sufferings inflicted upon the Russians under the bolsheviks, in particular the Great Famine of 1921. An emaciated Russian peasant woman sits exhausted in the snow, unable to move any further. Wolves, savouring an easy prey, lurk over the berm. The hungry woman, symbolising Mother Russia under the yoke of communism, stretches her arms in a gesture of resignation. But the shining star above her head offers not only spiritual salvation but also hope for better times.
Come to think of it. When in Prague, really try to visit that museum. Woman in the Wilderness is about halfway through it, to the right. Seeing the painting as a picture in a book or onscreen is one thing. Seeing it for real is a... well, I can only speak for myself of course, but for me it was a mesmerizing experience.
Good night, and have a lucky an productive week ahead.
MFBB.
Saturday, November 30, 2019
THE FOOL AND THE HERO.
We have all heard about Usman Khan, the muslim terrorist who killed two people in London the other day:
One of them was a virtue signalling fool by the name of Jack Merritt. Via The Telegraph:
This exerpt from The Daily Mail makes for depressing reading:
This tweet from 2015 is even more depressing:
I took a screenshot so that if the tweetlink expires, Merritt's nonsensical message stays up as a warning against multiculti insanity:
Now for the hero. Actually, there were three. Three white males full of toxic masculinity, who took down the scumbag so that he could be shot to death by police. But while I expressly do not want to belittle Thomas Gray or the individual who wants to stay anonymous, the act of Polish chef Lukasz grabbing a narwhal tusk from Fishmonger's Hall to pin down Khan strikes me as more than a little karma:
Some background here.
Poles have a history of pinning down islamic hordes with lances. They never brag - and "Lukasz" is apparently no exception - yet they do what must be done.
Tomorrow is Advent Sunday, the fourth Sunday before Christmas. It's a special Sunday in Christianity. I will tell you that I asked myself whether I should really have referred to Jack Merritt as a virtue signalling fool... at some level I do know that that choice of words is unbecoming for a Christian - even a flawed one like me.
And yet I decided to do just that.
Because the stakes are too high.
As harsh as the reality is, far from being a force for the good, Mr Merritt, and far too many of his peers, are actually a part of the problem. As long as a deluded generation - generations, actually - do not come to terms with the naked, basic truth that islam is a cancer and must be combated anytime, anywhere, lest it ultimately drag the whole of humanity back into inhumane backwardness...
... more people will die. More precious social fabric will be torn apart. More art will be destroyed. More freedom lost. And more civilizations will perish.
There is no place for islam on this planet. I'm not saying we should go on a killing spree. I'm saying the normal part of humanity should shun and contain it, to let it rot in its hellholes.
You could never turn nazism into something good. NEVER.
It's the same with islam.
MFBB.
Meet the #LondonBridge Terrorist. His name is Usman Khan. He was convicted of terrorism in 2012. He was released in 2018 (🤷♂️). He killed again yesterday. Police are trying to work out why a terrorist might terrorise. 🙄 Meanwhile, please keep an eye for Islamophobia. pic.twitter.com/cmgBjXo1Fz
— David Vance (@DVATW) November 30, 2019
One of them was a virtue signalling fool by the name of Jack Merritt. Via The Telegraph:
This exerpt from The Daily Mail makes for depressing reading:
"Jack Merritt, 25, from Cottenham, was today named by his father as one of two victims killed by Khan at a prisoner rehabilitation conference at Fishmongers' Hall, where the attack began yesterday afternoon.
Mr Merritt was the course co-ordinator for Learning Together, an education scheme run by the University of Cambridge's Institute of Criminology that killer Khan had attended on Friday.
The group had been hosting a conference at the Grade II-listed building when the attack began, with Khan one of the former criminals attending the rehabilitation seminar for prisoners.
Mr Merritt's father David said in a tweet that his son 'would not wish his death to be used as the pretext for more draconian sentences or for detaining people unnecessarily'.
'R.I.P. Jack: you were a beautiful spirit who always took the side of the underdog.'
He also said his son had been a 'champion' for those who had been 'dealt a losing hand by life, who ended up in the prison system'.
Giving a statement outside Scotland Yard, Metropolitan Police Assistant Commissioner Neil Basu said Khan was subject to an 'extensive list of licence conditions' on his release from prison and that 'to the best of my knowledge he was complying with those conditions'."
This tweet from 2015 is even more depressing:
'It's not the refugee outflows that cause terrorism, it is terrorism, tyranny, and war that create refugees.' https://t.co/HnE18wqbPr
— Jack Merritt (@JackmerrittJack) November 18, 2015
I took a screenshot so that if the tweetlink expires, Merritt's nonsensical message stays up as a warning against multiculti insanity:
Now for the hero. Actually, there were three. Three white males full of toxic masculinity, who took down the scumbag so that he could be shot to death by police. But while I expressly do not want to belittle Thomas Gray or the individual who wants to stay anonymous, the act of Polish chef Lukasz grabbing a narwhal tusk from Fishmonger's Hall to pin down Khan strikes me as more than a little karma:
Best of British.
— Katie Hopkins (@KTHopkins) November 30, 2019
Top lads taking down a terrorist after he killed 2 on #LondonBridge
Give them honours and rewards. Heroes still walk amongst us.
Love them. And you @BasedPoland pic.twitter.com/RqV3rnDlAt
Some background here.
Poles have a history of pinning down islamic hordes with lances. They never brag - and "Lukasz" is apparently no exception - yet they do what must be done.
