Last night in Toronto, Steve Bannon, former advisor to POTUS and founder of The Movement, was scheduled to debate the pros and cons of populism with cuckservative never-Trumper David Frum in one of the Munk Debates, an occasional circle-jerk for Canada's chattering classes.
Days before the event, the usual gang of SJWs, snowflakes and NPCs, led by Big Labour (Hello! United Steelworkers) and Canada's pinko New Democratic Party, started protesting. Petitions were circulated. Speeches were made. Marches were marched. The theme? "Free speech = hate speech!" For, as we know, the lefties are all for free speech and allowing people to voice their opinions, as long as the opinions are politically correct.
The organizers refused to cave, and the debate went ahead, but not before about 1500 antifa types, including cheerleaders from Canada's Communist and Socialist parties, held up traffic in front of the venue for about 45 minutes, trying to prevent the entry of the audience, not because they wished to speak, but because they came to listen! Here's some video from Global TV News.
Protesters chanted, booed and jeered at those waiting in line, and held up signs with slogans such as "refugees are welcome" and "human rights are not up for debate." Inspector Knacker of the Toronto Police "Service" tweeted that a dozen protesters will face "various charges". Two officers were injured during the near-riot.
Inside, Mr Bannon acknowledged protesters' right to free speech, before emphatically stating that populism is "a new political revolution." The question to be asked, he said, is what kind of populism will take root? "It's not a question of whether populism is on the rise and whether populism is going to be the political future," Bannon said. "The only question before us is, is it going to be populist nationalism or populist socialism?"
Dear American citizens, please keep that question in mind when you go to vote on Tuesday!
Showing posts with label riot. Show all posts
Showing posts with label riot. Show all posts
Saturday, November 3, 2018
Friday, August 19, 2011
London 2012 Olympics - Schedule of Events
The city of London will be hosting the Olympic Games in 2012. Many of the famous events which go to make up this spectacular event are to be especially altered to reflect the political and social realities of modern-day Britain. A copy of these changes has been leaked to the Zimbabwe Independent, thence to Walt. Here it is:
Opening Ceremonies
The flame will be ignited by a molotov cocktail thrown by a native of the area dressed in the traditional balaclava and shell suit. The flame will be contained in a large overturned police van situated on the roof of the stadium.
100 metre sprint
Competitors will have to hold a DVD player and microwave oven (one in each arm) and at the sound of the starting pistol, a police dog will be released from a cage 10 yards behind the athletes.
110 metre hurdles
As above but with added obstacles (i.e. car bonnets, hedges, garden fences, walls etc)
Hammer throw
Competitors in this event may choose the type of hammer they wish to use (claw, sledge etc) the winner will be the one who can cause the most physical damage within three attempts.
Fencing
Entrants will be required to dispose of as many stolen goods as possible in five minutes.
Shooting
A strong challenge is expected from local men in this event. The first target will be a moving police van. In the second round, competitors will aim at a post office clerk, bank teller or wages deliveryman. The traditional .22 rifle has been replaced in this event by a choice of either a Browning automatic handgun or sawed-off 12-gauge shotgun.
Boxing
Entry to the boxing will be restricted to husband and wife teams, and will take place on a Friday night. The husband will be given 15 pints of lager while the wife will be told not to make him any tea when he gets home. The bout will then commence.
Cycling time trials
Competitors will be asked to break into the University bike shed and take an expensive mountain bike owned by some mummy’s boy on his first trip away from home, all against the clock.
Cycling pursuit
As above, but the bike will be owned by a visiting member of the Australian rugby team, who will witness the theft.
Modern pentathlon
Amended to include mugging, breaking and entering, flashing, joyriding and arson.
Swimming events
All waterways are currently being tested for toxicity levels. Once one is found that can support human life, swimming events will be organized. Please note that the synchronised swimming event for this year will comprise dropping acid and watching all the funky ripples on the pool.
The marathon
A safe route has yet to be decided.
Men’s 50k walk
Unfortunately this will have to be cancelled as the police cannot guarantee the safety of anyone walking the streets of East London, especially anyone that appears to be, errr, mincing.
The closing ceremony
The flame will be extinguished by police riot water cannon following the inevitable pitch invasion by the West Ham organised hooliganism club. The stadium itself will then be boarded up before the local athletes break into it and remove all the copper piping and the central heating boiler.
Opening Ceremonies
The flame will be ignited by a molotov cocktail thrown by a native of the area dressed in the traditional balaclava and shell suit. The flame will be contained in a large overturned police van situated on the roof of the stadium.
100 metre sprint
Competitors will have to hold a DVD player and microwave oven (one in each arm) and at the sound of the starting pistol, a police dog will be released from a cage 10 yards behind the athletes.
110 metre hurdles
As above but with added obstacles (i.e. car bonnets, hedges, garden fences, walls etc)
Hammer throw
Competitors in this event may choose the type of hammer they wish to use (claw, sledge etc) the winner will be the one who can cause the most physical damage within three attempts.
Fencing
Entrants will be required to dispose of as many stolen goods as possible in five minutes.
Shooting
A strong challenge is expected from local men in this event. The first target will be a moving police van. In the second round, competitors will aim at a post office clerk, bank teller or wages deliveryman. The traditional .22 rifle has been replaced in this event by a choice of either a Browning automatic handgun or sawed-off 12-gauge shotgun.
Boxing
Entry to the boxing will be restricted to husband and wife teams, and will take place on a Friday night. The husband will be given 15 pints of lager while the wife will be told not to make him any tea when he gets home. The bout will then commence.
Cycling time trials
Competitors will be asked to break into the University bike shed and take an expensive mountain bike owned by some mummy’s boy on his first trip away from home, all against the clock.
