Hello Allah!

Walt doffs his fez to Agent 6.

Immigration officer interviews Syrian refugee (joke?)

From a country whose Muslim population (by percentage) is just slightly below that of France, Agent 69 sends the following.

Immigration: Do you speak English?
Syrian refugee: Yes
Immigration: Name?
Syrian refugee: Abdul Al-Rhasib
Immigration: Sex?
Syrian refugee: Three to five times a week
Immigration: No, no. I mean male or female?
Syrian refugee: Yes, male, female, sometimes camel!
Immigration: Holy cow!
Syrian refugee: Yes, cow, sheep, animals in general.
Immigration: But isn't it hostile?
Syrian refugee: Horse style, doggy style, any style!
Immigration: Oh dear!
Syrian refugee: No, no! Deer runs too fast!

Canada's welcome of 25,000 Muslim refugees "madness": Le Pen

Ujjal Dosanjh wasn't the only one to express concern over the plan of Canada's New Liberal Government (STARRING!!! Justin TRUUUUUDEAU!!!) to welcome into the Great No-longer-white North 25,000 Muslim "refugees". See "Rex Murphy on Kathleen Wynne", posted here earlier today.

Marine Le Pen, leader of France's Front National (and very possibly next president of La République!)Front, calls the project "madness".

"There," she said, in an interview with CBC-TV's fifth estate, "I've said it. Madness!" She went on to say, "There are other ways to do it," adding that the "danger is real -- false passports [or] real passports given to Islamic fundamentalists in the influx of immigrants to enter the country with the intent to commit terrorist attacks. It's a danger. And that's what happened in Paris."

As Walt mentioned in a footnote to "Paris jihadist attacks result of suicidal stupidity" Mme Le Pen's political star is in the ascendant, in the wake of Islamic terrorist attacks in Paris. Even before the events of Friday the 13th, she was doing well in French public opinion polls, particularly in two regions in the southeast and the depressed north, where she is vying to be president of Nord-Pas de Calais in regional elections set for early December.

France already has the largest Muslim population of any west European country, in percentage terms. Revulsion at the Islamization of France -- once known as "the eldest daughter of the Church" -- runs high. Mme Le Pen told fifth estate her solution to the migrant crisis is to kick them out and seal the borders. "The influx of migrants must be stopped," she said. "We know Islamic fundamentalists have infiltrated this flux of migrants to slip by unnoticed."

Rex Murphy on Kathleen Wynne

I hope no-one will be misled by the headline. Rex Murphy is not literally "on" -- as in "on top of" -- Kathleen Wynne. The very thought boggles the mind. But buddy dere has been talking about Ontario's openly lesbian (and proud of it!) Premier, as has the openly heterosexual man she replaced. See "Ontario's lesbian Premier thrown under school bus by former boss" (WWW 26/11/15).

Ms/Mr Wynne has a self-righteous, dogmatic approach to "conversations" about such things as "gender fluidity", sex education, diversity and any other issues on which she knows she's right. Her liberal (and Liberal) bias was made even more clear than usual earlier this week when she called the 67% of Canucks who had misgivings about the federal Liberals' plan to import 25,000 Muslim refugees "closet racists".

One of the many who advocated for a more thorough screening than the original plan allowed for was Ujjal Dosanjh, a card-carrying Liberal, former Premier of British Columbia, and former federal cabinet minister. Mr. Dosanjh is himself an immigrant to Canada, and has been a target of racists attacks, including a brutal beating by Sikh extremists. He was quite understandably miffed by Ms/Mr Wynne’s statement that critics of the latest example of Liberal pandering to vizmins were "tapping into a racist vein." Mr. Dosanjh shot back that he didn’t much like being called "a racist and a xenophobe."

In his column in Canada's National Post, Rex Murphy calls Ujjal Dosanjh "a truly admirable Canadian", and takes Mr/Ms Wynne to task for her narrow-minded attitude. He writes:

Wynne has lately shown an unseemly eagerness to mark any disagreement with her "progressive" worldview as the product of corrupt thinking or moral defect. She seems unwilling or unable to believe that others can have ideas different from those she espouses, unless they, her critics, are morally inferior to her and their ideas are the products of ugly or ignorant minds.

This stance is unworthy of any citizen in a democracy, especially a premier. Progressives share with the most regressive fundamentalists, this tendency to mark off the world into good and evil. Naturally, the progressives are on the positive side of that table. It is a nasty phenomenon. And if it results, even indirectly, in an indictment of Dosanjh as less of a moral being than those he challenges, as being in the camp of racists and xenophobes — the very forces he has faced with personal courage and resolve — then it is very easy to see how shameless and bankrupt that line of thinking really is.

Ontario's lesbian Premier thrown under school bus by former boss

Sometimes a picture really is worth 1000 words. Here's a photo of former Ontario Premier Dalton McGuinty looking away in embarrassment as his successor, Kathleen "Lesbian and Proud of it!" Wynne, announces that her intention to reintroduce the pro-queer, pro-perversion sex education curriculum that Mr. McGuinty previously put on the shelf.

Mr. McGuinty, now lucratively retired, wrote a very self-serving memoir, Dalton McGuinty, Making a Difference, which hit the bookstands last weekend. [It should be in the remainder bins come Boxing Day. Ed.]

Haven't read the book myself, but according to "From Sharia law to sex ed and the Queen: 17 things to know about Dalton McGuinty’s memoir" (National Post 21/11/15), "Premier Dad" wants to correct the public record on his role in the creation and withdrawal of the Liberals' new "dirty" sex education curriculum.

Mr. McGuinty told the NP interviewer that he "had no idea our government was even considering changes to sex ed until a reporter asked me about it" back in 2010. He went on to say that he didn't cave to "pressure from Christian fundamentalists" as has been suggested by many, including Ms/Mr Wynne. In the book, her former boss writes "She disagreed with my decision to put our sex-education reforms on hold. She felt we were caving to right-wing ideologues. I felt we were being prudent.'"

As PAFE (Parents As First Educators) has been saying for over a year now, Mr. McGuinty promised a proper consultation on the new curriculum, but his successor refused to honour that promise, undoubtedly because she knows that the majority of Ontario parents oppose her immoral, pro-LGBT, "if it feels good, do it!" agenda.

Footnote: Canada's new Liberal government, led by Justin Trudeau (for whom Ms/Mr Wynne campaigned relentlessly) announced earlier this week that the allegedly Syrian "refugees" it will be importing to Canada in the next few weeks will be women and children and families, but not single men... unless of course the single "men" happen to be gay or trans-gendered or bi or otherwise queer. Fancy that.

Further reading:
"McGuinty & Wynne: A decade of disaster". Editorial in the Toronto Sun, 3/10/13.
"Ontario's "dirty" sex ed curriculum going ahead. Worried parents scramble to get kids out" WWW 2/9/15
"Stop shaming parents who balk at sex education in schools" WWW 21/9/15

A true (and ridiculous) Canadian story of political correctness

Nowhere -- repeat: NOWHERE -- is political correctness more firmly entrenched than in the Great No-longer-white North. Everything has to be done by the book: The Little Red Book of Diversity and Sensitivity (Queen's Printer, 1/4/15). The latest sin the PC police are trying to stamp out is "cultural appropriation".

Not quite the same as "cultural insensitivity", it seems to mean being so keen on some other ethnic/religious group's culture that you take it for your own. Many examples were found on Hallowe'en. White parents were instructed, for example, that it was "inappropriate" to send their kids out trick-or-treating dressed as Indians. [Hey! "First Nations"! Ed.] And one of the newly-minted Liberal cabinet ministers was pilloried in the meeja for having donned a coolie hat and gone to a Hallowe'en party as a Chinese. She was obliged to take "offensive" photos off her FB page.

And now for today's news from the battle against cultural insensitivity. At the resolutely bilingual University of Ottawa/Université d'Ottawa, a free class in yoga which had been given for seven years at the university's Centre for Students with Disabilities was no longer offered this fall because some students and volunteers were "uncomfortable with the 'cultural issues' involved."