Tomorrow is Advent Sunday, the fourth Sunday before Christmas. It's a special Sunday in Christianity. I will tell you that I asked myself whether I should really have referred to Jack Merritt as a virtue signalling fool... at some level I do know that that choice of words is unbecoming for a Christian - even a flawed one like me.
And yet I decided to do just that.
Because the stakes are too high.
As harsh as the reality is, far from being a force for the good, Mr Merritt, and far too many of his peers, are actually a part of the problem. As long as a deluded generation - generations, actually - do not come to terms with the naked, basic truth that islam is a cancer and must be combated anytime, anywhere, lest it ultimately drag the whole of humanity back into inhumane backwardness...
... more people will die. More precious social fabric will be torn apart. More art will be destroyed. More freedom lost. And more civilizations will perish.
There is no place for islam on this planet. I'm not saying we should go on a killing spree. I'm saying the normal part of humanity should shun and contain it, to let it rot in its hellholes.
You could never turn nazism into something good. NEVER.
It's the same with islam.
MFBB.
Friday, November 29, 2019
UMVOLKUNG IN THE UK.
In 1976 the Sex Pistols sang 'Anarchy in the UK'. Seems like they get what they wished for. Infographic via The Economist. Look and shudder.
In 2060, China will be full of Chinese. Bengal full of Bengalese. Africa will be choke full of Africans. Brazil, ditto. It can be said with certainty that the ethnic composition of all these countries will have changed very little.
Western Europe and the US however will have become unrecognizable. Please tell me why this would be a bonus for our countries and authochton populations.
By and large, people are starting to wake up, although the powers behind this orchestrated Population Replacement are strong - very strong. But check out this document:
Two more innocent Europeans paid with their lives today for the multiculti insanity of our immoral 'leaders':
There may come a point where we will have to lynch and hang the Macrons and Merkels, if we want our once beautiful and prosperous countries, for which we worked, and work, so hard, to survive in any meaningful semblance.
Pray for the victims.
MFBB.
Britain will look very different in 2031. Will more diversity bring more tolerance, too? http://t.co/5ySdTVSm8A pic.twitter.com/gkbFEKuQ1g
— The Economist (@TheEconomist) June 9, 2015
In 2060, China will be full of Chinese. Bengal full of Bengalese. Africa will be choke full of Africans. Brazil, ditto. It can be said with certainty that the ethnic composition of all these countries will have changed very little.
Western Europe and the US however will have become unrecognizable. Please tell me why this would be a bonus for our countries and authochton populations.
By and large, people are starting to wake up, although the powers behind this orchestrated Population Replacement are strong - very strong. But check out this document:
"INTRODUCTION
__________________________________________________________________________________
“Diversity is our Greatest Strength™!” Undoubtedly you’ve heard the phrase from time to time. The most powerful institutions of the world are in unanimous agreement that diversity is unquestionably a colossal benefit to our societies; economically, culturally, and genetically. This includes:
the mainstream media, education system, corporate entities, government officials (both Left and Right), various supranational organizations, such as the UN, EU, IMF, World Bank, etc.1
Not only does the entire global elite espouse a pro-diversity message, but they have also deviously engineered a scenario in which it is almost entirely forbidden to oppose their unanimous consensus.
Any individual who dares to question the enormous, quantifiable benefits of Diversity™ faces severe threats of social, economic, and legal punishments. Social penalties—which have been engineered via a relentless, 24/7 pro-diversity propaganda bombardment from every source of information imaginable—include social shaming (loss of social status), isolation, loss of friendship, and familial
rejection. The questioning individual is decried as a “hateful bigot” and cast out of “polite society” as a pariah. Economic penalties include loss of employment or employability and, increasingly, rejection from public services, such as banking or transportation. These penalties operate similarly to China’s “social credit” system, but are widely regarded as non-tyrannical because “private corporations can do whatever they want” (strategic Libertarianism). In more tyrannous countries individuals who question the benefits of diversity face fierce legal repercussions, see, for example,
the United Kingdom’s insane “Hate Speech” laws, which roughly translate to “offending someone
who isn’t a White male is illegal.”
All in all, those who care about the truth and the overall happiness of society are in a pretty sticky situation. Fortunately, as this so-called “Diversity Experiment” progresses, the disparity in opinions between the relentlessly pro-diversity global elite and the vaguely-diversity-skeptical general populace is becoming more and more abyssal. The number of normal people speaking out
against this transparently engineered and wholly unnatural agenda is growing exponentially."
Two more innocent Europeans paid with their lives today for the multiculti insanity of our immoral 'leaders':
This is unbelievable. The Jihadi shot dead on #LondonBridge was not only a convicted terrorist who had been released on a tag but he was a guest of a Cambridge University sponsored conference in London today on “prisoner rehabilitation”. You just couldn’t make this stuff up! 😱 pic.twitter.com/40oO2JZHXY
— David Vance (@DVATW) November 29, 2019
There may come a point where we will have to lynch and hang the Macrons and Merkels, if we want our once beautiful and prosperous countries, for which we worked, and work, so hard, to survive in any meaningful semblance.
Pray for the victims.
MFBB.
Thursday, November 28, 2019
HAPPY THANKSGIVING!!!
As per usual, DowneastBlog wishes our US readers a Happy Thanksgiving!!!
God Bless.
MFBB.
God Bless.
MFBB.