Cycling pursuit
As above, but the bike will be owned by a visiting member of the Australian rugby team, who will witness the theft.
Modern pentathlon
Amended to include mugging, breaking and entering, flashing, joyriding and arson.
Swimming events
All waterways are currently being tested for toxicity levels. Once one is found that can support human life, swimming events will be organized. Please note that the synchronised swimming event for this year will comprise dropping acid and watching all the funky ripples on the pool.
The marathon
A safe route has yet to be decided.
Men’s 50k walk
Unfortunately this will have to be cancelled as the police cannot guarantee the safety of anyone walking the streets of East London, especially anyone that appears to be, errr, mincing.
The closing ceremony
The flame will be extinguished by police riot water cannon following the inevitable pitch invasion by the West Ham organised hooliganism club. The stadium itself will then be boarded up before the local athletes break into it and remove all the copper piping and the central heating boiler.
Tuesday, August 16, 2011
What to do with the dregs? Another opinion
I've been more than a little preoccupied with the riots in the UK. [Do you think readers have noticed? Ed.] That's my excuse for having failed to say anything until today about similar riots closer to home, viz. Philadelphia USA. In the City of Brotherly Love, roving gangs of black teenagers have taken to beating up ordinary citizens on the streets. To stem the wave of terror, the mayor has imposed curfews and authorized harsher police measures.
Mayor Michael Nutter -- yes, that's his real name -- blames the mayhem on moral collapse. When he speaks of family breakdown and failed communities, Hizzoner runs no risk of being called a racist, for he is black himself, unlike Daniel Moynihan, author of The Negro Family: The Case For National Action, better known as The Moynihan Report.
The sociologist who later became a US senator asserted that the structure of family life in the black community constituted a "tangle of pathology...capable of perpetuating itself without assistance from the white world," and that "at the heart of the deterioration of the fabric of Negro society is the deterioration of the Negro family. It is the fundamental source of the weakness of the Negro community at the present time."
Moynihan adds: "The steady expansion of welfare programs can be taken as a measure of the steady disintegration of the Negro family structure over the past generation in the United States".
That was in 1965, before some of the worst US race riots of the 20th century. In the nearly half-century since, things have actually gotten worse. Now we have -- in American as well as British cities -- packs of aimless, unschooled, almost feral youths, who loot, riot, rob, and beat people up just for fun.
Fact is, the problems of Britain’s inner cities are virtually the same as the problems of America’s inner cities. In both places, the disintegration of the family is intimately linked with social and moral decay. In the US, two-thirds of black kids are born to single mothers and unmarried couples. In parts of Britain the rate is already that high. Nationally 46 per cent of children are born to unmarried mothers, according to Britain’s Centre for Social Justice.
The Globe and Mail's Margaret Wente -- one of Walt's favourite columnists -- cites those statistics in "Unskilled, unmarried, unwanted..." Ms Wente goes on to say, "Both Britain and America have developed a large, permanent underclass whose numbers are growing. Rootless, unmoored young men with no stake in society are a major threat to social order." [My emphasis. Walt.]
Sadly, but understandably, Ms Wente offers no solution. "The fix," she says, "isn’t nearly as obvious as the problem. It will require much more than insisting that parents set clearer boundaries for their children. More social programs aren’t the answer either. We’ve been there, done that, for the past four decades of the welfare state. If there’s one thing we should have learned, it’s that the state is totally unable to compensate for broken families."
Indeed. So what's left? As I argued in my previous post, if the carrot doesn't work, perhaps it's time to try the stick -- and a good stout one too. Ms Wente says that 19th-century society had different ways of dealing with the problem. "Many of these [miscreants] would go to war as cannon fodder. Some would go to sea, or be transported to Australia. The more ambitious ones would strike out for the new world.
"Today we need another way," she concludes, "But no one has a clue what it might be." Not so. Walt knows. See "Three sentences the rioters will understand". My ideas are old, but worth trying again. If anyone has better suggestions, let's hear them!
Mayor Michael Nutter -- yes, that's his real name -- blames the mayhem on moral collapse. When he speaks of family breakdown and failed communities, Hizzoner runs no risk of being called a racist, for he is black himself, unlike Daniel Moynihan, author of The Negro Family: The Case For National Action, better known as The Moynihan Report.
The sociologist who later became a US senator asserted that the structure of family life in the black community constituted a "tangle of pathology...capable of perpetuating itself without assistance from the white world," and that "at the heart of the deterioration of the fabric of Negro society is the deterioration of the Negro family. It is the fundamental source of the weakness of the Negro community at the present time."
Moynihan adds: "The steady expansion of welfare programs can be taken as a measure of the steady disintegration of the Negro family structure over the past generation in the United States".
That was in 1965, before some of the worst US race riots of the 20th century. In the nearly half-century since, things have actually gotten worse. Now we have -- in American as well as British cities -- packs of aimless, unschooled, almost feral youths, who loot, riot, rob, and beat people up just for fun.
Fact is, the problems of Britain’s inner cities are virtually the same as the problems of America’s inner cities. In both places, the disintegration of the family is intimately linked with social and moral decay. In the US, two-thirds of black kids are born to single mothers and unmarried couples. In parts of Britain the rate is already that high. Nationally 46 per cent of children are born to unmarried mothers, according to Britain’s Centre for Social Justice.
The Globe and Mail's Margaret Wente -- one of Walt's favourite columnists -- cites those statistics in "Unskilled, unmarried, unwanted..." Ms Wente goes on to say, "Both Britain and America have developed a large, permanent underclass whose numbers are growing. Rootless, unmoored young men with no stake in society are a major threat to social order." [My emphasis. Walt.]