Yesterday, The lead instructor, Jen Scharf, told CBC News, "I guess it was this cultural appropriation issue because yoga originally comes from India. I told them, 'Why don't we just change the name of the course?' It's simple enough, just call it 'mindful stretching'.... We're not going through the finer points of scripture. We're talking about basic physical awareness and how to stretch so that you feel good.

"That went back and forth.... The higher-ups at the student federation got involved, finally we got an email routed through the student federation basically saying they couldn't get a French name and nobody wants to do it, so we're going to cancel it for now."

You couldn't make this stuff up, could you. Anyone who can come up with a suitable name en français is invited to send it to Walt at the usual address, for forwarding to the U of 0, as many Canadians call the ultra-PC institution of higher learning.

Registering Muslims in America vs registering Jews in Germany

Inevitably, the "progressive thinkers" and bleeding-heart liberals in the USA and elsewhere have pounced on Donald Trump's expressed agreement with the idea of registering Muslims so that they can be "surveilled" [There is no such verb as "surveille", but our "security forces" love it. Ed.] to the registration of Jews in Nazi Germany.

Walt wishes to point out that it was not the Donald's idea. The NBC interviewer sucked him in with a hypothetical, with which he expressed his agreement. Mr. Trump may be many things, but he is no Hitler.

Furthermore, there is one vital distinction to be drawn between the Jews of Nazi Germany and the Muslims of today's America. The Jews never declared themselves to be the enemies of the Gentiles, bent on destroying their religion and culture. The Muslims -- not all of them, but the radical Islamists among them -- have vowed to exterminate the "crusaders" not just in the Middle East but here at home.

Even Hellery Clinton cannot deny (try as she will) that there are "radicalized" Muslims among us. Walt stands by the proposition that it's not unreasonable to keep an eye on them.

Footnote: A report on Interfax today quotes a statement from Russia's Anti-Terrorism Committee that ten militants who had sworn allegiance to the Islamic State were killed in a special operation in a southern Russian republic. "During the active phase of a special operation near Nalchik," the committee said, "ten militants were neutralized. They were all members of armed groups that had sworn allegiance to the international terrorist organisation ISIL."

Walt adds... How do you suppose the Russians identified the late terrorists? Perhaps they had a list?

Hellery Clinton denies ISIS connection with radical Islam

Rex Murphy is one of Walt's favourite Canuck pundits. Whether he sticks his tongue firmly in his cheek on CBC-TV's The National, or dips his pen in vitriol for a piece in the National Post, he invariably says/writes comments that are often contrarian, but always sensible.

Today, in a piece headlined "Hillary's Hypocrisy", in the Post, Rex -- I always think of him as "my old friend Rex" -- marvels at the Crown Princess's stubborn refusal to admit that ISIS is an organization of Islamic terrorists. They say so themselves, but Hellery and her erstwhile boss and (she hopes) predecessor in the Oval Office, can't bring themselves to call a Muslim a Muslim. Here (only slightly edited) is what Rex thinks.

A Euclidean axiom in the new geometry of gender and progressive thought is that names -- what people are called, and what they themselves wish to be called -- matter greatly. So if [Bruce] Jenner says "Call me Caitlyn," Hillary will not oppose the right-thinking baptism.

However, on another naming subject -- one possibly of more import and global consequence than Jenner’s choice of restroom -- that of ISIL and radical Islam, Clinton appears to hold an opposite view. ISIL just completed a killing and wounding rampage in Paris. It went about its murderous fling with the usual chants of radical Islam, hurling “Allah Akbar” at its victims -- some, dear Lord, in wheelchairs. ISIL is of course Islamic, and it is radical by any definition of that weary word. The president of France, François Hollande, declared war on radical Islam in the wake of its multiple ambushes on Paris’ defenceless citizens. He recognizes it for what it says it is -- radical, Islamic and terroristic.

Yet in a debate on this very subject, Clinton refused to utter the phrase "radical Islam", pushed vigorously against the idea of naming Islamic terror for what it is, even though ISIL itself wears its radical Islamist motivations, goals and methods with arrogant pride.

On Jenner’s right to call herself what she wants, Clinton is on board. On a fanatic organization brutalizing the Middle East and exporting terror to the capitals of the world, she declines.

She is one with US President Barack Obama on this -- they steadfastly refuse to call our enemies by their name. In other words, when it comes to words and concepts that correspond to unalterable reality, she will deny words their meaning to the point of refusing to say them. But on matters that Glamour magazine takes seriously, on which DNA itself has spoken, Clinton is one with all the buzz factories of trendy thought.

She was, it must be noted, for four years the secretary of state of the most powerful country on Earth, and now wishes to be its president. Heaven help us.

TEASER: I left out the preamble in which Rex quotes Germaine Greer on the subject of "Ms" Jenner's self-identification as a female. I don't want the NP to sue me for copyright infringement! I don't think they'll complain, though, when I suggest strongly that you click on the link to read the entire column, including Ms Greer's pithy comments.

Why it's not unreasonable to register Muslims as enemy aliens

The lamestream media are jumping all over The Donald for suggesting that it might not be a bad idea to create a database to track Muslims in the Excited States. In what MSNBC calls an "extreme response" to the Islamic terrorist attacks in Paris, the Republican presidential wannabe told an NBC News reporter, "I would certainly implement that. Absolutely."

Between campaign events in Newton IA, yesterday, Mr. Trump told the reporter that Muslims would be signed up at "different places," adding, "It's all about management." Asked whether registering would be mandatory, Trump responded, "They have to be."

While some of his GOP rivals have been chastised by President 0 for suggesting that Christian Syrian refugees be given preference over Muslims, Mr. Trump has raised the bar, advocating new restrictions on civil liberties and enhanced surveillance activities, including keeping a Big Brother eye on what's going on inside mosques. Earlier this week, he said that the country was "going to have no choice" but to close certain mosques because "really bad things are happening, and they're happening fast."

Cue the cries of outrage from the PC police, the meeja, the Democrats, the one-worlders, etc etc and so forth. A columnist for Canada's Notional Pest called the Donald an archtype of "the Ugly American". The columnist forgets -- if he ever knew -- that the Ugly American was the hero of the novel.

While Walt is not yet ready to endorse anyone, he does not think it's so unreasonable for an aspiring candidate to suggest that the safety and security of America -- and the Rest of the West -- demands a little extra surveillance of those who have declared themselves to be our enemies, bent on attacking us infidels not just in the Middle East sandpit, but wherever we live.

Nor is there a lack of precedent for preventive measures. A hundred years ago, while the Great War raged, Canada declared immigrants from places like "Galicia" (the Ukraine) and other parts of the Austro-Hungarian empire, as well as Germany, "enemy aliens", and deprived them (temporarily) of certain rights, including the right to own and dispose of property. Agent 3 assures me that, when searching old land titles back in the day, he often saw endorsements on deeds and mortgages in which the grantor/mortgagor had to swear that he was not a member of the wrong ethnic group. And the restrictions applied to everybody in that group, no matter how strong their attachment to their adopted land.

There is also the rather shameful example of the internment of Japanese in both the USA and Canada, during World War II. 1000s of Japanese, including naturalized citizens of Japanese ancestry, were turfed out of their homes and farms along the west coast, for fear that they would aid and abet the Japanese soldiers and sailors who were presumed to be lurking just offshore in their little submarines, waiting for just the right moment for another sneak attack.

I do not say that the rounding up and detention of all these people -- most of whom were innocent -- and the confiscation of their property was right. It was not. But that is not what Mr. Trump is suggesting. He is merely saying that it would be a good idea to know who the Muslims among us are, since they are all potential targets for "radicalization" by the Islamic extremists.

It's not as if it hasn't happened. Young Muslim men and women, some of them converts to Islam, have already gone to fight for ISIS. Some of them have just stayed at home and attacked the nearest target, as in the case of the Parliament Hill shooting in Canada just over a year ago. Following that incident, the RCMP and CSIS (Canada's alleged spy agency) were asked why they hadn't been keeping an eye on the shooter. But if you don't know who they are, how can you watch them? That's what Mr. Trump is suggesting. I don't think that's so unreasonable.

