No WiFi, no maid service: African "refugees" trash Italian hotel

As I've said before, sometimes it takes months for news to reach Walt's cabin in the pines. And sometimes there are so many similar items that Ed. just loses track of them, particularly in the holiday season when he's into the jellied gin. Here's a story from last Christmas that will grind your gears, followed by an update and commentary as fresh as today.

See these guys, loitering in the entrance of a hotel in northern Italy? They're "refugees" from darkest Africa -- housed (in the hotel), fed and clothed on the Italian taxpayers' lira. [They use "euros" now. Ed.] They were pissed because they weren't getting free WiFi and maids to clean up their mess. So what did they do? Read on!

Why sure! Even if you come from a peaceful country [in Africa? Ed.] and have no right whatever to asylum in Europe, and you're not getting everything you think you're "entitled" to, you riot! Just before Christmas MilanoToday reported that scores of these bogus refugee claimants had taken to the streets demanding free WiFi and a maid to clean up the villa in which they were being accommodated. One wonder where they think a maid might come from. An Italian girl from Milan, perhaps?

La Repubblica reported that the "refugees" were upset over the lack of WiFi "because they cannot make Skype calls to their relatives back home." When free internet service and a maid were not immediately produced, the coloured gentlemen stormed into the streets and started shouting at and abusing passersby. When the Carabinieri were called, the Africans responded by throwing trashcans into the streets and emptying their contents in the road. Finally the cops were forced to draw batons and physically push the parasites back into their residence, arresting one 25-year-old in the process.

That was just before Christmas of 2015. Fast forward to last week, when 13,000 -- thirteen thousand -- more "refugees" were rescued from the sea and delivered to Italian shores. According to a press release from the International Organization for Migration, from January 1st to May 25th, an "estimated" 194,611 "migrants" -- "refugee" is a loaded word now, it seems -- entered Europe by sea in 2016, arriving in Italy, Greece, Cyprus, and Spain. According to the IOM, at least 37,363 non-whites arrived in Italy. That's not including this weekend's boatloads.

What's going on? And what's to be done? Can anything be done? Here are the key points from "The African surge into Europe", by one of Walt's favourite columnists, Margaret Wente. The emphasis is mine.

Libyan strongman Moammar Gadhafi kept a lid on the people-smuggling trade. But after Hillary Clinton and her European allies knocked him out in a burst of do-gooder interventionism, no one could stop the smugglers. Now that the Balkan route is shut, Libya has become the main migration route to Europe. Just last week, 13,000 people were rescued and delivered to Italian shores. Last year, Italy saw more than 150,000 migrants arrive by sea, according to the UN refugee agency. Three hundred thousand or more could arrive this year, according to some estimates.

This is a different kind of migration than the one that shocked the conscience of the world last year. These people aren’t fleeing for their lives, as were refugees from the Syrian war or conflict in Afghanistan. Almost all are Africans, from Gambia, Eritrea, Ghana, Niger, Nigeria. The vast majority are young men.... European leaders have no idea how to cope with the latest surge. Their response has been the usual combination of blame shifting, buck passing, and refusal to face the facts.

The African migrants are allowed to apply for refugee status in Italy, but few will succeed. Most will be sent to overflowing "reception centres", where they will be fed and housed for at least a year while their claims are processed. Some will be summarily rejected and ordered to leave the country right away. But no one enforces the deportation orders, and no one keeps track of the failed claimants. Most head north in search of better opportunities. Until recently, many of them left the country to become someone else’s problem.

Meanwhile, the population of Africa is exploding. By 2050, it is expected to double to 2.4 billion people, roughly four times the size of Europe. Europe’s current migrant problem, in other words, is just a taste of things to come.

Suddenly, more men than women in Sweden. Guess why?

"Wow! We sure didn't see this one coming," said Tomas Johansson, a population expert at SCB, the national statistics agency of Sweden. [Ed., please find a picture of Mr Johanson.] He was speaking to AP about the gender balance shift that caught his country by surprise.

Famous for their constant striving for "gender parity", the Swedes were dismayed to find that, for the first time since record-keeping began in 1749, the Land of the Meatball now has more men than women. Swedes don’t quite know what to make of this sudden male surplus, which is highly unusual in the West, where women historically have been in the majority in almost every country. But it may be a sign of things to come in Europe, where demographics are being transformed by changes in life expectancy and... wait for it... migration.

AP reports that the tipping point in Sweden happened in March of 2015, when population statistics showed 277 more men than women. In the year since, the gap has grown to more than 12,000. While that’s still small in a population of almost 10 million, it’s not unreasonable to suspect that Sweden will have a big male surplus in the future, predicted Mr Johansson.

The natural sex ratio -- the number of boy babies to girl babies (not counting those who will choose their gender later) -- is about 105:100 in Europe. However, European women have historically outnumbered men because they live longer. [No jokes, please, about why that might be. Ed.] AP's analysis of national and EU population statistics suggests women will remain in the majority in most European countries for decades to come. But the sex ratio is increasing, slowly in Europe as a whole and quickly in some northern and central European countries.

The SCB says Sweden’s demographic shift is mainly due to men catching up with women in terms of life expectancy. But there's another reason -- the arrival in recent years of tens of thousands of unaccompanied teenage boys from Afghanistan, Syria and North Africa. Sweden's biggest male surplus is in the 15-19 age group, where there are 108 boys for every 100 girls. That imbalance could grow to 115:100 this year when the impact of last year's record number of asylum-seekers — including more than 35,000 unaccompanied minors — is reflected in the population statistics.

Should Swedes be worried about this? Valerie Hudson, director of a wimmin's programme on peace and security at Texas A&M University, said her research has linked skewed sex ratios in China and India to more violence against women and higher crime levels. Of course the Swedes aren't the kind of people who abort baby girls or treat women as second-class citizens or go on rampages of sexual assault. That's the kind of behaviour you would rightly associate with [We regret that space limitations do not permit us to publish the conclusion of this post. Ed.]