Sadly, but understandably, Ms Wente offers no solution. "The fix," she says, "isn’t nearly as obvious as the problem. It will require much more than insisting that parents set clearer boundaries for their children. More social programs aren’t the answer either. We’ve been there, done that, for the past four decades of the welfare state. If there’s one thing we should have learned, it’s that the state is totally unable to compensate for broken families."
Indeed. So what's left? As I argued in my previous post, if the carrot doesn't work, perhaps it's time to try the stick -- and a good stout one too. Ms Wente says that 19th-century society had different ways of dealing with the problem. "Many of these [miscreants] would go to war as cannon fodder. Some would go to sea, or be transported to Australia. The more ambitious ones would strike out for the new world.
"Today we need another way," she concludes, "But no one has a clue what it might be." Not so. Walt knows. See "Three sentences the rioters will understand". My ideas are old, but worth trying again. If anyone has better suggestions, let's hear them!
Gangsta "culture" goes mainstream
That's Ezra Levant's take on the riots in Britain. Mr. Levant is a columnist for Canada's QMI agency, and has been following the controversy over remarks made by London historian David Starkey. Perhaps he saw Walt's comments yesterday. Or perhaps great minds think alike. [Perhaps Mr. Levant is a little better known than Walt. Ed.]
Whatever... Mr. Levant has also read, or read someone's remarks on Enoch Powell's "Rivers of Blood Speech". Here is part of the column in which Levant puts the trouble down to white and South Asian kids emulating the black gangsta "culture" they see glorified in the media.
Perhaps Starkey could have been more careful; he said white had become black — and then immediately became more precise, meaning they had accepted a particular segment of black culture, namely gangsta rap. But his meaning was perfectly clear — to anyone who has listened to rap music, with its glorification of violence and material excess, and who has seen the glamourization of that lifestyle move from ghettos into the cultural mainstream.
What grown men wear hoodies in public? Or their underwear up high and their pants down low? Those aren’t crimes, of course — maybe fashion crimes. But far more serious is the set of values that has been swallowed along with the cultural touchstones of fashion and diction. [My emphasis. Walt.]
Gangsta culture calls women “hos” and “bitches,” a crude misogyny with an undercurrent of a threat of violence. It glamourizes fighting, shooting and even dying in gangland warfare. It holds that the point of wealth is to squander it on bling and champagne.
Levant's point is that being free to talk about the problems caused by this ignorant, violent, culture of the undersclass -- without being demonized as a racist -- is part of the solution. His column is worth reading in its entirety. Click here to do so.
Whatever... Mr. Levant has also read, or read someone's remarks on Enoch Powell's "Rivers of Blood Speech". Here is part of the column in which Levant puts the trouble down to white and South Asian kids emulating the black gangsta "culture" they see glorified in the media.
Perhaps Starkey could have been more careful; he said white had become black — and then immediately became more precise, meaning they had accepted a particular segment of black culture, namely gangsta rap. But his meaning was perfectly clear — to anyone who has listened to rap music, with its glorification of violence and material excess, and who has seen the glamourization of that lifestyle move from ghettos into the cultural mainstream.
What grown men wear hoodies in public? Or their underwear up high and their pants down low? Those aren’t crimes, of course — maybe fashion crimes. But far more serious is the set of values that has been swallowed along with the cultural touchstones of fashion and diction. [My emphasis. Walt.]
Gangsta culture calls women “hos” and “bitches,” a crude misogyny with an undercurrent of a threat of violence. It glamourizes fighting, shooting and even dying in gangland warfare. It holds that the point of wealth is to squander it on bling and champagne.
Levant's point is that being free to talk about the problems caused by this ignorant, violent, culture of the undersclass -- without being demonized as a racist -- is part of the solution. His column is worth reading in its entirety. Click here to do so.
Monday, August 15, 2011
Three sentences the rioters will understand
It didn't take long after today's posts for a reader to raise the question of what I would do with hoodlums and hooligans caught looting, burning and generally causing mayhem.
The Economist says they should be brought before the courts and shown that criminal behaviour has "long-term consequences". Such as what? Should we keep building more and bigger jails, and filling them up even faster than we can build them? That's what the lawn ordure "reformers" keep advocating. Doesn't anyone have a better idea? Ahem...
I present not one but three (count `em, three) ideas on how to send the gangstas, chavs and other scum a message in language they can understand. (I do not speak of Jamaican English.) These ideas are not new. Two of them have been tried before, but set aside as emphasizing retribution and deterrence at the expense of rehabilitation. As if these offenders could be rehabilitated. The third idea is still being tried, but only in a half-hearted way. Here they are.
Hard labour
Agent 3, who was called to the bar back in the `60s, says he can't recall ever hearing "at hard labour" tacked onto the end of a prison sentence. While states and provinces across North America are campaigning to get service clubs to "adopt a highway" (meaning picking up the trash and suchlike), inmates of our prisons sit on their blacksides playing cards and watching TV.
What's wrong with the concept of the chain gang? Such was proposed, earlier this year, by the Leader of the Opposition in the Ontario legislature, but "forces for good and progress" in the community denounced Tim Whodat and the idea for being throwbacks to the 19th century. Admittedly, there have been plenty of abuses in times past, but the idea that convicts should have to work off their debt to society -- by making big ones into little ones, for instance -- is basically sound.
Corporal punishment
Commentators and criminologists tell us that one of the causes of the societal breakdown we're witnessing is a lack of discipline. Not much more than a century ago, the British army was famous for its discipline, demanding unquestioning and instant obedience from uneducated and rebellious soldiers, many of them drawn from the underclass which we now wonder how to control.
It was not uncommon for judges to give a "hard case" the option of going to jail for several years, or joining the army. If they survived, those who joined up came out better men and better citizens. Because they were disciplined. How? By corporal punishment! The army way of life, in those days, might be summed up as "grog and flog".