Saturday, November 23, 2019
JOSEPH STIGLITZ TOTALLY LOSING IT.
First a quick recap of the wonderful state of the economy in socialist Venezuela:
The pleasant images of this socialist model state bring to mind that, just like Nobel Peace Prizes, Nobel Economy Prizes have devalued at a rate comparable to the Venezuelan Bolivar. The time when Economy Nobel Prize Winner Joseph Stiglitz heaped praise on Hugo Chavez is not that long behind us:
Why do I bring up Mr Stiglitz now? Well, as you may or may not know, he has written a new book. And The Graudian has a few words to spare about the glorious event:
Just let that sink in. So Stiglitz has been "growing increasingly disturbed by America's growing inequality". Strange, because last time I checked CNN on the matter (CNN!), even they had to admit that under Trump, unemployment among minorities had fallen to record lows:
Back to Stiglitz:
But luckily South America in general, and Venezuela in particular, remain beacons of democracy to offset the Big Orange Fascist Gringo up North, isn't it?
From the Guardian article:
Duh. You mean sharing the same garbage bags, like this?
"It is not only important to have sustainable growth, but to ensure the best distribution of economic growth, for the benefit of all citizens." ~ Joseph Stiglitz
And then comes the killer quote:
Well, that does it. Any individual who has made it as far as third grade in Kindergarten knows for sure that the economic recipes of Bernie and Corbyn would wreak armageddon on the economies of their respectice countries. I used to think that the Most Moronic Economy Nobel Prize Winner was Paul Krugman. But in the Marketplace of Stupidity Mr Krugman is getting STIFF competition from Joseph Stiglitz.
MFBB.
THIS is the result of socialism. pic.twitter.com/NN3j0QyRvn
— PragerU (@prageru) November 23, 2019
The pleasant images of this socialist model state bring to mind that, just like Nobel Peace Prizes, Nobel Economy Prizes have devalued at a rate comparable to the Venezuelan Bolivar. The time when Economy Nobel Prize Winner Joseph Stiglitz heaped praise on Hugo Chavez is not that long behind us:
Why do I bring up Mr Stiglitz now? Well, as you may or may not know, he has written a new book. And The Graudian has a few words to spare about the glorious event:
"Stiglitz, in London to publicise his new book, says that for the past six or seven years he has been growing increasingly disturbed by America’s growing inequality and the simmering anger it has caused.
“I began to say ‘if we didn’t fix this problem we are going to have a political problem’ and historically a Trump figure, a fascist kind of figure arises.”
Asked whether he really thinks Trump is a fascist, Stiglitz says: “I certainly think he has those tendencies. He is restrained by our institutions and every day those institutions work we feel relieved. We don’t know what the bounds are and we don’t know how far he would push those bounds.
“A couple of things are most disturbing – the attack on the press and the attack on the foundations of knowledge which goes beyond the press.
A couple of things are most disturbing – the attack on the press and the attack on the foundations of knowledge
“We have never had a president who day after day lies and is unaffected by it. Normally everybody you deal with is tethered by a sense of responsibility and truth, but not him.
“I think the other thing you have seen with some of these fascist leaders is using ‘us versus them’ as a way of dividing society.” Stiglitz says Trump is using racism and misogyny to divide America. “To me it is deeply, deeply disturbing.”
Just let that sink in. So Stiglitz has been "growing increasingly disturbed by America's growing inequality". Strange, because last time I checked CNN on the matter (CNN!), even they had to admit that under Trump, unemployment among minorities had fallen to record lows:
"New York (CNN Business) Black unemployment fell to a record low in August, helped by a jump in the number of black women on the job.
The unemployment rate for black workers fell to 5.5% from 6%, according to the Labor Department data. The previous record low of 5.9% was set in May 2018.
The unemployment rate for black women fell to a record 4.4% from 5.2% in July. The unemployment rate for black men crept up to 5.9% from 5.8%. But the previous month's rate was a record, so the rate is still near its historic low.
Unemployment among workers who identify themselves as Hispanic or Latino also fell in August to 4.2%, which matched a record low set earlier this year.
Minority unemployment has been tracked by the Labor Department since the early 1970's. Both black and Hispanic or Latino unemployment numbers have traditionally been higher than white unemployment, and it remains so today. White unemployment was 3.4% in August, up from 3.3% previously. But this is the smallest gap on record between the respective unemployment rates for blacks and whites...
Back to Stiglitz:
"...and historically a Trump figure, a fascist kind of figure arises..."
But luckily South America in general, and Venezuela in particular, remain beacons of democracy to offset the Big Orange Fascist Gringo up North, isn't it?
From the Guardian article:
“I don’t think we can have democracies that work where most of the people are not benefiting economically, where most of the people are worried about their job security. Society can’t function without shared prosperity.”
Duh. You mean sharing the same garbage bags, like this?
"It is not only important to have sustainable growth, but to ensure the best distribution of economic growth, for the benefit of all citizens." ~ Joseph Stiglitz
And then comes the killer quote:
“I see the election of 2016 as an election of protest. Bernie represented a return to the old values: a middle-class lifestyle, a home, a secure retirement, education for your children, healthcare. Jeremy Corbyn is saying the same thing in the UK.”
Well, that does it. Any individual who has made it as far as third grade in Kindergarten knows for sure that the economic recipes of Bernie and Corbyn would wreak armageddon on the economies of their respectice countries. I used to think that the Most Moronic Economy Nobel Prize Winner was Paul Krugman. But in the Marketplace of Stupidity Mr Krugman is getting STIFF competition from Joseph Stiglitz.