Paris attacks: the exhausted reply of an exhausted Church

I just saw an insightful analysis by Christopher Ferrara on the tepid and politically correct response of Pope Francis to the Islamic terrorists' attacks in Paris. "Confronted with the mass murder and mayhem conducted by agents of the Islamic State in the very heart of the very nation known as 'the eldest daughter of the Church'", he writes "Pope Francis professed perplexity as his initial reaction: 'I am moved and I am saddened. I do not understand, these things [sic] hard to understand.'"

Mr. Ferrara goes on to ask why it should be hard to understand "that this false religion, the perpetual enemy of Christ and His Church, has spawned modern Muslim warriors who vow to conquer Europe and ultimately Rome itself even if they have to blow themselves up to further their cause?

"Islam is a religion invented by a man of violence, whose influence has expanded exclusively by violence. To this day Islam is maintained by violence even in 'moderate' Islamic states, where the penalty for conversion to Christianity is death."

Click here to read the entire article, including very trenchant quotes from Hilaire Belloc, on the Fatima Perspectives webpage.

Mark Steyn on the Middle East and our "societal suicide"

Shortly after I wrote to explain why there's no way for us Westerners to win a war in which we don't have any skin -- the Muslim civil war now raging in the Middle East -- I stumbled on some thoughts along the same line from Mark Steyn in National Review, almost seven years ago (30/12/08). Following the supposed defeat of the Taliban, Mr. Steyn wrote:

With the Taliban gone and the world's slowest "rush to war" with Iraq just getting underway, I made the mistake of going to Europe to visit the famous banlieues of Paris and other Continental Muslim neighborhoods.... I started to get the queasy feeling the bewildered investigator does when he's standing in the strange indentation at the edge of town and, just as he works out it's a giant left-foot print, he glances up to see Godzilla's right foot totaling his Honda Civic.

I began to see that it's not really about angry young men in caves in the Hindu Kush; it's not even about angry young men in the fast growing Muslim populations of the west -- although that's certainly part of the seven-eighths of the iceberg bobbing just below the surface of 9/11. But the bulk of that iceberg is the profound and perhaps fatal weakness of the civilization that built the modern world. [My emphasis. Walt]

We're witnessing the early stages of what the United Nations Population Division calls a "global upheaval" that's "without parallel in human history". Demographically and psychologically, Europeans have chosen to commit societal suicide, and their principal heir and beneficiary will be Islam. [Again. Walt] ...

Islam is not monolithic.... It's perfectly understandable for Osama bin Laden to play bad cop to the western Muslim lobby groups' good cop, granted that they share the same aim: the wish to annex the crusader lands to the House of Islam.

These comments are part of a chapter called "The Limits" in The [Un]documented Mark Steyn (Regnery 2014), which I recommend highly. But Mr. Steyn is not the first student of history to identify the suicide of the West. That, in fact, is the title of a classic by James Burnham -- full title Suicide of the West: An Essay on the Meaning and Destiny of Liberalism (John Day Co. 1964). I have it on my "working bookshelf" and urge you to get a copy -- it's still in print, and republished as an e-book -- to see how our "leaders" ignored such warnings and led us into the decline and fall playing out today.

A summary on the Amazon and Encounter Books websites says:
Suicide of the West remains a startling account on the nature of the modern era. It offers a profound, in-depth analysis of what is happening in the world today by putting into focus the intangible, often vague doctrine of American liberalism. It parallels the loosely defined liberal ideology rampant in American government and institutions, with the flow, ebb, growth, climax and the eventual decline and death of both ancient and modern civilizations.

Its author maintains that western suicidal tendencies lie not so much in the lack of resources or military power, but through an erosion of intellectual, moral, and spiritual factors abundant in modern western society and the mainstay of liberal psychology. Devastating in its relentless dissection of the liberal syndrome, this book will lead many liberals to painful self-examination, buttress the thinking conservative’s viewpoint, and incite others, no doubt, to infuriation. None can ignore it.

The Middle East is NOT "another Vietnam"; it's WORSE!

I have been misunderstood. Apparently some "readers" glance at the headline and just skim the text, often getting the wrong message from the few words that stick in their alleged minds. When, in commenting on the jihadists' attacks on Paris, I wrote [WHO wrote? Ed.] "How about we fight back?!", my suggestion was NOT that the French nor the US nor anyone else step up the air strikes in Syria and "bomb them back to the Stone Age". (copied right, Curtis LeMay).

All I said was that it was suicidal stupidity to be admitting to our countries 1000s upon 1000s of "undocumented aliens" because of the wave of weepy hypocrisy stirred up by the professional handwringers in the human rights industry ("We do well by doing good!") and the lamestream media. See "Paris jihadist attacks result of suicidal stupidity" (WWW 13/11/15)

In previous posts -- for instance "ISIS atrocities worse than ever; Canada ends mission" -- I'd thought I'd made clear my view that what the USA and its allies should do is stop interfering in the Muslim civil war. Get the hell out of the Middle East / get out of the Middle East hell... and let the Sunnis and Shias duke it out until, like the gingham dog and the calico cat, they eat each other up!

In "Why American must (not?) save the world from ISIS", I suggested that American military and political leaders persist in intervening in fights in which the USA has no gingham dog (or calico cat) because of a failure to learn the lessons of history in general and the Vietnam war in particular. What seems to have been misunderstood is that I don't believe that the Bush-Obama war is analogous to the Kennedy-Johnson-Nixon war, except insofar as America is fighting a losing battle far from home for the wrong reasons.

A better understanding of what the Vietnam war was really about will be gained by reading Two Cities: Hanoi and Saigon (Jonathan Cape, 1992) and A Bright Shining Lie (Random House 1988), both by Neil Sheehan, one of those chiefly responsible for obtaining the Pentagon Papers. Mr. Sheehan views Vietnam as essentially an anti-colonial war, a war fought by the Vietnamese for their independence.

Vietnam, along with Laos and Cambodia, comprised French Indochina, a part of the French empire until it was overrun by the Japanese in World War II. When the Japanese were defeated, the British, who had occupied the region, unaccountably handed it back to the French. Some Vietnamese, mostly in the south, were happy to serve their colonial masters once again. Others, mostly but not only in the north, started a guerilla war against the French.

They -- the Viet Minh -- became Communists almost by accident because the only outside powers that supported them were the USSR and its satellites (not including Marxist China). They weren't concerned with ideology so much as with getting the French to go home. After the fall of Dien Bien Phu, the Americans supplanted the French, to prevent the spread of Communism, prevent the other countries of southeast Asia from falling like dominoes, and so on -- the wrong reasons.

In Two Cities, Neil Sheehan says that for the first year or two after the Americans installed the puppet government of Ngo Dinh Diem, Ho Chi Minh actually expected that once they counted the cost -- in money and lives -- of propping up the South Vietnamese regime, they would pull out. He was wrong, because for the Americans, unlike the Vietnamese, the battle was ideological, not practical. Johnson and Nixon really believed (one hopes) that they could defeat Communism by winning the hearts and minds of the Vietnamese people. They were wrong.

The war being fought in Syria and Iraq (and Afghanistan, Libya, Yemen, etc etc) is not ideological. At least, it is not a clash between political ideologies. It's not about democracy versus Communism. There isn't a single democratic government in the entire Middle East. Never has been. There are only autocracies, either secular or religious. A religious autocracy can be described as a theocracy, which describes the governments of Iran, Saudi Arabia, and Afghanistan when the Taliban ruled. A theocracy is what ISIS wants to establish in its "new caliphate". And that's what the war is all about.

The followers of the Prophet Mohammed are fighting each other to decide which are the better Muslims, and which version of Islam shall prevail. It's Sunni Muslims versus Shia Muslims, with non-believers and infidels (that would be us) stuck in the middle. We -- the "Christian" West -- have no business in the Middle East.

There's no way for us, as outsiders, to win what is essentially a religious civil war. If you disagree, please tell me what a victory for "our side" would look like. If we "degrade and ultimately defeat" ISIS, will Basher Assad remain in power in Syria? Is that a win for "us"? Or will there be a power vacuum, as there is already in Iraq, thanks to America's lack of an exit strategy? Or will the entire region continue to be fought over by gangs of barbaous warlords, as is the case in Afghanistan? Could any of those outcomes be described as "victory"? I rest my case... for today...