And please don't tell me that's an old-fashioned idea. Corporal punishment was still possible under many criminal codes up until the hippy-dippy `60s, when it became, yeah, uncool. And I'm talking about the so-called civilized world, not Saudi Arabia or some other Sharia law hellhole. Imagine the look on the face of a perp on hearing "sixty strokes".
Deportation
Australia was founded by convicts who had been sent to the Antipodes as punishment for crime. Since the country was just a collection of British colonies at the time, the founding fathers were not being deported but transported. Since Britain and America have pretty much run out of colonies, and Canada never had any to start with, transportation is no longer an option. But what's wrong with the idea of sending people who are in your country illegally, and commit a crime while they're there, back to where they came from?
Nothing! Nothing except political correctness requires us to tolerate the presence in our midst of foreigners who disrupt our society and break its laws. And judges know this, so every now and then one of them has the courage to order a convict deported after serving his sentence. What happens then? They get off the plane at Kingston (just sayin') and get right back on the next plane back to London or New York or Toronto. In the unlikely event they're challenged on arrival, they all know the magic word "refugee". And so the cycle begins again.
We have been soft on criminals for half a century now, because, as the gliberals keep telling us, "it's not their fault, but ours." They're depraved on account of they're deprived! (See previous post.)
Hugging hoodies doesn't work! If we really want to put an end to the complete disregard of laws and social norms on display last week, it's time to get tough with the underclass. I gave you three ideas, without calling for the cutting off the hoodlums' hands or heads. Next time your elected representative tells you he or she doesn't know what can be done, tell them you know... No charge.
The Economist says they should be brought before the courts and shown that criminal behaviour has "long-term consequences". Such as what? Should we keep building more and bigger jails, and filling them up even faster than we can build them? That's what the lawn ordure "reformers" keep advocating. Doesn't anyone have a better idea? Ahem...
I present not one but three (count `em, three) ideas on how to send the gangstas, chavs and other scum a message in language they can understand. (I do not speak of Jamaican English.) These ideas are not new. Two of them have been tried before, but set aside as emphasizing retribution and deterrence at the expense of rehabilitation. As if these offenders could be rehabilitated. The third idea is still being tried, but only in a half-hearted way. Here they are.
Hard labour
Agent 3, who was called to the bar back in the `60s, says he can't recall ever hearing "at hard labour" tacked onto the end of a prison sentence. While states and provinces across North America are campaigning to get service clubs to "adopt a highway" (meaning picking up the trash and suchlike), inmates of our prisons sit on their blacksides playing cards and watching TV.
What's wrong with the concept of the chain gang? Such was proposed, earlier this year, by the Leader of the Opposition in the Ontario legislature, but "forces for good and progress" in the community denounced Tim Whodat and the idea for being throwbacks to the 19th century. Admittedly, there have been plenty of abuses in times past, but the idea that convicts should have to work off their debt to society -- by making big ones into little ones, for instance -- is basically sound.
Corporal punishment
Commentators and criminologists tell us that one of the causes of the societal breakdown we're witnessing is a lack of discipline. Not much more than a century ago, the British army was famous for its discipline, demanding unquestioning and instant obedience from uneducated and rebellious soldiers, many of them drawn from the underclass which we now wonder how to control.
It was not uncommon for judges to give a "hard case" the option of going to jail for several years, or joining the army. If they survived, those who joined up came out better men and better citizens. Because they were disciplined. How? By corporal punishment! The army way of life, in those days, might be summed up as "grog and flog".
And please don't tell me that's an old-fashioned idea. Corporal punishment was still possible under many criminal codes up until the hippy-dippy `60s, when it became, yeah, uncool. And I'm talking about the so-called civilized world, not Saudi Arabia or some other Sharia law hellhole. Imagine the look on the face of a perp on hearing "sixty strokes".
Deportation
Australia was founded by convicts who had been sent to the Antipodes as punishment for crime. Since the country was just a collection of British colonies at the time, the founding fathers were not being deported but transported. Since Britain and America have pretty much run out of colonies, and Canada never had any to start with, transportation is no longer an option. But what's wrong with the idea of sending people who are in your country illegally, and commit a crime while they're there, back to where they came from?
Nothing! Nothing except political correctness requires us to tolerate the presence in our midst of foreigners who disrupt our society and break its laws. And judges know this, so every now and then one of them has the courage to order a convict deported after serving his sentence. What happens then? They get off the plane at Kingston (just sayin') and get right back on the next plane back to London or New York or Toronto. In the unlikely event they're challenged on arrival, they all know the magic word "refugee". And so the cycle begins again.
We have been soft on criminals for half a century now, because, as the gliberals keep telling us, "it's not their fault, but ours." They're depraved on account of they're deprived! (See previous post.)
Hugging hoodies doesn't work! If we really want to put an end to the complete disregard of laws and social norms on display last week, it's time to get tough with the underclass. I gave you three ideas, without calling for the cutting off the hoodlums' hands or heads. Next time your elected representative tells you he or she doesn't know what can be done, tell them you know... No charge.
Dispelling the PC bullshit about Britain's rioting underclass
We are now being inundated by wave after wave of gliberal analysis of the causes of the riots that swept the UK last week. The problem is that British society is "broken". The "social contract" has been breached. And guess who's responsible? Certainly not those rampaging through the streets! Heavens no! They're victims, dontcha know...
That's bullshit, as most of us know but few of us have the courage to say. As I wrote earlier this morning, the truth is that the rioters are underclass scum -- black gangstas and chavs behaving like black gangstas because it's "cool". In an earlier post I called them hoodlums and hooligans, for that's what they are.