Further reading: Speaking of demographic disaster, check out this story on The New Observer, about a "refugee" claimant in Denmark who has won the "right" to bring his three (3) wives and twenty (20) children with him.

VIDEOS: Most racist TV commercials EVER!

This ad, for a Chinese laundry detergent called Qiaobi, has just surfaced on YouTube. You don't need Walt to explain what's going on, do you? Agent 78 translates the final voiceover as "You only need one Qiaobi laundry detergent tablet to make a change."



You can imagine the shouting and whining about racism being heard and read in the lamestream media. But here's the twist. As is well known, the Chinese are not so hot on innovation, but great on copying. The Qiaobi commercial owes a lot -- a lot -- to an ad for an Italian detergent called Coloreria. Have a look.



Your challenge for today: Send us an e-mail explaining, in 25 words or less, why the Chinese commercial is racist and the Italian one isn't! Shome double shtandard shurely!

"Project Pigeon" - a true story from the Vietnam War

During the Ten Thousand Day War in Vietnam (and Cambodia and Laos), the US military maintained the self-named "Jason Group" -- a semi-official think tank comprising top university scientists, Nobel Laureates, technocrats, computer experts and military strategists. By 1967 it had been very much enlarged and secretly ensconced in Washington under the new, innocuous-sounding "Defense Communications Planning Group". It had fiscal carte-blanche and a priority rating which had its members talking in "reverential and enthusiastic terms", according to Paul Dickson, author of The Electronic Battlefield (Indiana University Press, 1976). The author quotes a DCPG member as saying that if the group "needed 10,000 chocolate cream pies from the army by noon the next day, it would get them, and without any questions."

Until the ignominious end of American involvement in the 'Nam, the Jasons kept on thinking of new ways to wage war on the "gooks". Some of their ideas worked. Some were impractical. Some were downright flaky. There was, for instance, the "Lava Plan" -- an unsuccessful search for a chemical formula that could turn the moist forest soil of the Ho Chi Minh Trail into slippery grease. They also came up with a heat and motion sensor in the shape of a dog turd. They called the Seismic Intrusion Detector (SID) a "TURDSID".

And then there was "Project Pigeon", a plan right out of Dr. Strangelove foreseeing limitless flocks of bombers, in the form of homing pigeons. The idea was to strap tiny bomblets to pigeons which would home in on North Vietnamese vehicles, blowing one and all to bits as the metal triggered against the explosives. This brilliant plan was abadoned when the pigeons, tested against American trucks as well as North Vietnamese, proved unable to identify their ideology.

This true story -- you couldn't make this stuff up! -- is taken from The Ten Thousand Day War by Michael Maclear (St. Martin's Press, 1981. The book is a companion piece to the highly recommendable 13-part television series of the same name, which is now available on YouTube. Click here to watch the first episode, which summarizes those that follow. Each part runs about 48 minutes so you won't want to watch them all at once. But you can go through the book, which includes additional material, at your leisure. As you do, consider the lack of clear thinking and misunderstanding of the lessons of history which have characterized the American "interventions" in Iraq, Afghanistan, and now Syria. Vietnam, too, started with the arrival of just a few dozen US "advisors".

Latest on MS804: Explosion theory looks more likely

Early on Thursday, this Egyptair Airbus A320-232, registration number SU-GCC, was en route from Paris to Cairo with 66 people aboard when it vanished from radar. The plane was last "seen" by Greek radar. The Greek defence minister said the plane turned 90 degrees, then 360 degrees, before plummeting into the Mediterranean sea.

Yesterday, an Egyptian aviation official contradicted the Greek report. Ehab Azmy, who is head of Egypt's state-run provider of air navigation services, told AP that the plane had been flying at its normal height of 37,000 feet before dropping off the radar. It was not observed, he said, to swerve and change direction before it disappeared. The reason for the discrepancy between the Greek and the Egyptian aviation official's accounts of the crash is not clear, and neither Egyptair nor the Egyptian Ministry of Civil Aviation have commented on the final movements of the aircraft.

Greek aviation officials had said air traffic controllers spoke to the pilot when he entered Greek airspace and everything appeared normal. They tried to contact him again at 02:27 Cairo time, as the plane was set to enter Egyptian airspace, but "despite repeated calls, the aircraft did not respond." Last week, the Aviation Herald reported that smoke detectors went off in the plane's toilet and electrical systems three minutes before it disappeared.

As reported here yesterday, a number of messages were transmitted by the plane's ACARS system, which sends short transmissions from the aircraft to receivers on the ground, before it disappeared. Ed. has sourced the actual texts. Time stamps are in "Zulu time", that is GMT, two hours behind Cairo time.

00:26Z 3044 ANTI ICE R WINDOW
00:26Z 561200 R SLIDING WINDOW SENSOR
00:26Z 2600 SMOKE LAVATORY SMOKE
00:27Z 2600 AVIONICS SMOKE
00:28Z 561100 R FIXED WINDOW SENSOR
00:29Z 2200 AUTO FLT FCU 2 FAULT
00:29Z 2700 F/CTL SEC 3 FAULT

I wrote yesterday of the increasing speculation that the ACARS signals indicated that a bomb or incendiary device had exploded, affecting the right side of the aircraft. This morning we have an initial assessment from an Egyptian forensics official that human remains retrieved from the crash site suggest that there was an explosion on board the plane, although no traces of explosives have been detected.

The official based his assessment on the small size of body parts so far recovered from the Mediterranean Sea, where MS804 crashed. 23 bags of body parts have been collected since Sunday. "The size of the remains points towards an explosion," the official said. "The biggest part was the size of a palm."

However, another senior forensics official said only a tiny number of remains had arrived so far, and it was too early to specify whether there had been an explosion aboard. Investigators rely on debris, bags and clothes as well as chemical analysis to detect the imprints of an explosion, according to people involved in two previous probes where deliberate blasts were involved.

Supposing the cause of the crash really was an explosion. Who do you think might be responsible? Click here to read "MS804: 'We will bring this plane down'", WWW 23/5/16.