French round up the usual suspects (read: Islamic extremists)

Following up on "How about we fight back?!", Walt is pleased to report that Inspector Clouseau, is hot on the trail of some of the Islamic extremists who plotted and carried out the dastardly attacks which claimed the lives of over ten dozen French civilians.

In the round-the-clock coverage of the terrorist bombings and shootings, lamestream media and politicians on both sides of the Atlantic were at pains -- twisting themselves into pretzels -- to NOT blame Muslim jihadists. Mustn't but politically incorrect. Mustn't fan the flames of Islamophobia. All this as if people are stupid and didn't immediately draw the obvious conclusion, which turned out to be correct.

French military intelligence, having been stung by its failure to act on the warning signs which have been evident since Charlie Hebdo, immediately set about rounding up the usual suspects. Never was a movie cliché -- one of my favourites -- more apt, for as it turns out the alleged mastermind behind the co-ordinated gun and suicide attacks is none other than Abdelhamid Abaaoud, 27, a native of Morocco, now a Belgian citizen.

M. Abaaoud is, errr, a Muslim, and not one of those mythical moderate Muslims either! He was already known to police as an Islamic extremist after a raid on an ISIS cell following a gun battle in eastern Belgium in January. That's right -- January! Today, ten months later, he is described as being "on the run". So far he has managed to elude both Inspectors Poirot and Clouseau.

AFP reports that M. Abaaoud spent time fighting alongside ISIS. He even appeared in an ISIS video [Ed., can you find it on YouTube?], at the wheel of a car transporting mutilated bodies to a mass grave. French officials say he is connected with a foiled plot to attack a Paris church in April, and thwarted attacks on a Paris-bound high-speed train in August. The French newspaper Liberation also linked him to Sid Ahmed Ghlam, a French student charged with murder, attempted murder and terror offences. M Ghlam is also a follower of the Prophet.

Other French media report that M Abaaoud regularly attempted to recruit other western fighters to join Islamic State militants in Syria, even recruiting his own 13-year-old brother. VTM, a Flemish-language TV channel, said that he made calls from Greece to the brother of one of two heavily armed suspects killed during the counter-terrorism raids in January.

But why take the word of the French and Belgian media? M Abaaoud himself gave an interview to Dabiq, the IS magazine Dabiq, in which he boasted that he had been able to plot attacks against the west right under the nose of Belgian intelligence agencies, and that he was in Syria in February. He and two fellow jihadists travelled to Belgium, he said, "to terrorise the crusaders waging war against the Muslims."

Posing for the picture above, in which he holds an IS flag and the Qu’ran, the bearded terrorist told the magazine, "We faced a number of trials during the journey. We spent months trying to find a way into Europe, and by Allah’s strength, we succeeded in finally making our way to Belgium. We were then able to obtain weapons and set up a safe house while we planned to carry out operations against the crusaders. All of this was facilitated for us by Allah. There is no might nor power except by him."

But wait, there's more... M Abaaoud revealed he was stopped during the journey by "an officer" after a picture of him fighting for ISIS was published in Belgian media. However, he said, the officer "let me go, as he did not see the resemblance."

He boasted that he had been able to plan terror attacks against westerners while living in Belgium and being wanted by intelligence agencies when he travelled to Syria in January 2014. "I was able to leave...despite being chased after by so many intelligence agencies," he told Dabiq. "All this proves that a Muslim should not fear the bloated image of the crusader intelligence.

“My name and picture were all over the news yet I was able to stay in their homeland, plan operations against them, and leave safely when doing so became necessary. I ask Allah to accept the fruitful deeds of the [martyrs] who terrorized the crusaders of America, France, Canada, Australia, Germany, and Belgium."

How much longer, Walt wonders, will Western media and politicos -- Hello, Mr. Obama! Hello, M. Trudeau! -- persist in denying that the Islamists have declared war on the West? French President François Hollande himself admitted, after the dust had settled, that his is country at war.

If you're at war, what do you do to your enemies? Do you let them enter your country as "refugees"? Do you read them their rights and give them a fair trial? Do you ask them what wrong you have done to make them attack you? I don't believe real crusaders would have bothered with those niceties. But, bound as they are by political correctness, the crusaders of the 21st century cannot be real crusaders, can they....

Further reading: Mark Steyn: "The barbarians are already inside. There’s nowhere to get away from them". And yet, Walt adds, our leaders are promising to "welcome" thousands more! Suicidal stupidity!

CCTV is watching you!

Not SCTV... CCTV -- Closed Circuit Television. In his latest "clip book", The [Un]documented Mark Steyn (Regnery 2014), friend Mark writes: "It accompanies you as you make your way to work whether by car, bus, train, or taxi. And it's there waiting for you at the end of your shift, as you go to buy your groceries or head to the movies."

He goes on to quote from The Defector, a novel by American author Daniel Silva: "...CCTV, the ubiquitous network of 10,000 closed-circuit television cameras that gave London's Metropolitan Police the ability to monitor activity, criminal or otherwise, on virtually every street in the British capital.... The subjects of the United Kingdom, birthplace of Western democracy, now resided in an Orwellian world where their every movement was watched over by the eyes of the state."

Mr. Steyn says that's true, except for the "10,000" cameras. By some calculations, he wrote in 2009, the snoop-robots [Walt's phrase. Ed.] numbered some 5,000,000. That would include this one, ironically watching innocent people passing by the home of... wait for it... George Orwell!

Thanks to Agent 34. Walt knows you're watching!

How about we fight back?!

Just the facts...

As of this morning, 127 people are confirmed dead in the wave of terrorist bombings across Paris yesterday. They were, almost without exception, non-Muslims.

8 of the killers are dead -- 7 who blew themselves up (suicide bombers) and 1 "neutralized" by French police. They were all Muslims -- Islamic terrorists, jihadists, whatever term you like -- determined to slaughter as many non-Muslims as possible before going to the Paradise promised by the Prophet Mohammed.

Interviewed by the CBC, a "security expert", John Thompson, suggested that some of the terrorists might have entered France "mixed in" with the 1000s of "refugees" from Syria and elsewhere whom the French government has welcomed into the country. A Syrian passport was found amid the body parts of one of the suicide bombers.

ISIS has claimed credit for the biggest attack on Paris and the French people since World War II. All the bleeding-heart liberal media types and politicians who kept telling us that it was too early to be sure who was responsible, we mustn't jump to conclusions, beware of Islamophobia, yada yada yada, were wrong, and IMHO deliberately so.

From the very first report, I knew who did it. So did you, dear reader. Everybody knew it, except those who refuse to face the facts. The Paris killings are yet another attack in the Muslim war against the rest of us. French President François Hollande even called it an "act of war". But it is more than "war". What the Islamists are waging is jihad -- so-called "holy war".

The question is: when and how are we going to fight back? I can't answer the "when", but I think if we were smart -- a doubtful proposition -- we would begin by ceasing immediately the suicidal stupidity of admitting to our countries aliens who threaten our security and our culture. Will we do it? Is the Pope Catholic? (Answer to both questions -- NO!)

Paris jihadist attacks result of suicidal stupidity

Let me ask you a question. If a man (or woman) dressed in black, with his (or her) face covered by a mask (or burqa), knocked on your front door and shouted, "Let me in!"... would you do so?

That's what the French did, following the dismemberment of their empire and the loss of their colonies in the Middle East and North Africa, notably Algeria in 1962. It was in the post-colonial spirit of redressing the many evils visited on the poor Arabs and Africans and by the white, Christian (French)man that the liberals who succeeded de Gaulle opened the borders to every Lebanese, Syrian, Tunisian, Moroccan and Algerian who claimed that they were French at heart. Then came the ideals and rules of the European Union, which say that no-one should be refused entry to Europe because of race, colour or creed.

Today, France is full of Muslims of Middle Eastern and African descent. And today, just as Charles de Gaulle predicted in 1959, France is no longer France. See "Muslim 'no-go' zones in France -- the failure of multicult" (WWW 25/10/13 -- includes video)

In that post I wrote "Don't say you weren't warned!" A little more than a year later, France started experiencing "lone wolf" attacks. See "Meanwhile in France... another Muslim 'lone wolf'". (WWW 21/12/14) Then came Charlie Hebdo. And now a number of "co-ordinated attacks" across Paris, which, as I write, have taken at least four dozen lives.