MFBB.
Sunday, November 17, 2019
WHEN STRENGTH IN DIVERSITY MEANT THE JETS.
OK the video was shamelessly stolen from the good CDR, I didn't even bother to ask, but what's he gonna do huh, with 5,000 kloms of Atlantic between us?
Anyway, watch this marvellous video in Technicolor of take offs and landings on the USS Shangri-La (CV 38), somewhere in the Med in 1962.
My personal favorite is the Skyhawk. For some reason I have always liked this tough little delta-winged attack plane. I had a model as a kid - although I almost always built my models myself, that one was a diecast. And of course, the Skyhawk featured prominently in the middle batch of my numerous Buck Danny cartoons:
Yes, there once was a USS Shangri-La (CV/CVA/CVS-38), prolly the carrier with the most incongruous name ever. One of 24 Essex-class aircraft carriers commissioned during or right after WWII for the United States Navy, the inspiration for her name came from President Roosevelt himself. You may or may not know that on the heels of Pearl Harbor, a Lt Col by the name of James H. Doolittle took off with sixteen B25 Mitchell bombers from the deck of the carrier Hornet and bombed Tokyo, a feat that caused little structural damage but of which the psychological impact was enormous (both for the Japanese and the Americans). When shortly after the raid a reporter asked the President whence the raid had been carried out, the President, apparently choosing to let the enemy in the dark about US carriers being able to launch twin engined bombers, replied that it had been from Shangri-La, which is a fictional, mystical land in the novel Lost Horizon by James Hilton. Two years later, when it came time to name a long hull Essex carrier, someone remembered the anecdote and voilà.
USS Shangri-La, commissioned in 1944, took part in several campaigns in the Pacific, earning two battle stars. Decommissioned shortly after war's end, she was modernized and recommissioned in the early 50s, and redesignated a CVA, an attack carrier. Operating in both the Pacific and Atlantic/Mediterranean, she was refitted with an angled deck and towards the end of her career took part in the Vietnam War, where she added another three battle stars to her combat record. Shangri-La was decommissioned in 1971, and sold for scrap in 1988. Here she is on her last deployment in 1970:
MFBB.
Anyway, watch this marvellous video in Technicolor of take offs and landings on the USS Shangri-La (CV 38), somewhere in the Med in 1962.
My personal favorite is the Skyhawk. For some reason I have always liked this tough little delta-winged attack plane. I had a model as a kid - although I almost always built my models myself, that one was a diecast. And of course, the Skyhawk featured prominently in the middle batch of my numerous Buck Danny cartoons:
Yes, there once was a USS Shangri-La (CV/CVA/CVS-38), prolly the carrier with the most incongruous name ever. One of 24 Essex-class aircraft carriers commissioned during or right after WWII for the United States Navy, the inspiration for her name came from President Roosevelt himself. You may or may not know that on the heels of Pearl Harbor, a Lt Col by the name of James H. Doolittle took off with sixteen B25 Mitchell bombers from the deck of the carrier Hornet and bombed Tokyo, a feat that caused little structural damage but of which the psychological impact was enormous (both for the Japanese and the Americans). When shortly after the raid a reporter asked the President whence the raid had been carried out, the President, apparently choosing to let the enemy in the dark about US carriers being able to launch twin engined bombers, replied that it had been from Shangri-La, which is a fictional, mystical land in the novel Lost Horizon by James Hilton. Two years later, when it came time to name a long hull Essex carrier, someone remembered the anecdote and voilà.
USS Shangri-La, commissioned in 1944, took part in several campaigns in the Pacific, earning two battle stars. Decommissioned shortly after war's end, she was modernized and recommissioned in the early 50s, and redesignated a CVA, an attack carrier. Operating in both the Pacific and Atlantic/Mediterranean, she was refitted with an angled deck and towards the end of her career took part in the Vietnam War, where she added another three battle stars to her combat record. Shangri-La was decommissioned in 1971, and sold for scrap in 1988. Here she is on her last deployment in 1970:
MFBB.
Saturday, November 16, 2019
AZAN, CALL TO ISLAMIC PRAYER, NOW IN AMSTERDAM, THE NETHERLANDS.
This is nothing but a nightmare. Last Friday, November 15, must be written in the annals of The Netherlands as one of the blackest days in that country's history, since for the first time the azan, or adhan, the call to islamic prayer, could be heard from loudspeakers mounted on the Blauwe Moskee (lit. Blue Mosque). Hear and shiver:
Some background here.
Follow that link, and you will come across the howler at the end:
Indeed. It is so tolerant that it tolerates muslim vermin which will make a swift end to that tolerance. And while the traitor class of spineless politicians in The Netherlands is tripping over its feet to assist in the islamization of their own country, the paltry remnants of Christianity in muslim majority countries are persecuted on a daily basis and their few remaining churches are demolished or decommissioned. In Algeria for instance, a long time ago a Christian country which brought forth Saint Augustine of Hippo, one of our essential Church fathers, police raided several of the last remaining churches and closed them down:
Got that? The pitiful Christian remnant in Algeria - around 1 per cent of the population - is deprived of its last places of worship. Meanwhile, the islamic call to prayer is now allowed in The Netherlands' most iconic city.