Amazing! Vatican cardinal calls for conversion of Muslims (but not Jews)

Walt hasn't written much lately about the crisis in the Roman Catholic Church because there is such turmoil over homosexuality, paedophilia, the admission of divorced-and-remarried Catholics to the sacraments etc. that it's hard to focus on just one issue. Some Traditional Catholics are close to committing the sin of despair as they watch Pope Francis the Humble lead the faithful away from the truths that the Church held for 1900+ years, until the disaster of Vatican II.

One of the things that we were taught, back in the day, was that we should go forth and preach the Gospel of Christ to all nations. We were called to proselytize, to seek the conversion of non-believers, including the Jews who refused to accept that the Messiah had come. Indeed we used to pray for the conversion of the Jews and the heathens as part of our Good Friday liturgy. But no more.

Now the "Holy Father" delights in sitting down, even kneeling down with imams and muftis and rabbis and the leaders of other "faith communities", which, he tells us, are co-equal with what we believed to be the One True Faith. After all, we're told, we all pray to the same God, no matter whether we call him Jehovah or Yahweh or Allah. And all faiths can lead us to Heaven, if there is a heaven, because we don't really believe in Hell anyway. That kind of thinking is called Syncretism or Indifferentism. And it is heresy! Every day, Pope Francis leads us deeper and deeper into heresy!

Thus is came as something of a shock to read news of a recent pronouncement by Kurt Cardinal Koch, who, as President of the Pontifical Council for Christian University, is the Batican's point man on the "ecumenical relations" file. At an interfaith meeting in Cambridge, Cardinal Koch said... wait for it... that Christians are called to seek the conversion of all Muslims!

“We have a mission to convert all non-Christian religions' people," said the prelate, adding that this imperative extends even to jihadis responsible for persecuting Christians in the Middle East. My immediate reaction: Does the Pope know about this? Cardinal Koch is supposed to be one of Francis' closest advisors, yet he seems to be contradicting the false ecumenism that the Pope has been preaching almost since Day One of his pontificate.

In the very next breath, though, Cardinal Koch made an exception for the Jews. The duty to evangelize applies to all Christians in their relations with all other faiths, he said, except Judaism. He acknowledged that Christians share with both Jews and Muslims a reverence for the traditions of faith handed down from Abraham. But he said that "we cannot deny that the view of Abraham in Jewish and Christian tradition and the Islamic tradition is not the same." While Christians acknowledge the covenant God made with the Jewish people, the same cannot be said of the Islamic faith. Thus, he explained, "we have only with Jewish people this unique relationship that we do not have with Islam." So leave the Jews alone, then.

As a Traditional Catholic, Walt is all for reaching out to non-believers, including Muslims and Jews. But I'll go a step further and suggest that we start with the modernist, post-conciliar bishops (including the Bishop of Rome) and priests who seem to have lost their grip on the tenets of the Faith of our fathers. Grab your Baltimore Catechisms, boys, and get out there and make those converts!

Footnote: You'll be interested (if not pleased) to know that all of the 499 Syrians who have been granted refugee status in the USA so far this month are Muslims, according to the CNSNews service. Not a single Christian has been granted that status. Since the beginning of the current fiscal year, 2235 Syrian refugees have been welcomed (sort of) into America. Just 10 of them -- less than one-half of 1% -- have been Christians. There's no need, then, to leave the USA to find Muslims to convert!

Absentee votes deny Freedom Party victory in Austrian election

The final results from Austria's presidential election are now in. With Austrian voters apparently sick and tired of the centre-left coalitions that governed the country for two generations, the hard-fought campaign pitted the right-wing populist Freedom Party (FPO) against (believe it or not) the Green Party. It was like watching Donald Trump vs Bernie Sanders, but in German of course.

The Freedom Party campaigned on an "anti" platform -- anti-immigration, anti-Muslim (although they don't say so as directly as does The Donald), and -- very significantly -- anti-European Union, which is to say they're against the One Rainbow World Agenda. The Greens? Well, they're for all the rainbows and unicorns, alternative energy, Willkommenskultur and the brotherhood of man. [Ed., can I still say "brotherhood of man"?]

A key campaign issue was Europe's migrant crisis, which has seen the number of mostly Muslim asylum-seekers and "refugees" soar into the millions. Unlike their German kith and kin, Austrians have been decidedly unwelcoming to the Muslim hordes. Although only 90,000 or so people claimed asylum in Austria last year, that's equivalent to about 1% of the country's population, and many Austrians -- the majority, apparently -- feel that enough is enough!

As of last night, the Freedom Party's presidential candidate, Norbert Hofer, was leading the Greens' Alexander Van der Bellen by 51.9% to 48.1%. The actual margin was 144,006 votes, but there are some 750,000 postal ballots yet to be counted. Projections indicate the postal votes could favour Herr Van der Bellen, and sure enough, the final tally showed Herr Hofer with 49.7% of the vote and Herr Van der Bellen the president-elect, with 50.3%. The difference is only a little more than 31,000 votes out of more than 4.6 million ballots cast.

If Norbert Hofer had won, he would have been the first "far-right" head of state in the European Union. The implications -- not just for Austria but for all of Europe -- of the FPO's very narrow loss are enormous! Although the "antis" lost a close one, the result still adds momentum to the surge in support for populist and far-right parties in other European countries. As well, it gives impetus as well to the "Quit Europe" side in the UK "Brexit" referendum, coming next month. The forces of "progress and enlightenment" are more nervous now than ever... and rightly so!

MS804: "We will bring this plane down" - NY Times report

The lamestream media are hedging on initial speculation that Thursday's crash of Egyptair MS804 into the Mediterranean Sea was caused by bomb planted by Islamic terrorists. They point to the paucity of scorch marks and other signs of fire on fragments of debris found so far, as well as the erratic twists and turns of the aircraft moments before it dropped off the radar screens. This morning, however, the mojo wire brings two new pieces of information which, taken together, point the finger of suspicion squarely at followers of Mohammed.

First we have a report from the New York Times that "EgyptAir was aware of threats to security, including one scribbled on plane". Two years ago, vandals daubed the Airbus with a graffito reading: "We will bring this plane down".