As I write, I am trying to get through to my agent in Paris -- I do have one -- to get a line on what the French media are saying. The North American lamestream meeja have used the words "terrorists", but have refrained from using the M-word or the I-word. Mustn't stir up Islamophobia, you know, or jeopardize the good will being showing to the hundreds of thousands of, errr, Muslims who are this very moment making their way into Europe.

The Prez has just made a televised statement in which he called "liberté, égalité and [sic] fraternité" "universal values", meaning values shared by everyone. He is wrong. The values of liberty, equality and fraternity -- the brotherhood of man and all that -- may still be espoused in the post-Christian, secular humanist West, but they are alien to Islam and to the Muslims who are flooding into our countries.

Are these aliens -- for that's what they are -- going to adapt themselves to our values? No! They are going to make us adapt ourselves to their values! Is anyone -- any Western government -- going to do anything to remedy the suicidal stupidity of our immigration and "human rights" policies and restore the rights of the majority? Will the French government lead the way? Don't bet on it.

Footnote: In that last paragraph, I speak of the socialist government of François Hollande. Therefore I speak of the immediate future -- like tomorrow -- because if today's events don't guarantee the election of Marine Le Pen and the Front National the next time around, nothing will! Lifetime pct .982.

Are we making any progress?

Just reread The B.S. Factor, by Arthur Herzog (Simon & Schuster, 1973). The subtitle of the book is "The Theory and Technique of Faking It in America". It's about "thought pollution" -- the fakery and hypocrisy that pervades American communications. In the conclusion, Mr. Herzog calls for a new breed of "radical skeptics" who, he hopes, will clear away the bullshit that is now engulfing the USA.

Writing in 1973 -- not long after the "flower power" revolution -- the author poses an excellent question: did the social upheaval of the hippy-dippy `60s result in any real progress towards making America a better society? Here's a quote.

Among the things a asociety might want to conceal from itself -- because the realization might be too painful, or imply a need for changes that the society did not want to, or was afraid to make -- would be the failure to achieve its own stated goals. Progress, for instance.

Americans work, and work hard, but do they in any fundamental sense progress? And in a time-frame small enough so that progress is clearly focused? How do we measure progress? Greater personal security? Shorter work week? Better education? Improved medical protection? Higher culture? More happiness? In none of these ways does there seem to be progress commensurate with the enormous effort Americans have been putting out.

In a footnote to the quoted passage, Mr. Herzog says: "For a chronicle of our 'progress', see William O. Douglas, Points of Rebellion (Random House, 1970). The remarkable (or perhaps unremarkable aspect of Douglas' depressing findings is that the conditions he reports are so persistent. In other words, years have passed and nothing has been done about them."

Walt hastens to add the the William O. Douglas whose book Mr. Herzog recommends is the same William O. Douglas who was appointed to the Supreme Court of the United States by Franklin D. Roosevelt in 1939. He survived two attempts at impeachment before retiring in 1975, having served the longest term in the history of the court.

In 1975 Time magazine called Justice Douglas "the most doctrinaire and committed civil libertarian ever to sit on the court". He appeared to have little regard for judicial consistency or stare decisis when deciding cases. And what were the fruits of the liberal judicial activism for which he became so well known? Was any progress made? Errr, no.

ISIS atrocities worse than ever; Canada ends mission

While Christian ["post-Christian", surely! Ed.] nations paused on the 11th to mourn and show respect for those who died to keep the world free from tyranny, racism [etc etc. Ed.], the Islamic extremists of ISIS pursued their jihad against Christians, Jews and all non-believers, including other Muslims.

In Lebanon, two suicide bombers blew themselves into Islamic smithereens, taking with them some four dozen other Muslims in a mainly Shi'ite quarter of Beirut. And in the Afghani province of Zabul, IS fighters beheaded seven ethnic Hazaras, who happen to be Shi'ites as well. The followers of the Prophet used razor wire to cut off the heads of four men, two women, and a child!

In Afghanistan's capital, Kabul, thousands of demonstrators took to the streets, carrying coffins containing the bodies of the victims. Al Jazeera reports that the protesters, including women and men from Afghanistan's different ethnic groups - Pashtun, Tajik, Uzbek, and Hazara - marched on the presidential tent ["palace", surely. Ed.] to urge the government to take action against rising violence against Afghan civilians.

Of course the Afghan government is pretty much powerless to do anything to or about ISIS or the Taliban, or al-Qaeda, or any of the bearded beheaders and bomb-throwers who infest not just their sandpit but the entire Middle East. That's why the US-led coalition is there, right? Because someone -- step forward President O -- thinks "we" bear some kind of responsibility for the wretched people of the armpit of the world.

Walt thinks the only responsibility America bears is that of having invaded the Middle East in the first place, during the reign of Bush I, thus exacerbating the instability and sectarian violence from which that region has always suffered and always will suffer, no matter what "we" do. Walt says it's time to go home and leave the Muslims to beheading and otherwise butchering each other. And may Allah have mercy on them.

UPDATE: Canada's new Liberal government (starring Justin Trudeau, now on screens across the Great Not-so-white North) has ordered its Defence Minister -- as Sikh! -- to end the combat mission in Iraq and Syria ASAP. Will the American forces miss their Canuck counterparts? Probably not as much as the Canucks would like to think. But at least they won't be pour any more dollars into the desert sands.

Lest we forget

Why America must (not?) save the world from ISIS

Not long after posting "US invasion of Syria begins; Walt predicts the outcome", I found on a shelf of my lower level library a dog-eared copy of The B.S. Factor: The Theory and Technique of Faking It in America, by Arthur Herzog (Simon & Schuster, 1973). In the chapter headed "Historical Analogies", the author warns us to beware of dubious lessons supposedly learned from history which lead us -- our political and military leaders -- to make bad decisions for the present and future.

Historical analogies, Mr. Herzog writes, can be reduced to what Aristotle called "the fallacy of accident", which arises when you take an accidental property for an essential one. He gives the example of Vietnam, which General Matthew B. Ridgway thought was a second Korea. "And so did General Mark W. Clark, who learned from Korea, 'The sure way to maintain the peace is to be strong militarily and unafraid politically, and to let the enemy know that we will use that strength to maintain the security of the United States.'

"Eugene V. Rostow, of the Yale Law School, remembered the Soviet-Finnish conflict before World War II, and claimed that if the United States did not maintain its position of dominance in Southeast Asia it would be reduced to the status of Finland -- subject to Russian will.

"Secretary of State Dean Rusk continually compared Vietnam to Munich. An American withdrawal, he said, would lead to further aggression like Hitler's. Lyndon Johnson himself compared North Vietnam's actions to those of the Japanese at Pearl Harbor and believed that the American Actions in Vietnam would be justified on the same grounds as our involvement in World War II."

Mr. Herzog was writing in 1973, before the Paranoid States of America lost the first war in its history. That's if you ignore the War of 1812 and the Korean War, both of which can be said with charity to have been fought to a draw. No such thing can be said about Vietnam. It was a stinging defeat for the USA, the soi-disant greatest military power in the world, inflicted by a smaller gang of ill-equipped but super-motivated Asian peasants.

Did the leaders of America learn anything from the egregious error that was Vietnam? Apparently not. Every president from Bush the Elder right down to POTUS has fallen into the same logical trap, drawing the wrong conclusion -- that the USA is responsible for the security and freedom of the whole world -- from the lessons of history. And so America is doomed to learn the same lessons once again.

7K9268 almost certainly downed by Islamic terrorist bomb

Reports from France and the UK this morning confirm that the crash in the Sinai Peninsula of Metrojet flight 7K928 was not caused by a mechanical or technical failure. Experts with Airbus and French and British aviation authorities have analyzed the "black boxes" -- voice and data recorders -- from the aircraft, and say there is no indication of any problems with the engines or mechanical or electrical systems.

That leaves only one plausible explanation -- a bomb planted somewhere in the airplane's hold, probably smuggled aboard in someone's luggage. "Chatter" monitored by Western security services appears to confirm this explanation.