I'm pleasantly surprised to find the lamestream and resolutely politically correct Globe and Mail agreeing with me. [Or you could say you find yourself in agreement with the Glob! Ed.] Here's the lead paragraph from their editorial, "No excuses for British hooligans":
There is an emerging analysis that while on the one hand there is “no excuse” for the wave of rioting, looting and wanton violence that swept London and other British cities last week, on the other hand there really is an excuse: social exclusion and systemic discrimination. Accordingly, the hoodlums are really victims, their violence and mayhem only a plaintive cry for help. They are not depraved but deprived. It is a ludicrous suggestion, one that flies in the face of two decades worth of massive expenditures in poverty-stricken areas designed to improve the opportunities, particularly, of inner city youth.
Putting it another way, British taxpayers have spent billions of pounds doing what the liberals tell us is "the progressive thing", "the right thing", namely doling out money to the "disadvantaged" and hoping they'll stay in their place, not cause any more trouble...and vote for the government of the day. So how's that working out? Film at seven!
There is a lesson in that for governments on the western side of the Atlantic. Even now, we keep hearing cries from the guilt-ridden (because they're white) dogooders that we should spend even more money "helping the disadvantaged". Build them special schools, we're told. Bring your peanut butter and mac & cheese to the food bank. Give them better housing and don't worry about collecting the rent.
I'm reminded of the song "Gee, Officer Krupke", from West Side Story....
Dear kindly social workers
They say go earn some dough
Like be a soda jerker
Which means like be a schmo
It's not I'm anti-social
I'm only anti-work!
Gloryosky, that's why I'm a jerk...
Jerks, hoodlums, hooligans... that's what they are. And it's not the rest of us who made them that way! The rest of us work to provide ourselves with the necessities of life. And if there's money left over for a TV, we go and buy it; we don't break into the Source!
How about we shut up about "social exclusion" and "systemic discrimination". Instead, let's try applying a little old-fashioned discipline, to make these poor "disadvantaged" youths shape up or face real consequences.
That's bullshit, as most of us know but few of us have the courage to say. As I wrote earlier this morning, the truth is that the rioters are underclass scum -- black gangstas and chavs behaving like black gangstas because it's "cool". In an earlier post I called them hoodlums and hooligans, for that's what they are.
I'm pleasantly surprised to find the lamestream and resolutely politically correct Globe and Mail agreeing with me. [Or you could say you find yourself in agreement with the Glob! Ed.] Here's the lead paragraph from their editorial, "No excuses for British hooligans":
There is an emerging analysis that while on the one hand there is “no excuse” for the wave of rioting, looting and wanton violence that swept London and other British cities last week, on the other hand there really is an excuse: social exclusion and systemic discrimination. Accordingly, the hoodlums are really victims, their violence and mayhem only a plaintive cry for help. They are not depraved but deprived. It is a ludicrous suggestion, one that flies in the face of two decades worth of massive expenditures in poverty-stricken areas designed to improve the opportunities, particularly, of inner city youth.
Putting it another way, British taxpayers have spent billions of pounds doing what the liberals tell us is "the progressive thing", "the right thing", namely doling out money to the "disadvantaged" and hoping they'll stay in their place, not cause any more trouble...and vote for the government of the day. So how's that working out? Film at seven!
There is a lesson in that for governments on the western side of the Atlantic. Even now, we keep hearing cries from the guilt-ridden (because they're white) dogooders that we should spend even more money "helping the disadvantaged". Build them special schools, we're told. Bring your peanut butter and mac & cheese to the food bank. Give them better housing and don't worry about collecting the rent.
I'm reminded of the song "Gee, Officer Krupke", from West Side Story....
Dear kindly social workers
They say go earn some dough
Like be a soda jerker
Which means like be a schmo
It's not I'm anti-social
I'm only anti-work!
Gloryosky, that's why I'm a jerk...
Jerks, hoodlums, hooligans... that's what they are. And it's not the rest of us who made them that way! The rest of us work to provide ourselves with the necessities of life. And if there's money left over for a TV, we go and buy it; we don't break into the Source!
How about we shut up about "social exclusion" and "systemic discrimination". Instead, let's try applying a little old-fashioned discipline, to make these poor "disadvantaged" youths shape up or face real consequences.
"Whites behaving like blacks"
Quick, what's the most politically incorrect thing you could say about last week's riots in the UK? Looking at the video clips, you could say that you saw blacks behaving like blacks -- burning, looting, trashing everything in sight. And you could say that you also saw whites behaving like blacks.
So said London historian David Starkey, during a debate on the origins and causes of the riots which rocked London and other English -- not Scottish or Welsh, just English -- cities. Predictably, Mr. Starkey's extremely politically incorrect remarks have caused cries of outrage from the usual progressive right-thinking liberals throughout Britain and around the world.
The row erupted after Dr. Starkey spoke on BBC's Newsnight on Friday, opposite leftie author Owen Jones, who wrote Chavs: The Demonisation of the Working Class. You may remember seeing Walt's note on chavs, referencing this book, on July 18th.
Here's what Dr. Starkey had the courage to say: "I think what this week has shown is that profound changes have happened. There has been a profound cultural change. I have just been re-reading Enoch Powell. [The reference is to Mr. Powell's 1968 "Rivers of Blood Speech", quotes by Walt on August 10th.]
"[Powell's] prophecy was absolutely right in one sense: the Tiber didn’t foam with blood, but flames lambent wrapped around Tottenham, wrapped around Clapham. But it wasn’t intercommunal violence; this was where he was completely wrong.
"What has happened is that the substantial section of the chavs that you wrote about have become black. The whites have become black. A particular sort of violent, destructive, nihilistic gangster culture has become the fashion.
"Black and white, boy and girl operate in this language together. This language, which is wholly false, which is this Jamaican patois that has intruded in England. This is why so many of us have this sense of [living in] a foreign country."