The Times, always politically corrected, says those words weren't a jihadist threat, but a protest against Abdel Fattah El-Sisi, the Egyptian president who seized power in a coup. Egyptair didn't see it quite that way, and fired a number of staff with alleged Muslim Brotherhood sympathies in 2013 as part of a general purge of suspected Islamists after the military takeover.

Fast forward to November of 2015. French police said that in the weeks following the Paris attacks, graffiti such as “Allahu Akbar” were found daubed on EasyJet and Vueling planes at the Paris and Lyon airports. The discoveries raised fears that a bomb could be planted on a plane at an airport in France, but EasyJet and the French authorities insisted at the time there was nothing to worry about. Although they acknowledged that such graffiti had been found on a number of planes in the months before the terror strikes, Inspector Clouseau played down any link with the attacks.

Over to London, now, whewre The Telegraph quotes an unnamed commercial pilot with a major European airline that parts of MS804's data log suggested that windows in the right side of the cockpit were blown out by an explosion inside the aircraft. The pilot, who flies an A-330 (similar to the downed A-320) told the paper, "It looks like the right front and side window were blown out, most probably from inside out."

The pilot suggested the smoke detectors may have been set off not by a fire but by fog which filled the cabin as it lost air pressure in the moments after the explosion. The data he referred to were taken from the plane's ACARS system, which sends short transmissions from the aircraft to receivers on the ground.

Three different warnings showed there were faults in the windows next to the co-pilot, suggesting they could have been blasted outwards by an onboard bomb. That does not mean the explosion came from the cockpit, but indicates the right side of the plane was more badly damaged than the left. Until investigators find the plane's black boxes, the ACARS data are the only clues as to what was happening aboard MS804 in the last minutes of the fateful flight. Walt will update the story as more information becomes available.

Budweiser to market something even worse than Bud Light

IMHO, one of the worst products ever exported by the Excited States of America to the rest of the world is Budweiser "beer". I put the word "beer" in quotation marks because any resemblance between Budweiser and proper, tasty, alcoholic beer is purely a matter of nomenclature. If they didn't call Budweiser "beer", how would you know what it was supposed to be?

Some years ago, as an experiment, I sent a container of Budweiser -- sans label or other identification -- to the FDA for testing. Some days later I received this reply:
"Dear Mr. Whiteman, Your horse has diabetes."

And that was just the regular, "full-strength" Budweiser. Don't get me started on "Bud Light"! Well OK, now that you got me started... Why is Bud Light like a couple making love in a canoe? Because they're both fucking near water! [That's positively ancient! Ed.]

Now, believe it or not, the marketing geniuses at Anheuser-Busch InBev -- Bud's parent company -- have come up with something even worse than Bud Light. It's called "Prohibition Brew", and its alcohol content is not 5%, not 4%, not 3.2%, but... believe it or not... 0%. Zero percent! Not a drop of alcohol in it. Which is why they can't call it "beer".

Who would drink this piss? Believe it or not (again), the target market is... wait for it... Canadians! Kyle Norrington, VP of marketing for Labatt's (which owns the Bud brand in Canada) thinks there's a big opportunity in a country known to be full of beer-loving hosers. He points to Germany, home of Oktoberfest, as a country where beer lovers appear to have embraced alcohol-free alternatives. According to market research, in 2013, almost 50% of German consumers bought an alcohol-free beer. [How many times? More than once? Ed.]

Mr. Norrington told AP that Canadians have likewise increasingly guzzled low- and non-alcoholic beverages in recent years, and Labatt is counting on that to continue. They already sell several other "non-alcoholic beers" in Canada, but the launch of Prohibition Brew next week will mark the first under the Budweiser brand name. This product, Mr. Norrington said, is for those who enjoy the taste of beer without the buzz. How many such wusses exist in Canada remains to be seen.

Questions from Ed.: Is Kyle Norrington a Canadian or, like his beer, an import from south of the border? And where does he drink his alleged brew? At some cute little pub on Toronto's Church Street? Just askin'...

MS804: Where there's smoke, there's fire

We're starting to get a look at some of the debris that has been recovered from the Mediterranean Sea, about 250 miles north of Alexandria, Egypt. (We're not talking about the lifejackets recovered just after the disappearance of Egyptair MS804 near the Greek island of Crete.) Pictures circulating on the internet show some rags of clothing and a life vest, which do not appear to be scorched or burned. The absence of burn marks suggests that the Airbus 320 broke up either before or when it hit the water. But there's little more to go on, as only a few pieces of debris have so far been recovered.

Meanwhile, Egyptian officials are investigating reports that smoke detectors went off shortly before the plane crashed. And French say there were indications of a fire on board. Sebastien Barthe, a spokesthingy for the French air accident investigation service, says messages sent by the plane's automatic detection system suggest smoke was detected in multiple places on board the aircraft before it went down. Messages of that type usually indicate the start of a fire, he said, but anything beyond that is "pure conjecture" at this point.

The respected industry website The Aviation Herald has published automatic alerts transmitted by the A-320. In short succession, they indicate the opening of a cockpit window, smoke in a lavatory and smoke underneath the flight deck in the electronics bay. Further messages also suggest problems with the flight controls computer.

"Over a period of three minutes, the aircraft system shut down," said the editor of Aviation Security International."That's starting to indicate that it probably wasn't a hijacking. There probably wasn't a struggle in the cockpit. It's more likely a fire on board," he said. "Now, whether that was a technical fire, a short circuit, or whether it was because a bomb went off on board, we don't know."

So it's still much too soon to say what happened. It could be something as simple as some simpleton having a smoke in the lavatory and causing a fire. Or it could be a terrorist -- not likely a Christian or a Jew -- setting fire to his shoes or underpants. Stay tuned.

Mary Anne Noland, RIP

Thanks to Agent 34 for making us aware of this obituary.

UPDATED: MS804, another MH370?

This is developing news, so I'll update this post tonight or tomorrow, but want to put out a first thought.