So does data from the "black boxes", according to Le Point. In "Crash dans le Sinaï : l'attentat confirmé par les boîtes noires", published yesterday, the French weekly quotes an unnamed expert as saying "It was not a technical issue, but an outside action," suggesting the cause of the crash, which killed all 224 people on board, was likely an explosion.

Who would be responsible for such a dastardly act of terrorism? Answers on the back of a postage stamp, please, to the usual address.

Book review: More on stupidity from Bill Bryson

More on stupidity... More on... Geddit? Moron!

I am working hard [hardly working? Ed.] on a review of Bill Bryson's latest book The Road to Little Dribbling (Penguin Random House/Doubleday 2015). My problem is that I keep running into long(ish) passages that I want to quote verbatim. I've already done that twice this week, and feel I'm now in danger of posting the whole book, a page or two at a time. The publishers wouldn't like that. So I content myself with copying one last excerpt.

An underlying theme of Mr. Bryson's latest "travel" book -- really a text in sociology and philosophy -- is the deep and abiding stupidity into which the world is falling. Although the book is ostensibly about Britain and the British, the author takes a few potshots at America and Americans along the way. (Being an American himself, he's entitled to do so.) Here's his account (from pages 284-285) of a visit to Austin TX.

Going to America always does me good. It's where I'm from, after all. There's baseball on the TV, people are friendly and upbeat, they don't obsess about the weather except when there is weather worth obsessing about, you can have all the ice cubes you want. Above all, visiting America gives me perspective.

Consider two small experiences I had upon arriving at a hotel in downtown Austin, Texas. When I checked in, the clerk needed to record my details, naturally enough, and asked for my home address. Our house [in Britain] doesn't have a street number, just a name, and I have found in the past that that is more deviance than an American computer can sometimes cope with, so I gave our London address. The girl typed in the building number and street name, then said: 'City?'

I replied: 'London.'
'Can you spell that please?'
I looked at her and saw that she wasn't joking. 'L-O-N-D-O-N,' I said.
'Country?'
'England.'
'Can you spell that?'
I spelled England.
She typed for a moment and said: 'The computer won't accept England. Is that a real country?'
I assured her it was. 'Try Britain,' I suggested.
I spelled that, too - twice (we got the wrong number of Ts the first time) - and the computer wouldn't take that either. So I suggested Great Britain, United Kingdom, UK and GB, but those were all rejected, too. I couldn't think of anything else to suggest.

'It'll take France,' the girl said after a minute.
'I beg your pardon?'
'You can have "London, France".'
'Seriously?'
She nodded.
'Well, why not?'
So she typed 'London, France', and the system was happy.

I finished the check-in process and went with my bag and plastic room key to a bank of elevators a few paces away. When the elevator arrived, a young woman was in it already, which I thought a little strange because the elevator had come from one of the upper floors and now we were going back up there again. About five seconds into the ascent, she said to me in a suddenly alert tone: 'Excuse me, was that the lobby back there?'
'That big room with a check-in desk and revolving doors to the street? Why, yes, it was.'
'Shoot,' she said and looked chagrined.

Now I am not for a moment suggesting that these incidents typify Austin, Texas, or America generally or anything like that. But it did get me to thinking that our problems are more serious than I had supposed. When functioning adults can't identify London, England, or a hotel lobby, I think it is time to be concerned. This is clearly a global problem and it's spreading. I am not at all sure how we should tackle such a crisis, but on the basis of what we know so far, I would suggest, as a start, quarantining Texas.

Having now passed on three excerpts from The Road to Little Dribbling, -- this one, "Bill Bryson on declining standards of punctuation and grammar" and "Bill Bryson on rising levels of stupidity" -- perhaps I can be excused from writing only a few more lines in praise of the book.

I'm not sure if Mr. Bryson set out to be a curmudgeon. Perhaps one doesn't "set out" so to do. With me, it just happened naturally as I watched the world around me sink into the muck of tastelessness, political correctness, and the other stupidities of which Mr. B complains. He pokes fun at our Western society and "culture" with a large pitchfork, in the manner of H.L. Mencken, but with even more humour.

The Road to Little Dribbling purports to be a travel book, the genre which Bill Bryson does best. It does describe his zigzag rambles up "the Bryson Line" from the English Channel to Cape Wrath (and considerably beyond), but, as noted before, the book is not so much about places and things -- although both are described in detail and with great wit -- but about people. Like Mark Twain's Innocents Abroad, it is a work of serious philosophical inquiry wrapped in dry humour. Don't fail to read it.

Further reading: Innocents Abroad, by Mark Twain. The Project Gutenberg e-book, FREE.

7K9268: US military intelligence believes ISIS did it

Following up on "Metrojet crash in Sinai caused by IS militants?", posted here on Monday, we see now a lot more photos of charred debris from Metrojet flight 7K9268, indicating that there was an explosion and fire of some kind. This is not the sort of thing you would find if, say, the tail fell off, as initial reports suggested. The question now is, what caused the explosion?

American military intelligence [No remarks about oxymorons, please. Ed.] told us, a couple of days ago, that it couldn't be the work of ISIS or any of its affiliates, because they don't have the missile technology to hit a plane flying at 31,000 feet. In reply, Islamic extremists said -- Walt translates from the Arabic -- "Who said anything about missiles? We just said we brought it down!"

Well, an unnamed US official told CNN, they must have planted a bomb inside the plane then. "There is a definite feeling it was an explosive device planted in luggage or somewhere on the plane," were his exact words. "It is believed to be an explosion but what kind is not clear. There is an examination of the sand at the crash site to try and determine if it was a bomb." Walt wonders if there is some type of explosive device other than a bomb!

That ISIS did it, in some way, is only a suspicion in the minds of the US military at this point. You can almost hear them saying, "Yeah, that's it... ISIS did it... yeah... They probably did MH370 too!"

Bill Bryson on rising levels of stupidity

As Ed. told you earlier today -- see previous post -- [not the one with the video of the Swazi reed dance! Ed.] -- I am writing a review of Bill Bryson's latest opus The Road to Little Dribbling (Penguin Random House/Doubleday 2015). Some people will call it a travel book, but in reality it's a trenchant commentary on the decline of culture and just about everything else, disguised as a travel book. One of the things decried by Mr. Bryson is the descent of modern society into a deep and abiding stupidity. He didn't write that; I did. Here's what he wrote, pages 226-227.

I was seated at a window with a good view of the Jeremy Clarkson poster that I had noted earlier [see previous post] and this got me to thinking about stupidity again, in the universal sense. I had recently read about something called the Dunning-Kruger Effect, which is named after two academics at Cornell University in New York State, who first described it. The Dunning-Kruger Effect is basically being too stupid to know how stupid you are. That sounds like a pretty good description of the world to me.

So what I began to wonder was this: what if we are all getting stupid at more or less the same rate and we don't realize it because we are all declining together? You might argue that we'd see a general fall in IQ scores, but what if it's not the kind of deterioration that shows up in IQ tests? What if it were reflected in just, say, poor judgement or diminished taste? That would explain the success of Mrs Brown's Boys, for one thing.

We all know that regular exposure to lead can seriously impair brain function, yet it took decades for scientists to figure that out. What if something even more insidious is poisoning our brains from some other part of our daily lives? The number of chemicals in use in the developed world was more than 82,000 at the last count, and most of them - 86 per cent, according to one estimate - have never been tested for their effect on humans.

Every day, to take just one example, we call consume or absorb substantial amounts of bisphenols and phthalates, which are found in food packaging. These may pass harmlessly through us or they may be doing to our brains what a microwave oven does to a tub of baked beans. We have no idea, but if you look at what's on TV on a typical weeknight, you have to wonder. That's all I'm saying.

Bill Bryson on declining standards of punctuation and grammar

Ed. here. Bill Bryson, best known for his travel books, has also written two fine books on the development and use of the English language. Mother Tongue and Made in America occupy positions of honour in Walt's working library. Mr. Bryson is also a stickler for proper usage of our language, as witness the following excerpt from his latest book, The Road to Little Dribbling (Penguin Random House/Doubleday 2015). Walt's working on a review, but showed me this passage (pages 220-222), which I couldn't wait to share with you.