Dr. Starkey said there had been "a profound cultural change" and added that the disturbances and accompanying looting were not riots in the traditional sense, but simply "shopping with violence".
Strong stuff, and of course reaction from the usual suspects has been equally strong. Dr. Starkey has been called a "classist" (by Mr. Jones, of course) for looking down his educated patrician nose at the scum ["chavs", surely! Ed.] doing the rioting.
Others, such as David Lammy, Labour MP for Tottenham (where the rioting began) and, errr, a gentleman of the coloured persuasion, had to admit that, yes, the rioters and looters were chavs, but "those who engaged in criminal behaviour came from all races".
Mr. Lammy, called Dr. Starkey's comments were "misleading" as well as "dangerous and divisive". Ah yes..."divisive". That and "unhelpful" are this year's code words for "You may be right but you're not allowed to say these things because our disadvantaged minorities might be offended."
However, Dr. Starkey has his defenders. Author and commentator Toby Young told the Daily Mail that Dr Starkey was not criticising black culture in general but a "particular form of black culture, the violent, destructive, nihilistic, gangster culture associated with Jamaican gangs and American rap music". [My emphasis. Walt.]
Young added: "Had he been talking about these qualities as if they were synonymous with African-Caribbean culture per se, or condemning that culture in its totality, then he would have been guilty of racism. But he wasn’t. He was quite specifically condemning a sub-culture associated with a small minority of people of African-Caribbean heritage.
"Rather than being racist, he was merely trotting out the conventional wisdom of the hour, namely, that gang culture is to blame for the riots. In addition, Starkey wasn’t linking this sub-culture to people of just one skin colour, but condemning working-class white people – chavs, as he put it – who embraced it as well."
In his blog "If David Starkey is racist then so is everybody", the Telegraph's James Delingpole said: "The cultural point he is making is indisputable. Listen to how many white kids (and Asian kids) choose to speak in black street patois; note the extent to which hip-hop and grime garage and their offshoots have penetrated the white mainstream; check out how many white kids like to roll like pimps or perps with their Calvins pulled up to their midriffs and their jean waistbands sagging below their buttocks. Is anyone seriously going to try to make the case that this isn’t black culture in excelsis?"
Walt's answer to Mr. Delingpole is no. Of course no observant person will try to shift the blame from where it obviously belongs. We have eyes and ears. We can see and hear. We know who the perps are and what they represent. The only reason we can't say so plainly -- and take the appropriate corrective action -- is that people like Mr. Jones and Mr. Lammy find telling the truth "divisive" and "unhelpful".
Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2026043/UK-RIOTS-David-Starkey-backed-furore-whites-black-culture-claim.html#ixzz1V6YYc35I
So said London historian David Starkey, during a debate on the origins and causes of the riots which rocked London and other English -- not Scottish or Welsh, just English -- cities. Predictably, Mr. Starkey's extremely politically incorrect remarks have caused cries of outrage from the usual progressive right-thinking liberals throughout Britain and around the world.
The row erupted after Dr. Starkey spoke on BBC's Newsnight on Friday, opposite leftie author Owen Jones, who wrote Chavs: The Demonisation of the Working Class. You may remember seeing Walt's note on chavs, referencing this book, on July 18th.
Here's what Dr. Starkey had the courage to say: "I think what this week has shown is that profound changes have happened. There has been a profound cultural change. I have just been re-reading Enoch Powell. [The reference is to Mr. Powell's 1968 "Rivers of Blood Speech", quotes by Walt on August 10th.]
"[Powell's] prophecy was absolutely right in one sense: the Tiber didn’t foam with blood, but flames lambent wrapped around Tottenham, wrapped around Clapham. But it wasn’t intercommunal violence; this was where he was completely wrong.
"What has happened is that the substantial section of the chavs that you wrote about have become black. The whites have become black. A particular sort of violent, destructive, nihilistic gangster culture has become the fashion.
"Black and white, boy and girl operate in this language together. This language, which is wholly false, which is this Jamaican patois that has intruded in England. This is why so many of us have this sense of [living in] a foreign country."
Dr. Starkey said there had been "a profound cultural change" and added that the disturbances and accompanying looting were not riots in the traditional sense, but simply "shopping with violence".
Strong stuff, and of course reaction from the usual suspects has been equally strong. Dr. Starkey has been called a "classist" (by Mr. Jones, of course) for looking down his educated patrician nose at the scum ["chavs", surely! Ed.] doing the rioting.
Others, such as David Lammy, Labour MP for Tottenham (where the rioting began) and, errr, a gentleman of the coloured persuasion, had to admit that, yes, the rioters and looters were chavs, but "those who engaged in criminal behaviour came from all races".
Mr. Lammy, called Dr. Starkey's comments were "misleading" as well as "dangerous and divisive". Ah yes..."divisive". That and "unhelpful" are this year's code words for "You may be right but you're not allowed to say these things because our disadvantaged minorities might be offended."
However, Dr. Starkey has his defenders. Author and commentator Toby Young told the Daily Mail that Dr Starkey was not criticising black culture in general but a "particular form of black culture, the violent, destructive, nihilistic, gangster culture associated with Jamaican gangs and American rap music". [My emphasis. Walt.]
Young added: "Had he been talking about these qualities as if they were synonymous with African-Caribbean culture per se, or condemning that culture in its totality, then he would have been guilty of racism. But he wasn’t. He was quite specifically condemning a sub-culture associated with a small minority of people of African-Caribbean heritage.
"Rather than being racist, he was merely trotting out the conventional wisdom of the hour, namely, that gang culture is to blame for the riots. In addition, Starkey wasn’t linking this sub-culture to people of just one skin colour, but condemning working-class white people – chavs, as he put it – who embraced it as well."