AP reports that an EgyptAir Airbus 320, operating flight MS804 from Paris to Cairo with 66 pax and crew on board, crashed in the Mediterranean early this morning. French President François Hollande told the mdia, "Unfortunately the information we have...confirms to us that the plane came down and is lost. No hypothesis can be ruled out, nor can any be favoured over another."

Egypt's Civil Aviation Minister, Sherif Fathy, takes a different position. While not yet confirming that the plane crashed, he said that the possibility of a terror attack as the cause of the plane's disappearance from the radar screens is "stronger" than a technical failure.

Here's what we know so far. Greek Defence Minister Panos Kammenos said the plane was about 10 to 15 miles inside Egyptian airspaqce when it made two abrupt turns and suddenly lost altitude before disappearing from radar. "It turned 90 degrees left and then a 360-degree turn toward the right, dropping from 38,000 to 15,000 feet and then it was lost at about 10,000 feet."

Haven't we seen this movie before, just over two years ago? Malaysian Airlines flight MH370 was heading northeast towards Beijing when it abruptly made a 90-degree turn to the west-northwest, then (according to the searchers' hypothesis), made a further turn towards the southwest and disappeared into the Indian Ocean somewhere off the west coast of Australia.

Regular readers of WWW will know that Walt does not agree with the theory that MH370, whether controlled or uncontrolled, slowly flew into the sea. But supposing the "experts" are correct, that's what seems to have happened to MS804. The search for wreckage is under way. Stay tuned.

UPDATED at 1225. A couple of lifejackets and some other debris has been found off the coast of the Greek island of Crete. Given that Crete is some distance north of the last known location of MS804, Walt thinks it's more likely this junk came from boats carrying "refugees". More later.

Welcome to Britistan - Urdu signs in Bradford, UK

Ah to be in England now that spring is here! Among the greenery sprouting along the highways and byways of the Septic Isle are some highway directional signs telling people where to go in two (count `em, 2) languages -- English and Urdu. Here's a pic.

Urdu (in case you didn't know) is the main language of Pakistan. Why is it now seen on British street signs? Because Pakistanis are now the majority in the Leeds-Bradford conurbation -- I've seen it with my own eyes -- but cannot or will not read English, so the local council has "accommodated" them by erecting signs in their own language.

After a series of accidents involving the Muslim colonizers, Mohammed Amin al Husseini, Bradford's Grand Mufti, complained that English-only road signs were putting Urdu speakers at unnecessary risk. The signs have cost more than £100,000, but hey, it's worth it! According to a report on The New Observer site, "the bilingual road signs have proven successful and a larger roll-out of signage across multicultural cities and towns across West Yorkshire and the North West has been approved and is expected to be implemented in early 2017." Here's another one.

The New Observer comments: "The advent of Urdu street signage in Yorkshire is another indication of the full extent of the ongoing non-white colonization of Britain which has been encouraged and supported by successive Labour and Conservative Party governments over a matter of decades." Indeed. But, Walt adds, this sort of thing doesn't happen only on the eastern side of the Atlantic. The misgovernments of the USA and Canada are also keen on promoting multiculturalism and "celebrating diversity". Bilingual/multilingual signs... coming soon to a neighbourhood near you... nearer than you think!

Footnote: Isn't it delicious to see "Little Germany" written in English and Urdu... but not in German?!

Further reading: "London Cockneys being exterminated", The New Observer 14/5/16. London’s world-famous cockneys -- once an iconic symbol of Britain -- have been exterminated by the flood of nonwhite immigration into the UK, a new documentary by the BBC has admitted. The documentary, titled "Last Whites of the East End", will be broadcast by the BBC on May 24th. It will show that the traditional Cockney district of East London now "looks like Baghdad".

Liberals move to enshrine LGBTQ(etc) rights in Canadian law

Yesterday was Be Nice To Transgendered Folks Day, or something like that, in Canada. The Canuck Prime Minister of Photo Ops, a flaming heterosexual, posed for numerous selfies with persons of indeterminate gender. And the Premier of Ontario, the first openly lesbian head of government in North America [perhaps the world? Ed.] got together with her husband... no... wife... no... [try "spouse". Ed.] got together with members of the loving LGBTQ2S community for a family portrait. Here `tis.

One of Walt's assiduous Ontarian readers sent the pic along with this note:
For all my friends who live outside of Canada, the person in blue is the Liberal Premier of the Canadian Province of Ontario.
The Person in grey and white is the "wife" of the Liberal Premier of the Canadian Province of Ontario. 
As for the rest of "The Family" - no comment!
I promise I will never laugh at California again!
Ontario's first family -- really brings a tear to your eye doesn't it!

Well, no. Walt's are quite dry. Had they been misted over, I would have missed the news that, to mark BNTTF Day (or whatever it was), Canada's Liberal government introduced in Parliament a bill, C-16, to add "gender identity" to that country's assorted human rights acts and codes, so that poor oppressed people who aren't happy with the way God made them can change to "the other" without fear of not being able to get a job or a house or a seat in the women's washroom!

Agent 3 points out that discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation has been illegal in Canada for years, but apparently the laws didn't specifically mention the transgendered crowd, so Bill C-16 is going to remedy that omission. There will be no "bathroom laws" in Canada, so everybody's happy now, except perhaps normal people. But who [or what. Ed.] is "normal" these days?

Further reading: "Sorry, Liberals, But Gender Is Not a 'Social Construct'", Conservative Read, 17/5/16.

Bono urges Newfoundlanders to help starving African children

Agent 9 sends us news of an appearance by well-known do-good wienie Bono in the easternmost part of North America, the Canadian province of Newfoundland. Newfoundland has its own poverty issues, what with oil prices down to $45 and the arse out of the fishery. Nevertheless, Bono made his customary appeal to white guilt, urging his audience to do something for the poor starving children of Africa.

He asked the audience for to be quiet, and then he slowly started to clap his hands. Holding the audience in total silence, he said in solemn tones, "(clap) I want you to think about something. (clap) Every time I clap my hands... (clap) a child in Africa dies (clap)..."