This is only a precedent. The dyke has broken. Five years from now, The Netherlands will be full of mosques where muslims and non-muslims alike will hear a fucking muezzin yell at the top of his lungs five times a day.
It's a nightmare.
MFBB.
Het is gebeurd: de #azan in #Amsterdam. Opdat de hele buurt - moslims én niet-moslims - er steeds weer aan wordt herinnerd wie de baas is (#Allah).
— Sam van Rooy 💛 (@SamvanRooy1) November 16, 2019
Dit is je reinste bezetting, onderwerping en #islamisering, en een niet te onderschatten overwinning voor de totalitaire #islam. 👇🏻 pic.twitter.com/qnZVlfXWbR
Some background here.
Follow that link, and you will come across the howler at the end:
"Imam Elforkani of the Blauwe Moskee on Henri Dunanstraat expects that the mosque’s intention to use loudspeakers will cause a discussion, but not much problems. “Amsterdam is a tolerant city, right?” he said to Parool."
Indeed. It is so tolerant that it tolerates muslim vermin which will make a swift end to that tolerance. And while the traitor class of spineless politicians in The Netherlands is tripping over its feet to assist in the islamization of their own country, the paltry remnants of Christianity in muslim majority countries are persecuted on a daily basis and their few remaining churches are demolished or decommissioned. In Algeria for instance, a long time ago a Christian country which brought forth Saint Augustine of Hippo, one of our essential Church fathers, police raided several of the last remaining churches and closed them down:
This is what Christian persecution looks like in #Algeria where the state has launched a campaign to close churches. Yesterday, police unexpectedly showed up at this church and at one point, brutally beat the pastor and other believers. pic.twitter.com/pKjLd5zcWr
— Open Doors USA (@OpenDoors) October 18, 2019
Got that? The pitiful Christian remnant in Algeria - around 1 per cent of the population - is deprived of its last places of worship. Meanwhile, the islamic call to prayer is now allowed in The Netherlands' most iconic city.
This is only a precedent. The dyke has broken. Five years from now, The Netherlands will be full of mosques where muslims and non-muslims alike will hear a fucking muezzin yell at the top of his lungs five times a day.
It's a nightmare.
MFBB.
Sunday, November 10, 2019
RECOMMENDED READS: THE GATESTONE INSTITUTE'S "PERSECUTION OF CHRISTIANS IN ALGERIA" BY UZAY BULUT.
While the overwhelming majority of Western political leaders are tripping over their feet not only to accommodate islam but to actively promote and even import it, the reality in muslim-majority countries is the exact opposite. Indeed, the few remaining pitiful remnants of Christianity and Judaism face ever more severe persecution. Case in point Algeria, as this article by Uzay Bulut over at The Gatestone Institute makes clear:
Via Twitter images of a sit in in the Tizi Ouzou Church. In vain of course, as police officers forcibly remove the worshippers:
It's a crying scandal that our so-called Pope is blathering about 'faithfulness and respect for each other' - while his flock is mercilessly prosecuted all across the globe.
MFBB.
"Although Christians make up a mere one percent of Algeria's Muslim-majority population, they continue to be persecuted by the government in Algiers. The most recent example is the closure in mid-October of three churches and the forced eviction of their congregants by police.
William Stark, regional manager of International Christian Concern (ICC), told Gatestone that shuttering the churches is just part of a broader campaign that began two years ago to target places of Christian worship.
Stark said his organization's sources in Algeria report that 12 churches have been closed by Algerian authorities since the beginning of 2019 alone:
~ "The closing of the latest three churches is most concerning, as it came only days after members of the l'Eglise Protestante d'Algerie (EPA) -- an umbrella organization for Protestant churches -- staged a peaceful sit-in against earlier church closures, and therefore suggests that it was an act of retaliation by Algerian authorities against those Christians willing to protest.
"One impetus for the protests is a 2006 law stating that any non-Muslim worship be conducted in specific, designated buildings. But since this law came into effect, no Christian places of worship have been designated by the government of Algeria."
According to the ICC, one of the churches that was shut down -- the Full Gospel of Tizi-Ouzou , with approximately 1,000 members -- is the largest in Algeria. Its lead pastor, Salah Chalah, also happens to head the EPA.
The pastor reportedly attempted to meet with government representatives multiple times, with no success. While his church was being raided by police, he was beaten with a baton.
Stark explained to Gatestone:
~ "The mere existence of an open Christian minority seems to challenge Algeria's national identity as a Muslim nation. The fact that this small, nonconforming minority is openly projecting its own image of what it means to be Algerian is at least part of the reason that it is being targeted."
Chapter I, Article 2 of Algeria's constitution determines that "Islam is the religion of the State."
According to the US State Department's 2018 Report on International Religious Freedom, in Algeria:
~ "Proselytizing of Muslims by non-Muslims is a crime... According to media reports, authorities charged five Christians from Bouira Province, three of whom belong to the same family, with 'inciting a Muslim to change his religion' and 'performing religious worship in an unauthorized place.' On December 25, a judge at the court of Bouira acquitted the five individuals. In March a court in Tiaret convicted and fined two Christian brothers for carrying more than 50 Bibles in their car. Prosecutors said the accused planned to use them for proselytism; the brothers said they were for church use only. The court fined each man 100,000 dinars ($850). In May another court convicted a church leader and another Christian of proselytizing, sentenced them to three months in prison, and fined them 100,000 dinars...