In his blog "If David Starkey is racist then so is everybody", the Telegraph's James Delingpole said: "The cultural point he is making is indisputable. Listen to how many white kids (and Asian kids) choose to speak in black street patois; note the extent to which hip-hop and grime garage and their offshoots have penetrated the white mainstream; check out how many white kids like to roll like pimps or perps with their Calvins pulled up to their midriffs and their jean waistbands sagging below their buttocks. Is anyone seriously going to try to make the case that this isn’t black culture in excelsis?"
Walt's answer to Mr. Delingpole is no. Of course no observant person will try to shift the blame from where it obviously belongs. We have eyes and ears. We can see and hear. We know who the perps are and what they represent. The only reason we can't say so plainly -- and take the appropriate corrective action -- is that people like Mr. Jones and Mr. Lammy find telling the truth "divisive" and "unhelpful".
Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2026043/UK-RIOTS-David-Starkey-backed-furore-whites-black-culture-claim.html#ixzz1V6YYc35I
Wednesday, August 10, 2011
"I told you this would happen!": Enoch Powell
Earlier today, I wrote about the riots which are spreading across England like wildfire. (Pun intended, of course.) What we are seeing, I said, is class warfare. Karl Marx would not have been surprised, but he would have been astonished, I'm sure, by the degraded nature of the revolting underclass.Marx foresaw warfare between the rich upper class and bourgeoisie and the lower class of workers and peasants. He didn't imagine that there would be a still-lower class of NEETs and chavs -- see previous post for definitions -- biting the hand of the nanny state that feeds them.
The other element Marx didn't factor in was race. He lived and worked in 19th century England, which had yet to admit millions of immigrants from its former colonies.
The tide of black and brown wannabe-Britons didn't reach flood proportions until the UK started winding up its empire in the 1950s. Marx was long gone by the time more dark faces than white were seen in the streets of London, Birmingham, and Leeds.
One man who saw it -- or them -- coming, and predicted disaster, was Enoch Powell, a Conservative member of the British parliament. On April 20, 1968, Mr. Powell made what he always called "the Birmingham speech", better known then and now as "the Rivers of Blood speech".
The speech caused a political firestorm, for Mr. Powell had the courage to say what had already become politically incorrect. He said that Britain would rue the day when it opened the doors to 1000s of third-world immigrants who would not or could not be assimilated into British society. The phrase "rivers of blood" does not appear in the speech. However, it includes the line, "As I look ahead, I am filled with foreboding; like the Roman, I seem to see 'the River Tiber foaming with much blood.'"
Powell quoted a letter he received about the troubles of an elderly woman living in a Wolverhampton street where she was the only white resident. "We must be mad, literally mad, as a nation to be permitting the annual inflow of some 50,000 dependants, who are for the most part the material of the future growth of the immigrant descended population. It is like watching a nation busily engaged in heaping up its own funeral pyre."
Powell argued that although "many thousands" of immigrants wanted to integrate, the majority did not. Some, he said, had vested interests in fostering racial and religious differences "with a view to the exercise of actual domination, first over fellow immigrants and then over the rest of the population".
He went on to say that those who were urging the government to pass anti-discrimination laws -- this was in 1968, remember, at the height of the "civil rights" movement -- were blind to the rising peril which would ensure. Powell said that such legislation would be used to discriminate against the indigenous population and that it would be like "throwing a match onto gunpowder."
Mr. Powell described the position to which he thought the indigenous -- meaning white -- population would be reduced:
"For reasons which they could not comprehend, and in pursuance of a decision...on which they were never consulted, they found themselves made strangers in their own country.
"They found their wives unable to obtain hospital beds in childbirth, their children unable to obtain school places, their homes and neighbourhoods changed beyond recognition, their plans and prospects for the future defeated; at work they found that employers hesitated to apply to the immigrant worker the standards of discipline and competence required of the native-born worker; they began to hear, as time went by, more and more voices which told them that they were now the unwanted.
"On top of this, they now learn that a one-way privilege is to be established by Act of Parliament; a law which cannot, and is not intended to, operate to protect them or redress their grievances, is to be enacted to give the stranger, the disgruntled and the agent provocateur the power to pillory them for their private actions."
Enoch Powell said all of this and much more at Birmingham in 1968. His speech is worth reading in its entirety, for it paints a deadly accurate picture of the future of once-great Britain, after half a century of largely unrestricted immigration and reverse discrimination.
The rioting in progress today has its origins in the class war, sure enough. But it is also about race. As in Watts and other American riots of the `60s and `70s, it began (in Tottenham, a poor and blighted section of north London) when a white cop shot a person of colour. Minutes later, the gangstas and looters were burning, smashing and grabbing for all they were worth. "Police brutality" and "discrimination" makes it all right, you see.
The Brits are wringing their hands now, trying to figure out what to do, since it's obviously impossible to send them all back home. Powell advocated "voluntary repatriation", but that was over 40 years ago. Most of the boyz in the hoodz we see today were born in the UK. Which is where the class aspect of the problem manifests itself.
The mobsters intent on wrecking anything and everything are not only black or brown, but white too. What they have in common is being part of this huge underclass, the NEETs and chavs and scum which constitute a rapidly growing cancer in the body of our society.
How can this cancer be cured? Don't expect me to write "to be continued", for honestly, I have no printable ideas. We were warned. We didn't listen. We're still not listening, even though the disease is now endemic. In due course, I fear, our society will die. And, from wherever he is, Enoch Powell can rightly say, "I told you so."
"I didn't see this coming!": Marx
On July 18th, I wrote about "The new oppressed minority", and introduced to you the British neologism "chavs", standing (possibly) for "Council Housed And Violent". I was looking for an example and came up with just one picture. Since this weekend, though, you've been able to see hundreds of pictures and videos of chavs in action, in the riots that have spread from a largely black area of London to several English cities.