At that point a Newfie in the front row hollered, "Then stop clappin', ya Irish arsehole!"

Further reading, suggested by Agent 34: "Rest Of U2 Perfectly Fine With Africans Starving", The Onion 7/12/05. It's a joke, OK? So was the little story above.

Smart Canucks warn their country to brace for a Trump win

Derek H. Burney and Fen Osler Hampson are not the real names of the guys who play arch-hosers Bob and Doug McKenzie on much-missed SCTV. They are most unhoserlike. Mr. Burney was Canada’s ambassador to the United States from 1989-1993, during the reign of Bush I. Mr. Hampson is a distinguished fellow [a title, not necessarily a description. Ed.] and director of Global Security at the Centre for International Governance Innovation. He is also Chancellor’s Professor at Carleton University in Ottawa.

Messrs Burney and Hampson the authors of Brave New Canada: Meeting the Challenge of a Changing World (McGill-Queen's University Press, 2014). They've also written an op-ed piece in The Globe and Mail in which they give some timely advice to their fellow Canucks under the headline: "Brace yourselves: Trump is going to win". Walt will skip the advice and repost the explanation for their contrarian prediction.

Canadians and our media have watched U.S. primary season with a mixture of incredulity, disbelief, horror and smugness. The conventional wisdom here, as well as among most American pundits, is that Donald Trump doesn’t stand a chance of winning the presidency and that the Democrats will retake the White House under Hillary Clinton.

The problem is that the conventional wisdom has been consistently wrong since last June. Many thought Mr. Trump would implode during the Republican primary. He didn’t. Many thought his reality-TV-show persona and foul-mouthed campaign style would eventually wear thin with voters. It hasn’t. 

Many thought – and still do – that his lack of policy substance and multiple about-faces – if not downright contradictions – on hot-button issues like abortion, Muslims and Mexican migrants would doom his campaign with Americans, who generally tend to have a strong sense of fair play and public decorum. That, too, hasn’t happened. Meanwhile the FBI investigation of Ms. Clinton’s personal e-mail accounts is ongoing and Vice-President Joe Biden is back on TV stating that he would be the best candidate.

What many fail to recognize is that Donald Trump is rewriting the rules of American politics with his take-no-prisoners, earned-rather-than-paid media campaign for the U.S. presidency. He is riding a tidal wave of profound dissatisfaction among ordinary American voters (and not just aging, white, middle-aged males, for that matter) that is driven by a volatile mix of xenophobic nationalism, falling wages and living standards for the middle and lower classes, a yawning and ever-widening gap between rich and poor, and an acute sense that America under President Barack Obama has taken a backseat role in world affairs, has mismanaged major issues and is no longer the leading great power it once was.

Donald Trump understands the angry mood of America better than his Washington-based Republicans, which is why he is the last man standing. Only Democratic Senator Bernie Sanders rivals Mr. Trump with his intuitive grasp of America’s state of mind and that is why he is giving Hillary Clinton such an unexpected run for her money.

America’s political establishment, including those in the media, are widely seen as being out of the touch and arrogant and self-serving, which is why Mr. Trump’s “outsider” appeal has traction. If there were any lingering doubts, consider the extraordinary confession in the New York Times Magazine by Obama confidant, Deputy National Security Adviser Ben Rhodes. Mr. Rhodes openly bragged about lying about timelines in the Iranian nuclear deal to reporters while feeding their more inexperienced colleagues with stories to create, in his words, “an echo chamber” so that the public would support the deal. Talk about hubris! 

A just released Reuters online poll puts the race between Ms. Clinton and Mr. Trump as neck and neck. That is just one poll and a lot can happen between now and November. But Canadians and their government should nevertheless ready themselves for the possibility of a Trump presidency. Prudence is anticipating the worst before it happens and readying yourself for the consequences.

Indeed.... The emphasis above is mine. And, as Donald Trump said to David Cameron, I'm not stupid -- far from it. I'm taking bets now on The Donald plus three points. That is, if Mr. Trump wins, or loses to Hellery Clinton by 3% of the popular vote or less, I win. Send your name and credit card details to the usual address. I won't debit your card until after the votes are counted!

UPDATED: Toronto school board blinks on sex ed curriculum

Well, maybe not the Ontario Ministry of Education (Lez Sandals, prop.) so much as the Toronto District School Board, more particularly Thorncliffe Park Public School, in the heart of Toronto's Muslim ghetto. In theory at least, Muslims take a dim view of homosexuality, gender fluidity, masturbation and the other perversions being inculcated into the minds of children as young as six (6) by the Liberal government's new sex education curriculum.

Regular readers of WWW will remember that when the curriculum was reintroduced -- after being shelved by then-premier Dalton McGuinty following an outcry from some religious groups -- it was hailed by Ms Sandals and her boss, proudly lesbian Premier Kathleen Wynne, as a necessary update for decades-old materials that did not address "the realities of children’s lives today". The ladies (?) recognized, though, that there would be opposition to the curriculum's pro-queer agenda. Ms Sandals said "I anticipate there will be members of various religions who may object to one thing or another...but the curriculum is the curriculum that will be taught in Ontario schools."

Well yes... unless the objectors happen to be Muslims. It's OK to push immoral nonsense into the Catholic schools, because the Catholics themselves don't know what to believe any more. But no bien pensant Canadian politician wants to offend Muslims! So there was much soiling of silks at Queen's Park last September when hundreds of Muslim kids were kept out of Thorncliffe Park PS in protest against the very explicit material which is to be taught.

Fast forward to this week, when the first lessons in anatomy were due to be taught. The curriculum calls for children in Grade 1 -- yes, Grade 1, age 6 -- to be taught the correct names for what Mr. Bookman* called "peepees" and "weewees" and "wawas". Thorncliffe Park Principal Jeff Crane told the meeja today that because "a number of parents" (sounds better than "hundreds") had concerns about their children being taught the words "penis" and "vagina", the school decided to offer a class where teachers covered the key issue of inappropriate touching without being specific about body parts. The idea, the educator said, was to keep kids in school this week and at least learn some of the curriculum.