"Some Christian leaders and congregants spoke of family members abusing Muslims who converted to or expressed an interest in Christianity. Media reported unknown individuals vandalized two Christian cemeteries, smashing tombstones and ransacking graves. Individuals engaged in religious practice other than Sunni Islam reported they had experienced threats and intolerance, including in the media."
Via Twitter images of a sit in in the Tizi Ouzou Church. In vain of course, as police officers forcibly remove the worshippers:
#BreakingNews Christians in #Algeria stage a church sit-in to protest Algeria shutting down the two largest churches in the country. Police forcefully remove protesters and seal the church. 1500 Christians lose places of worship.
— International Christian Concern (@persecutionnews) October 16, 2019
More info: https://t.co/YBVoBkxsFB pic.twitter.com/GuvPTWUVVz
It's a crying scandal that our so-called Pope is blathering about 'faithfulness and respect for each other' - while his flock is mercilessly prosecuted all across the globe.
MFBB.
Saturday, November 02, 2019
UMPTEENTH MOSQUE IN THE WORKS IN OFFENBACH, GERMANY.
Gates of Vienna reports on yet another mosque building project in the city of Offenbach (near Frankfurt am Main), and the awareness actions by well-known islam critic Michael Stuerzenberger:
Here is the monstrosity. With a central part that resembles a helmet - as intended to, see Dictator Erdogan's infamous 'the domes are our helmets' statement.
The mere fact that in a not too large city, which already has TEN mosques, the authorities are tripping over each other's feet to issue a building permission for yet another mosque, is extremely serious cause for concern. It's worse, they are actually happy to have another muslim barracks in their midst.
But of course it's not only Offenbach. There's a veritable mosque building frenzy all over Germany, very much as in the rest of Western Europe, and it's getting hard to travel through the country and not encountering one. Why, last September I visited a fair in Central Germany and, having started out late, I stayed for the night in a hotel not far from Dueren, about halfway between Aachen and Koeln. In the morning, as I drove through Dueren to get back on the A4, well, guess what I came across:
... Dueren's main mosque. Run by the Diyanet, Turkey’s religious body, the Directorate of Religious Affairs. If you followed the link a bit higher up, you may have read that Sultan Erdogan, he of the "the minarets are our bayonets" quote, compared the staff and imams of the Diyanet to “an army of 140,000”.
Come to think of it, last year in late summer I went for a bike ride with my daughter in Eastern Flanders, more precisely around the town of Maasmechelen. I wanted to check out the panorama from one of the old terril hills (artifical mounds composed of mining debris and excavations), and from the top of one of them I saw...
... the minaret of the Tevhid mosque - an "Erdogan bayonet" - peeking out from under the green. A quick search revealed to me that this mosque too is controlled by ... the Diyanet.
The insanity of it all!!! While Christianity in Turkey is reduced to a paltry 200,000 souls who are forbidden to build churches, we are eagerly allowing an islamic dictator to construct hundreds of islamic prayer houses all over Europe. We are committing suicide. More and more I tend to think that our political "leaders" deserve nothing less than the gallows.
MFBB.
"On Friday October 25th, as part of their Germany tour, the citizens’ movement Pax Europa (BPE) were in Offenbach. BPE members hung up 160 posters at 80 locations and distributed thousands of flyers to interest citizens in the event. The planned mosque construction by Millî Görüş in the already strongly “enriched” city means it has great need for information.
The establishment parties are happy about the €4.5 million project with a minaret for 600 Muslims. It is estimated that 14,000 Muslims live in Hessen’s fifth-largest city, and to date there are already ten mosques. Friday’s rally at the Aliceplatz between 12 noon and 7pm included a very exciting discussion with the citizens (See video). According to the Frankfurter Rundschau, the magistrate of the city reacted to the posters on Tuesday with a statement in which it wished to have “no imported debates on the subject for parties to catch votes”. If a mosque was a topic, then it would be discussed by those affected. Well, this magistrate is obviously badly informed. The BPE is not a “party trying to catch votes”, but rather a citizens’ movement that has been enlightening people about Islam for over 15 years. And this magistrate should be grateful when the discussion is enriched with extensive facts about the threat of political Islam. The BPE provided citizens with information that has been withheld from them by the mainstream media and the old parties.
OP Online also reported about the poster campaign and the BPE rally, tendentiously as expected, and called it a “controversial right-wing populist campaign”:
“Offenbach is not a good place for hate demonstrations by right-wing or right-wing populist movements: in 2017, an appearance by the AfD politician Alexander Gauland at the Stadthof in front of just forty sympathizers was drowned by the whistling concert of the counter-demonstrators.
“Also the action of the right-wing populist ‘citizen movement Pax Europa’ (BPE) planned for Friday (October 25, 2019) is already encountering resistance. The fact that the BPE is advertising its event throughout the city with the right-wing populist and Islam opponent Michael Stürzenberger, who has been watched by the Bavarian Office for the Protection of the Constitution and convicted of incitement of the people, has caused controversy.”
Here is the monstrosity. With a central part that resembles a helmet - as intended to, see Dictator Erdogan's infamous 'the domes are our helmets' statement.
The mere fact that in a not too large city, which already has TEN mosques, the authorities are tripping over each other's feet to issue a building permission for yet another mosque, is extremely serious cause for concern. It's worse, they are actually happy to have another muslim barracks in their midst.