On the platform at Cambridge station was a poster for a Jeremy Clarkson book. It had a photo of Clarkson looking adorably doleful and a caption that read: 'Dads. Everything they say. Everything they do. Everything they wear. Its all completely wrong.' Oh, the wit. But note the absence of the apostrophe in 'its'. I know it is way too much to ask that Jeremy Clarkson should take an interest in the literacy of his posters, but surely someone at Penguin ought to care.

We have now reached a level in which many people are not merely unacquainted with the fundamentals of punctuation, but evidently don't realize that there are fundamentals. Many people...seem to think that capitalization and marks of punctuation are condiments that you sprinkle indiscriminately through any collection of words. Here is a headline, exactly as presented, from a magazine ad for a private school in York: 'Ranked by the daily Telegraph the top Northern Co-Educational day and Boarding School for Academic results'. All those capital letters are just random. Does anyone really think that the correct rendering of the newspaper is 'the daily Telegraph'? Is it really possible to be that unobservant?

Well, yes, as a matter of fact. Not long ago, I received an email from someone at the Department for Children, Schools and Families asking me to take part in a campaign to help raise appreciation for the quality of teaching in the UK. Here is the opening line of the message exactly as it was sent to me: 'Hi Bill. Hope alls well. Here at the Department of Children Schools and Families...'

In the space of one line, fourteen words, the author has made three elemental punctuation errors (two missing commas, one missing apostrophe; I am not telling you more than that) and got the name of her own department wrong - this from a person whose job it is to promote education. In a similar spirit, I received a letter not long ago from a paediatric surgeon inviting me to speak at a conference. The writer used the word children's twice in her invitation, spelling it two different ways and getting it wrong both times. This was a children's specialist working in a children's hospital. How long do you have to be exposed to a word, how central must it be to your working life, to notice how it is spelled?

People everywhere have abandoned whole elements of grammatical English, and I don't understand it.I was watching a Brian Cox television documentary in which he was standing in a field in Mexico talking about bombardier beetles when he said: 'The bombardier beetle and me, and in fact every living thing you can see, are exposed to the same threat... Me and my friend the beetle have both reached the same solution.' Now don't get me wrong. I have great respect for Brian Cox. He has a brain so big that it crosses whole time zones, and he is normally impeccable with the language, so why on earth would he say 'the bombardier beetle and me' when it is surely more natural, and clearly more respectable, to say 'the bombardier beetle and I'?

Soon after this, I watched a documentary by another eminent young scientist, Adam Rutherford, and he said: 'Now I've got just 33 vertebrae in my spinal column, but Belle here [a boa constrictor] has got 304, and the amazing thing is it's the same handful of genes that determine how many vertebrae both me and her have.'

Then I was watching a repeat of Outnumbered, which had this snatch of dialogue in it:
          Outnumbered kid: 'Why do I have to look after Karen?'
          Hugh Dennis: 'Because me and Mum and Ben are going to be at Ben's parents' evening.'
Hugh Dennis was educated at Cambridge in real life, and he plays a teacher who should really know better.

Then I heard Samantha Cameron, wife of the Prime Minister, say to a television interviewer, 'Me and the kids help to keep him grounded.'

So here is all I am saying about this. Stop it.

VIDEO: Swazi king goes to India with 15 wives, 30 kids, 100 servants

News from the Third World takes longer to get to Walt's cabin in the woods than news from, say, Springfield. Just in is a report from India's Zee Media claiming that His Royal Highness Mswati III, king of Swaziland, took 15 of his wives, 30 children, and 100 servants to India for last week's India-Africa Forum.

The report goes on to say that at least 200 hotel rooms in a five-star, $230/night, New Delhi hotel were booked a week in advance, with all expenses paid by the Indian government. Struggling to carve out a high profile in Africa, the Indians treated African delegates to lavish spectacles and even richer gifts, before the two sides shook hands on a US$10.6 billion deal for cheap loans and grants.

The Swazi Observer, a mouthpiece for the Swazi royal house, termed the Zee reports "blatant lies" and "totally fabricated". The journal did not, however, deny that Mswati III has 15 wives. Nor did it make any mention of the famous Swazi Reed Dance, featured here on WWW before, in which hundreds of virgins dance before the king, hoping to be chosen to fill any vacant wifely positions.

As a public service, we present a short educational video explaining the Reed Dance, taken by Shari Rogers in 2015. Ed. asks me to make clear that this is not a barbaric cultural practice.



Footnote: Wondering what happened to the video of the Swazi girls doing the reed dance that we posted on 1 July 2012? It's still there! You're [not "your"] welcome.

Barbaric cultural (= religious = Muslim) practices

In the last session of Canada's 41st Parliament, the Conservative government of Steve "Call me Stephen" Harper passed the Zero Tolerance for Barbaric Cultural Practices Act, a law which proscribes, inter alia [That's enough Latin. Ed.] things like honour killings, forced marriage, and polygamy. Genital mutilation (aka female -- only -- circumcision) and sex-selective abortion were omitted because the neocon Tories were afraid to go there.

The barbaric cultural practices enumerated are more common in the Great Not-so-white North than you might think, largely because of the massive influx of immigrants, refugees, asylum-seekers etc from the Middle East and South Asia, parts of the world where non-Christian religions, particular Islam hold sway.

Since culture and religion are inextricably conjoined, we're really talking about barbaric religious customs that Muslims, Hindus and Sikhs cling to even after they find refuge in the nominally Christian West. The old saw "When in Rome, do as the Romans do," has no meaning for those who bring their religious and cultural baggage with them. That's why laws like the Zero Tolerance for Barbaric Cultural Practices Act are sadly necessary.

But you can't tell that to the bleeding-heart liberals, "progressive thinkers" and the hordes of lawyers and social workers getting rich forcing us to celebrate diversity. The ink was barely dry on the ZTBCPA [Got tired of writing it in full, eh? Ed.] before the chattering classes started denouncing it as Eurocentric, discriminatory, racist, yada yada yada.

The ZTBCPA is Islamophobic too, they tell us. Muslims aren't really barbaric, they tell us. As evidence to the contrary, Walt passes on a horror story from today's Guardian. Here's a photo of Sonia Bibi, a young Pakistani woman who died yesterday after a rejected suitor set her ablaze for refusing his marriage proposal.

Ms Bibi is ethnically Punjabi, a resident of the village of Multan, in the central Punjab district of Pakistan. She is, or was, a Muslim. So is Latif Ahmed, the former lover now accused of murdering her. She was admitted to hospital, where this picture was taken, last month.

Ms Bibi told police that she had fallen out of love with Mr. Ahmed, and preliminary investigations suggested he had set her on fire after she refused to marry him. Medical staff originally thought she would recover, but doctors told AFP yesterday that she had died after her injuries became infected.

What's disturbing about this case is that it's not unusual, at least not in Pakistan where hundreds of women are murdered every year in cases of domestic violence or on the grounds of defending family "honour". The Aurat Foundation, a campaign group that works to improve the lives of women in Pakistan's conservative and patriarchal society, says more than 3000 women have been killed in such attacks since 2008.

Such killings will doubtless continue, until Pakistan gets a Zero Tolerance for Barbaric Cultural Practices Act of its own. Chances of that happening? Slim and none! (Lifetime pct .989.)

Your wet dreams come true - Heidi Klum as Jessica Rabbit

Ed. here. We at WWW are under no illusions about why certain posts get 1000s of hits, and others, errr, about 14. A lot of our traffic, particularly from Russia, comes from boyz typing with one hand, looking for pix/videos of naked or nearly naked women. Well... yeah... human nature.

We don't like to pander but every now and then Walt sees a photo that warms the cockles of his heart. Sometimes his cockles get so warm he has to rub them with ice! Such a pic spread all over the Web like a rash this weekend, so we're going to share it with any of you who missed it.

Jessica Rabbit is an exquisitely drawn character -- a bawd with a bod -- from the fine Walt Disney film Who Framed Roger Rabbit. Yes, it really is a Disney film, although far from being one of their syrupy, G-rated, "family entertainment" productions. It's fine for kids at one level, but really meant to be viewed and appreciated by adults of a certain age (like Walt) who look back with nostalgia to the golden days of full animation and cartoons that were zany and genuinely funny.