Who are the chavs -- the hooded hooligans we see burning, looting and pillaging their own neighbourhoods? Where do they come from? Why are they doing this? In "More about chavs", I tried to show how Britain's welfare statism -- relentless even during the government of Margaret Thatcher -- has produced a large and growing underclass of uneducated, unemployed and generally useless young people, parasites sucking on the tits of the British taxpayers. It is that scummy underclass -- on this side of the water we would call them "white trash" -- who are revolting. And no, I'm not making a cheap joke.
Karl Marx saw class warfare as inevitable. He predicted a revolution of the proletariat -- meaning workers and peasants -- who would rise against the upper classes, the landlords, capitalists and gentry who (he claimed) held the lower classes in poverty and servitude.
Marx had the general idea, but he never imagined that the upper classes would create and nurture the drunken mob which roams the streets of British cities even as I write.
For the hoodlums you see kicking in windows and robbing the wounded are not workers, peasants or students. They are NEETs -- another new word for you -- Not in Employment, Education or Training. In other words, they are idlers and layabouts, who would be starving and homeless but for the largesse of the nanny state which provides them with public housing ("council houses"), free healthcare, and "allowances" for being unemployed or unemployable.
Marx would doubtless approve of all these socialistic -- OK, communist! -- programmes. However, it was the British electorate which voted for one government after another -- not excepting that of Margaret Thatcher -- which instituted these "measures for the assistance of the less fortunate and disadvantaged". "Progressive" thinking, "progressive" thinkers and "progressive" politicians have sowed the wind. And now Britain reaps the whirlwind.
But before we say it can't happen in America, let us remember the so-called race riots of the `60s and `70s: Detroit, Harlem, and of course Watts. While there were racial overtones to those riots, they were just as much about class as about race. In the USA, "progressive" civil rights, welfare and criminal justice policies have spawned a huge underclass which just happens to be comprised largely of brown and black people. Those are the ones who take to the streets and steal TVs to get even for "police brutality" and other real or imaginary injustices.
Marx, it seems, was colour-blind. Perhaps it was because most of the citizens of his native Prussia and of Britain, where he did most of his thinking and writing, were white. The UK had not yet been inundated by wave after wave of South Asian, Caribbean and African immigrants.
And in the 19th century, when Marx wrote, Britain had not yet tried putting his theories into practice. It's a pity Marx didn't live to see how his vision of Utopia played out. What happened to the Great Britain of the Victorian era? "Progressive" policies turned it into the mongrelized anti-society that is collapsing tonight.
Who are the chavs -- the hooded hooligans we see burning, looting and pillaging their own neighbourhoods? Where do they come from? Why are they doing this? In "More about chavs", I tried to show how Britain's welfare statism -- relentless even during the government of Margaret Thatcher -- has produced a large and growing underclass of uneducated, unemployed and generally useless young people, parasites sucking on the tits of the British taxpayers. It is that scummy underclass -- on this side of the water we would call them "white trash" -- who are revolting. And no, I'm not making a cheap joke.
Karl Marx saw class warfare as inevitable. He predicted a revolution of the proletariat -- meaning workers and peasants -- who would rise against the upper classes, the landlords, capitalists and gentry who (he claimed) held the lower classes in poverty and servitude.
Marx had the general idea, but he never imagined that the upper classes would create and nurture the drunken mob which roams the streets of British cities even as I write.
For the hoodlums you see kicking in windows and robbing the wounded are not workers, peasants or students. They are NEETs -- another new word for you -- Not in Employment, Education or Training. In other words, they are idlers and layabouts, who would be starving and homeless but for the largesse of the nanny state which provides them with public housing ("council houses"), free healthcare, and "allowances" for being unemployed or unemployable.
Marx would doubtless approve of all these socialistic -- OK, communist! -- programmes. However, it was the British electorate which voted for one government after another -- not excepting that of Margaret Thatcher -- which instituted these "measures for the assistance of the less fortunate and disadvantaged". "Progressive" thinking, "progressive" thinkers and "progressive" politicians have sowed the wind. And now Britain reaps the whirlwind.
But before we say it can't happen in America, let us remember the so-called race riots of the `60s and `70s: Detroit, Harlem, and of course Watts. While there were racial overtones to those riots, they were just as much about class as about race. In the USA, "progressive" civil rights, welfare and criminal justice policies have spawned a huge underclass which just happens to be comprised largely of brown and black people. Those are the ones who take to the streets and steal TVs to get even for "police brutality" and other real or imaginary injustices.
Marx, it seems, was colour-blind. Perhaps it was because most of the citizens of his native Prussia and of Britain, where he did most of his thinking and writing, were white. The UK had not yet been inundated by wave after wave of South Asian, Caribbean and African immigrants.
And in the 19th century, when Marx wrote, Britain had not yet tried putting his theories into practice. It's a pity Marx didn't live to see how his vision of Utopia played out. What happened to the Great Britain of the Victorian era? "Progressive" policies turned it into the mongrelized anti-society that is collapsing tonight.
Saturday, February 5, 2011
Revolutionary headgear
Scenes from Cairo remind Walt of Lawrence of Arabia. People charging around, waving swords, mounted on horses and, yes, even camels. Apparently we can't yet ban the term "camel jockey" as politically incorrect.Here's a fascinating photo, showing one of the demonstrators sporting the latest in revolutionary headgear. Yes, it's bread. Just the thing to wear in the middle of a riot.
Consider the benefits. If someone hits you upside the head with a baton or the broad side of a sword, the baguette acts as a shock absorber. You could shove it in the mouth of someone cheering for the other side. Or if you get hungry, you could eat it yourself. Brilliant.
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