But of course it's not only Offenbach. There's a veritable mosque building frenzy all over Germany, very much as in the rest of Western Europe, and it's getting hard to travel through the country and not encountering one. Why, last September I visited a fair in Central Germany and, having started out late, I stayed for the night in a hotel not far from Dueren, about halfway between Aachen and Koeln. In the morning, as I drove through Dueren to get back on the A4, well, guess what I came across:
... Dueren's main mosque. Run by the Diyanet, Turkey’s religious body, the Directorate of Religious Affairs. If you followed the link a bit higher up, you may have read that Sultan Erdogan, he of the "the minarets are our bayonets" quote, compared the staff and imams of the Diyanet to “an army of 140,000”.
Come to think of it, last year in late summer I went for a bike ride with my daughter in Eastern Flanders, more precisely around the town of Maasmechelen. I wanted to check out the panorama from one of the old terril hills (artifical mounds composed of mining debris and excavations), and from the top of one of them I saw...
... the minaret of the Tevhid mosque - an "Erdogan bayonet" - peeking out from under the green. A quick search revealed to me that this mosque too is controlled by ... the Diyanet.
The insanity of it all!!! While Christianity in Turkey is reduced to a paltry 200,000 souls who are forbidden to build churches, we are eagerly allowing an islamic dictator to construct hundreds of islamic prayer houses all over Europe. We are committing suicide. More and more I tend to think that our political "leaders" deserve nothing less than the gallows.
MFBB.
Friday, November 01, 2019
A DAY OUT IN THE ARDENNES.
Last Sunday, OutlawDaughter and I, after a botched attempt the week before on account of atrocious weather, took to the Ardennes again for a healthy walk from Rochehaut over Frahan to Poupehan and back. Although the weather channel predicted again rain, a glance at the rainfront radar more or less convinced me that by the time we'd arrive in Rochehaut, our planned point of departure, the worst of the rain would be off to the east.
And so it turned out to be. At 2pm tops we parked our vehicle on the Rochehaut parking lot overlooking Frahan:
... and the few drips that still touched us turned out to also be the last, for the rest of the day.
So we off on a somewhat circular way that would lead us down the hill where Rochehaut (lit. High Rock) sits perched overlooking the Semois valley, to Frahan, thence along the "Crêtes de Frahan" towards Poupehan, and then back via the Roche Gilquin.
The long slope towards the Passerelle de Frahan, a foot bridge spanning the Semois, does not pose any difficulty whatsoever:
Not even 100 meters beyond Frahan's small church a path leads up and to the right towards the Crêtes de Frahan. Here we are at the very beginning of the Crêtes:
Along the well-indicated path, which follows the ridge of what is essentially a long narrow peninsula terminating in Frahan, one encounters a number of peculiar rock outcroppings:
At the base of the "peninsula" the rock formations are so numerous that they are dubbed the "Château de Montragut". This small platform is the highest in the whole complex.
And from there we continued our way to Poupehan. View from the "Chaire à Prêcher" viewpoint:
Beyond the "Chaire à prêcher" we descended gradually, coming along another POV the "Pic du Midi" (not much picky about it btw) and a good ten minutes later we were at the bank of the Semois again. We crossed it and continued our way first due north, then a little to the east, where we passed the POV "Roche Gilquin":
At 6pm we were back in Rochehaut. The twelve kloms took us exactly four hours. It's a pity the sky remained heavily overcast all during the walk, otherwise the sunrays would have revealed the full beauty of an "Eté Indien" in the woods surrounding the Semois meanders, but on the other hand we should perhaps just count ourselves lucky we did not get back soaking wet.
Nite.
MFBB.
And so it turned out to be. At 2pm tops we parked our vehicle on the Rochehaut parking lot overlooking Frahan:
... and the few drips that still touched us turned out to also be the last, for the rest of the day.
So we off on a somewhat circular way that would lead us down the hill where Rochehaut (lit. High Rock) sits perched overlooking the Semois valley, to Frahan, thence along the "Crêtes de Frahan" towards Poupehan, and then back via the Roche Gilquin.
The long slope towards the Passerelle de Frahan, a foot bridge spanning the Semois, does not pose any difficulty whatsoever:
Not even 100 meters beyond Frahan's small church a path leads up and to the right towards the Crêtes de Frahan. Here we are at the very beginning of the Crêtes:
Along the well-indicated path, which follows the ridge of what is essentially a long narrow peninsula terminating in Frahan, one encounters a number of peculiar rock outcroppings:
At the base of the "peninsula" the rock formations are so numerous that they are dubbed the "Château de Montragut". This small platform is the highest in the whole complex.
And from there we continued our way to Poupehan. View from the "Chaire à Prêcher" viewpoint:
Beyond the "Chaire à prêcher" we descended gradually, coming along another POV the "Pic du Midi" (not much picky about it btw) and a good ten minutes later we were at the bank of the Semois again. We crossed it and continued our way first due north, then a little to the east, where we passed the POV "Roche Gilquin":
At 6pm we were back in Rochehaut. The twelve kloms took us exactly four hours. It's a pity the sky remained heavily overcast all during the walk, otherwise the sunrays would have revealed the full beauty of an "Eté Indien" in the woods surrounding the Semois meanders, but on the other hand we should perhaps just count ourselves lucky we did not get back soaking wet.
Nite.
MFBB.
Saturday, October 26, 2019
RECOMMENDED READS: PAULINA NEUDING'S "BOMB ATTACKS ARE NOW A NORMAL PART OF SWEDISH LIFE."