"We let parents know ahead of time when the health strands for human development were being taught and, for Grade 1, that there would be one lesson where there would be discussion of body parts," he said. "They were told if learning the names of genitalia was a concern, they could write me a letter requesting a religious accommodation."

What Mr. Crane did not say was that (1) almost all of the parents requesting the "religious accomodation" are Muslim, and (2) Thorncliffe Park Public School is located in the riding represented by Premier Wynne. No pressure, then. Yet Mr. Crane held 20 sessions with more than 650 parents to go over the curriculum and to "counter misinformation circulating in the community".

In the result, about 60% of Thorncliffe Park's 300 Grade 1 students were taught the explicit curriculum, with the remaining 40% getting what Mr. Crane called "the sanitized version". Will the same choice be extended to parents at other schools in places like Markham (high concentration of Chinese) or Mississauga and Brampton (predominantly south Asian)? And what about the Catholics who are asking for the new curriculum to be adjusted to teach "sex education from a Catholic perspective"? Will any further changes be made to the liberal secular humanist propaganda? Stay tuned!

* Note from Ed.: If you don't remember Mr. Bookman, go to YouTube and search "Seinfeld + Bookman".

UPDATED 26/5/16 with some further reading: "Trustee says drop in TDSB enrolment due in part to sex ed changes", (Toronto Star 26/5/16). Finally they admit it!

MH370: 5 pieces now, all in "the wrong place"

Speaking of airplanes -- see yesterday's post (with video!) about the amazing An-225 Mriya -- you may be wondering what's become of the search for the wreckage of Malaysian Airlines flight MH370, which went down somewhere in the Indian Ocean in March of 2014. When last we checked (WWW 24/3/16), two more pieces of debris had been found on the western fringes of the Indian Ocean, 1000s of miles from the search zone in the southeastern quadrant of said ocean.

Walt and others have suggested all along that the "authorities" are looking for the wreck in the wrong place. Whether they're doing so as a result of lack of information or deliberate disinformation is part of the Mystery of MH370. But more evidence that the search has somehow been misdirected surfaced (if you'll forgive the pun) yesterday, when the Malaysian government confirmed that two more pieces of debris have been found, making the total number recovered five. Can you guess where the two new pieces were discovered? Yes, in the same general area -- the coast of South Africa and Rodrigues Island, just to the east of Mauritius. Check out this map.

You can't see southern Africa on the map, but trust me, it's just to the west (left) of the area shown. To get from there to Mauritius, you fly more or less due east from Maputo (capital of Moçambique), over Madagascar, passing by Réunion (where the first piece of debris was found) and there you are. Keep going, and the next stop is Rodrigues.

Notice anything else? Ah yes... Make a left turn at Rodrigues, head northeast, and you'd wind up at... wait for it... Diego Garcia! Does that name sound familiar? It's the site of a gigantic US military base. And that, IMHO, is where the answer to the Mystery of MH370 is likeliest to be found.

Returning to yesterday's announcement, the "authorities" and "experts" seem to be stealthily backing away from their position that MH370 slipped into the sea somewhere off the west coast of Australia. Geoff Dell, a specialist in accident investigation at Central Queensland University in Australia, told AP that the latest discovery "shows they're looking in the right ocean — that's about it."

To make matters murkier, the five pieces of debris found so far don't offer much in terms of figuring out what happened to the Boeing 777. There don't appear to be any scorch or burn marks which would indicate an explosion and/or fire. Investigators are examining marine life attached to the debris to see if it could somehow help them narrow down where the plane entered the ocean, but haven't discovered anything useful yet.

The Australian Transport Safety Bureau, which is leading the investigation, says one of the pieces found recently is a panel from the main cabin, probably part of a door closet, identified by its decorative laminate. But even this interior piece is unlikely to prove very helpful, said Mr Dell.

It won't, for example, answer the question that some have raised about whether anyone was still at the controls of the plane at the end of its flight, or whether the plane spiraled uncontrollably into the water after running out of fuel. "I wouldn't hang your hat too much on what it says, other than it's got to come out of the airplane somehow and that suggests there was a structural failure in the fuselage that allowed it to get out," he said. "But how, exactly — who knows?"

In the Internet Age, spelling is more important than ever

A guy sends a text to his next-door neighbour:

"Bob, I'm sorry. I've been riddled with guilt and I have to confess: I have been helping myself to your wife when you're not around, probably more than you. I know it's no excuse but I don't get it at home. I can't live with the guilt any longer. I hope you'll accept my sincerest apology. It won't happen again."

Feeling betrayed and outraged, Bob grabs his gun, goes into the bedroom, and without a word, shoots his wife.

Moments later Bob gets a second text: "Really should use spell-check! That should be 'wifi'."

Thanx [Ed., is this spelling OK?] to Agent 6.

VIDEO: Biggest damn airplane you ever saw fly - An-225 Mriya

I saw a squib (small story on a news site) reporting that the world's largest airplane had left the Ukraine carrying a load of very large mining equipment to Australia. The airplane, it said, was an Antonov-225 "Mriya" (= "dream", in Ukrainian). What, I wondered, does it look like? Ed. did a bit of searching on YouTube and came up with this beautiful video, which we send out to Agents 3 and 17 and all other aviation buffs.



Six turbofan engines. 72 wheels... I think... difficult to count when it's moving like that. The longest and heaviest plane ever built, with a wingspan twice the length of a B747, and maximum takeoff weight of 640 tonnes (1410 tons on this side of the Atlantic).

Plane Logger says this example, bearing Ukrainian registration number UA-82060, the only one ever built (line number 01-01!), was rolled out in August of 1993. How did I miss that?! It still belongs to and is operated by the Antonov Design Bureau. A second airframe was partially built, but its completion was halted because of lack of funding and interest. Hard to understand, isn't it.

Note from Ed.: We trust you weren't fooled by the still photo filling the window above. The An-225 only has six (6) engines, two less than a B-52. So whose engines are more powerful, do you think?