Jessica Rabbit, wife of the movie's central character, Roger Rabbit, looks like a gigantic sex toy. "I'm not a bad girl," she tells ace detective Eddie Valiant (Bob Hoskins), "I'm just drawn that way." She certainly is an eyeful. What man could watch the movie without dreaming of meeting [just "meeting"? Walt] a girl built like that. But hey, she's only a toon.

Or so it was until this weekend, when 42-year-old model Heidi Klum decided to dress up like Jessica Rabbit for her annual Hallowe'en bash. MailOnline reports (with pix) that doing so took a lot more than slipping into a red satin dress slit up to heaven. Ms Klum had to don rubber eyelids and a fake bum. [If it had been made in London, we could call it a London derriere. You're welcome. Walt.]

It took a team of specialist make-up artists nine hours to painstakingly add layer upon layer of prosthetic face and body enhancements to create Jessica Rabbit's stunning sultry physique. The result is certainly something to behold, and we know 1000s of you will do just that, for weeks, months and years to come. Enjoy.

Metrojet crash in Sinai caused by IS militants?

First the facts. On Saturday morning, Metrojet flight 7K9268 crashed into the Sinai Peninsula. The flight’s planned route was from Sharm el-Sheikh to St. Petersburg, Russia. Click here to see the flight path, altitude and speed changes acquired by Flightradar24. All three of their receivers stopped receiving data at exactly the same time, 0413 GMT.

So what happened? The jetliner -- a leased Airbus A-321 operated by Russian airline Kogalymavia -- apparently disintegrated while at cruising altitude. It either exploded or was blown apart or just... broke up. Within hours, a militant group affiliated to Islamic State in Egypt claimed responsibility for bringing down the jet, but Egypt and Russia disputed the claim, suggesting militants in northern Sinai, where Egypt has been fighting an Islamic insurgency, did not have the weaponry to hit a flight at 31,000 feet. Pictures of the debris show no signs of burn or scorch marks.

The airliner's black boxes have been recovered, but have not yet been analyzed. Yesterday, however, an official of Kogalymavia put the disaster down to "external activity". Alexander Smirnov, the deputy director of the airline, ruled out a technical fault and pilot error. "The only [explanation] for the plane to have been destroyed in mid-air can be specific impact, purely mechanical, physical influence on the aircraft," he said. "There is no such combination of failures of systems which could have led to the plane disintegrating in the air."

A regional expert on Sinai security said on Sunday that the militant group’s statement "said they were responsible for downing the plane, not shooting it down." Zack Gold told the Guardian, "A legitimate ISIS-supporting account in Sinai said, 'Why is everyone talking about shooting it down, why is no one talking about a bomb or suicide bomber on board.'"

He explained that if a bomb had been planted on the plane, it would suggest security systems at Sharm el-Sheikh airport had been infiltrated or compromised, which would raise a whole range of other questions. But, he added, there has been nothing to support the claim so far, such as a pre-mission video of a suicide attacker. "The group does not have a history of major fabrications, but at the same time it's curious that they would make this claim without providing any kind of evidence. They have military capabilities, but to carry out this kind of terrorism [on a plane] they would have to display organization they haven’t shown [before]."

If it turns out that the IS affiliate in Egypt is indeed responsible, what does that portend for the American-led "war on terror" in the Middle East? Will the Russians, now bombing the jihadis in Syria, take the fight to the jihadis in Egypt? And which side will the USA take? Stay tuned.

Less "Willkommenskutur", please, say Germans

This is the third, but probably not last, report on how ordinary Germans are reacting to Chancellor Angela Merkel's policy of welcoming hundreds of thousands of Muslim "refugees" from the Middle East. In a word, they are fed up to the teeth with "Willkommenskultur". But since their leaders don't listen, they are finding their own ways to vent their displeasure.

Deutsche Welle reports today that around 20 attackers ganged up on two refugees who were standing outside a shelter in Wismar. Three more refugees were injured in Magdeburg, about 120 miles south of Wismar, when a group of 30 assailants attacked them using baseball bats.

In Freital, Saxony, a Syrian man was hurt by broken glass when an explosive device detonated in front of his window in a refugee home. Toeing the PC line, Saxony's Interior Minister Markus Ulbrig decried the "cowardly and cold-blooded" attack. Those responsible for the blast must know "that there is no place for them in our society," he said. That turn of phrase would probably be echoed by those responsible for the explosion, if anyone asked them.

But wait, there's more. In Jen, another refugee was attacked at a tram stop. And near Hannover, a 43-year old German man was arrested for allegedly committing an arson attack on a home of an asylum seeker family from Montenegro.

This weekend also saw arson attacks against several buildings designated as future refugee shelters, as Germany's ruling parties struggled to find a joint strategy to manage the unprecedented influx of refugees. The ministry responsible for welcoming the migrants announced last week that there had been 576 crimes against refugee centers so far this year, compared to 198 in all of the last year.

For refugees and asylum-seekers -- real and bogus -- the welcome is wearing thin. And yet they come. Germany is expected to receive at least 800,000 refugees by the end of the year.

Further reading on WWW:
"'Culture of welcome' for refugees turns sour for Krauts" (28/9/15)
"German 'Willkommenskultur' worn thin by ill-fitting 'refugees'" (13/10/15)

US invasion of Syria begins; Walt predicts the outcome

So it begins. The White House -- more accurately, Secretary of State John Kerry -- has announced that a "small contingent" of US special forces will be sent to Syria to "advise and assist" the Syrian rebels fighting against Islamic State militants and/or the régime of Syrian President Basher Assad.

The troops will be sent to Kurdish-controlled territory in northern Syria, where there's less chance of being blown to bits by Russian missiles or, errr, "friendly fire" from the USAF. (There's no risk of being hit by a Canadian rocket, since the new Canuck PM has promised to withdraw his country's six (6) CF-18s from the mission.)

Although US troops are not "expected" -- note this weasel word carefully -- to be on the front lines with rebel forces, they will have the right to fight back if attacked. They can also join rebel raids if authorized by Washington. Hands up, those who think that such authorization would ever be denied.

So it begins -- the US invasion of Syria. Until now, the Prez and the Pentagon could say with straight faces that the mission against ISIL [or ISIS or IS -- whichever is the approved acronym of the day. Ed.] wasn't an invasion, because, errr, there were no boots on the ground. On 10 September 2014, Mr. O told a credulous nation: "I want the American people to understand how this effort will be different from the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. It will not involve American combat troops fighting on foreign soil."

Earlier in the same speech, the Prez warned against Islamophobia. "ISIL is not 'Islamic'", he said. Oh, hahahahahaha... What a kidder POTUS is!

Dear citizens (and voters) of the Paranoid States of America, it's not a laughing matter. The US has a pretty sorry record when it comes to invasions, beginning with the failed expedition into Canada into 1812. Former President Thomas Jefferson wrote to a friend that "the acquisition of Canada this year will be a mere matter of marching." Oh, hahahahahahahaha...

Fast forward to the 1960s, and the Bay of Pigs, which didn't really count as a "US invasion" because those guys weren't really US troops, right? In the same decade, really American special forces were sent to Vietnam to "advise and assist" the democratic government fighting against Communist insurgents. Note the similarity between that sentence and the opening sentence of this post. We know how Vietnam turned out, right?

Was any lesson learned from the Vietnam debacle? Errr, apparently not. Since Y2K America has invaded Iraq, and Afghanistan, then Iraq again, and now Syria. A classic definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again yet expecting a different result. By that definition, the invasion of Syria is insane.

Walt will now explain why it's crazy to expect a different outcome. In reality, the civil war being fought in Syria is not three-cornered, as The Jaw That Walks Like A Man would have you believe. The Syrian rebels are not fighting the ISIS militants so much as they are fighting the Assad government. You can't tell the difference between the rebels and ISIS without a programme! Their aims are the same -- the establishment of an Islamic theocracy in Syria and throughout the Middle East.

It follows, then, that if you -- meaning the USA -- want to take sides in the Muslim civil war, you can choose between (a) the Assad régime and (b) the jihadis -- between (a) bad and (b) worse. There is no (c). Once again, America's rulers, ignorant of the realities of the Middle East and the world of Islam, are making the wrong choice. Walt predicts disaster. (Lifetime pct .975.)