Via The Speccie:
I have to admit that I actually feel very little sympathy towards the Swedes. A neutered people that keeps voting time and again for a criminal and utterly insane bunch of feminazis does not deserve better. To give you just one idea how far the country has gone down the cliff, consider PM Stefan Löfven's take on the issue of "Swedish" ISIS terrorists returning to their Scandinavian haunt:
"They have the right to come back to the country". Says the eggheaded, ball-less, childless, brainless sorry excuse for PM of the world's 'Humanitarian Superpower'.
Let that sink in.
MFBB.
"One night last week, explosions took place in three different locations in and around Stockholm. There were no injuries this time, just the usual shattered windows, scattered debris and shocked people woken by the blast.
The police bomb squad was already on its way to the first explosion in the district of Vaxholm when it had to turn around and prioritise the detonation at a residential building in the more densely populated city centre. Residents whose doors had been deformed by the shock wave had to be rescued. The third target (seemingly unrelated) was a facility belonging to a Syriac Orthodox church, which had already been bombed twice in the past year.
‘Normalisation’ is a term that we have come to associate with domestic violence: the victim begins to think of abuse as a part of everyday life. Explosions have become so normalised in Sweden that SVT, Sweden’s equivalent of the BBC, did not even mention the three explosions in the country’s capital on its national news programme that evening. Instead, the main domestic story was the purported censorship of ‘big female bodies’ on Instagram. Apparently, we mustn’t be referred to as ‘women’ any more, but ‘female bodies’, lest anyone’s gender be assumed. The explosions were left to the local news.
To understand how Sweden arrived at this degree of normalisation, consider the statistics: between January and June this year, more than 100 explosions were reported in the country, up from about 70 in the same period last year. A total of more than 160 suspected attacks with explosives were reported last year. There are no comparable figures available for earlier years because it’s such a recent phenomenon. Until recently no one would have thought of adding a column on bombings to the national Swedish crime statistics.
Wilhelm Agrell, professor of intelligence analysis at Lund University, has warned that the situation has become so dire that the integrity of the Swedish state is in jeopardy. ‘The state’s monopoly on violence, the actual token of a sovereign government, has been hollowed out bit by bit and no longer exists,’ he wrote a few weeks ago. ‘The armed criminal violence is having effects that are increasingly similar to those of terrorism.’
At first, it was argued that these are just wars between gangs: awful, but avoidable if you just steer clear. But the bombings have now increased to such an extent that it’s impossible to ignore the collateral damage. The biggest blast so far, which took place in the university town of Linköping in June, demolished two residential buildings and damaged more than 250 apartments. A police spokesman called it a ‘miracle’ that no one was severely injured.
A bombing in the university town of Lund in September left a female student with severe facial injuries. She was passing by a shop on her way home after a night out when an explosive device detonated. Witnesses saw people jumping out of windows. Just weeks before, a young woman was murdered in an affluent neighbourhood in Malmö, in an attack which police believe was aimed at her boyfriend. Karolin Hakim, a doctor, was carrying her young child when she was gunned down. As she was lying on the ground, the shooter put a bullet in her head. Her baby is now in a government protection programme.
As inured as Sweden has become to gang violence, the country was shaken by this cold-blooded murder of a mother with a baby in her arms. Justice Minister Morgan Johansson declared on Twitter that the state would chase Ms Hakim’s killer ‘to the ends of the earth’. But gang violence has severely strained police resources. A month after the murder, more than a hundred witnesses are yet to be heard. So much for chasing anyone to the ends of the earth: there weren’t even enough police to knock on doors around Malmö.
Only days after the murder of Karolin Hakim, another young woman fell victim to the gang wars. Eighteen-year-old Ndella Jack was killed as someone fired an automatic weapon into her flat in western Stockholm, probably aiming for her husband, a well-known figure in Stockholm’s gang scene. Less than a week after the murder, associates of Ms Jack’s husband were lured to a middle-class suburb of Stockholm, where they had been promised information about her killer. Shots were fired, missing the targets and hitting instead a taxi driver and a resident in a nearby building. One victim, also a university student, lost his sight in an eye after it was hit by a bullet."
I have to admit that I actually feel very little sympathy towards the Swedes. A neutered people that keeps voting time and again for a criminal and utterly insane bunch of feminazis does not deserve better. To give you just one idea how far the country has gone down the cliff, consider PM Stefan Löfven's take on the issue of "Swedish" ISIS terrorists returning to their Scandinavian haunt:
"Stefan Löfven, Sweden’s Prime Minister and the leftist Socialist Party leader has ruled out the possibility of stripping Swedish Islamic State Fighters of their citizenships, and has said that they have the right to come back to the country.
Nyheter Idag recently reported that Löfven stated the Ministry of Foreign Affairs had previously warned those who were traveling in and around the region in which IS had been fighting, that those individuals who were captured shouldn’t anticipate any assistance from the Swedish government at a consular level.
The prime minster did, however, state that he would refrain from stripping the Islamic State fighters of their Swedish citizenship, asserting that it was their right to return to the country if they desired. He then said that upon their return, it would be up to the intelligence service and law enforcement to keep track of the returning terrorists whereabouts and to potentially arrest and prosecute them."
"They have the right to come back to the country". Says the eggheaded, ball-less, childless, brainless sorry excuse for PM of the world's 'Humanitarian Superpower'.
Let that sink in.
MFBB.
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