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.

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.

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.



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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:

"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.



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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.

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.


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CORE STAGE OF 1ST SLS COMPLETED.

Via Spacedotcom:

"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.

INSANE: SWEDISH CHURCH INSTALLS ALTARPIECE WITH TRANSGENDER/SAME SEX COUPLES.

Via RT:

"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.

RECOMMENDED READS: MARK STEYN'S "TOO STUPID TO SURVIVE."

Mark Steyn's piece nails it, but then I'm repeating myself:

"...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.

RECOMMENDED VIDEO: PRAGER UNIVERSITY'S "THE LEFT RUINS EVERYTHING".

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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!

“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.

"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:

Vandaag heeft de Duitse rapper K.I.Z. een muziekvideo gepubliceerd waarin hij AfD-politici Weidel, Höcke en Gauland afslacht.

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

— K. Elias (@KolyavB) November 29, 2019

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.

MOLENBEEK, NOVEMBER 2019.

Video courtesy Sam Van Rooy, a young Vlaams Belang politician and MP in the regional Flemish Parliament.

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.

EU NOW FAST EVOLVING INTO EUSSR.

And who better to convey that message than that horrible Merkel creature?

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".

Who gets to define what "hate speech" is?

1984#NewSpeech#MinistryOfTruth pic.twitter.com/bmMpIPjXG2

— BasedPoland (@BasedPoland) November 29, 2019

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 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.

THE FOOL AND THE HERO.

We have all heard about Usman Khan, the muslim terrorist who killed two people in London the other day:

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.

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

— Katie Hopkins (@KTHopkins) November 30, 2019

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.

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.

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.

HAPPY THANKSGIVING!!!

As per usual, DowneastBlog wishes our US readers a Happy Thanksgiving!!!





God Bless.


MFBB.

JOSEPH STIGLITZ TOTALLY LOSING IT.

First a quick recap of the wonderful state of the economy in socialist Venezuela:

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.

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.