Cops say at least 40 IS militants came to Germany as "refugees"

Why does the man on the right have his face covered? Fear of catching the flu perhaps? Or could it be that he's o ne of the dozens of ISIS terrorists entering Germany as "refugees"?

According to reports from Thomson Reuters, German federal police admitted today that they are investigating 40 cases in which Islamic militants are suspected of having entered the country disguised as refugees. That's more than double the number of cases under investigation in January. Under German Chancellor Angela Merkel's policy of "Willkommenskultur", it's relatively easy, it seems, for bogus refugees, asylum-seekers and other migrants to enter the Fatherland without proof of identity. They could come, and do come from anywhere.

In the past, the Frau Merkel's government has played down the risks of IS fighters entering Europe with the tide of migrants, in part to avoid exacerbating public concerns about the influx, which hit a record 1.1 million last year. But last week, Hans-Georg Maassen, the head of Germany's domestic intelligence agency, told a conference that although there were more efficient ways to smuggle in fighters, ISIS appeared to have sent some via the Balkan route from Greece in order to fan fears about refugees and "send a political signal." "I am not telling you a secret," he said, "when I say that I am concerned about the high number of migrants whose identities we don't know because they had no papers when they entered the country."

A spokesthingy for the Bundeskriminalamt (BKA, the federal police), told the press "German security officials have indications that members and supporters of terrorist organisations are being smuggled in with refugees in a targeted, organized way in order to launch attacks in Germany." Two of the suicide bombers from the November attacks in Paris that killed 130 people came into Europe through the Balkan route, she said. So did two men who authorities believe were meant to participate in those attacks but were delayed and arrested in a refugee centre in Salzburg in December. There is also evidence that Saleh Abdeslam, believed to be the lone surviving suspect from the attacks, picked up three unidentified militants who entered Europe with "refugees" in the southern German city of Ulm last October.

In early February of this year, German authorities arrested a 35-year-old Algerian man and his wife at a refugee centre in the town of Attendorn. The man, suspected of being a member of ISIS, reportedly posed as a Syrian when he entered Germany in the autumn of 2015. Days later, in Mainz, the polizei arrested a 32-year-old man suspected of having fought with the Islamic militants in eastern Syria before travelling to Germany via Turkey.
[No more bogus refugees, please. Out of space. Ed.]

Vagina art -- is it obscene? Japanese creator speaks out

To paraphrase George Carlin, there's no obscene art, only obscene thoughts. That would seem to be the attitude of Megumi Igarashi, also known as Rokudenashiko (meaning "good-for-nothing girl" in Japanese), who's been in a spot of trouble for creating objects that, in some people's minds, resemble... errr... Well, here's Miss Good-for-nothing paddling her own kayak.

Sure looks like a little girl in a boat to me. Can you imagine my surprise when Ms Igarashi revealed that the design is based on her vagina!

Japan is said to have a thriving and lucrative pornography industry, as well as a high tolerance for displays of scantily dressed women in magazines and advertising. However, its obscenity laws prohibit public displays of genitalia.

So, is Ms Igarashi's kayak:
(a) an example of creative yet functional design?
(b) art?
(c) obscenity?

Apparently the answer is (a) and/or (b) but not (c), because the artist didn't get into any trouble over this piece. Nor did she run afoul of the law by creating the pieces she's holding here.

A Tokyo court ruled yesterday that a set of three plaster figures in the shape of Ms Igarashi's vagina, decorated and painted in bright colours, qualify as art. Her lawyers had argued that they did not look like skin or immediately suggest female genitalia, and the judge agreed.

But obviously something had to prevent a proliferation of this kind of art. Can't have artists doing things like photocopying their nether regions! [What a novel idea! Ed.] So although the court let Ms Igarashi off the hook for her cute little objets d'art, it took a different view of a little gift she made for contributors to the kayak project.

What was it? Nothing more or less than a computer disc containing digital data that could be used with a 3-D printer to recreate the artist's genitalia. Way better than a 2-D photocopy, right?! Not according to the judges of the Tokyo District Court, who said the data, from a scan of Ms Igarashi's own vagina, could be used to create "a realistic shape that could sexually arouse viewers".

Guilty, guilty, guilty!!! The Good-for-nothing girl was ordered to pay a fine of 400,000 yen (about $3700 in real money) for distributing obscene material.

Ms Igarashi takes a dim view of the whole affair. Commenting on the ruling, she told the press "There is very much a male-oriented view of what is considered obscene in terms of the female genitalia, and my work is to overturn those notions. I am extremely frustrated that that message did not come across to the judges."

Click here to see "My body is not an obscenity", a very brief interview with Megumi Igarashi.

Stabbing on German train - what they don't say about the attacker

Last week, WWW as all Trump, all the time... or most of the time. People are starting to think Walt is endorsing Trump, maybe getting measured for a cheerleading outfit. [With skirt? Ed.] Must avoid taking sides. Must find something else to write about. No more American politics until... errr... at least tomorrow. Instead, let's look at a story which appeared on the AP wire this morning, and was published on the BBC, CBC and other lamestream sites. First, let me give you the headlines.

GERMANY: 1 DEAD, 3 WOUNDED IN STABBING AT TRAIN STATION (AP)

Germany [sic] knife attacker kills man at Grafing station (BBC)

German police probe train stabbing that leaves 1 dead, 3 injured (CBC)

The secondary headline on the CBC News site reads: Suspect, who has confessed to the attack, has psychological problems and drug issues, says state minister

Now then, before we go any further... what one vital piece of information do you just know is missing from these headlines? Oh dear... Did I just trigger an Islamophobic thought? Are you ashamed of yourself for jumping to a racist conclusion? Don't be. Here's the lead-in from the CBC News version of the story.

"German investigators have no indication that the suspect in a fatal stabbing at a train station had an Islamic extremist motive, according to a top regional security official."

How strange that the very liberal CBC, before presenting any of the facts, warns readers against thinking the perp might be a Muslim terrorist. How could we think such a politically incorrect thought, when there's no evidence of "an Islamic extremist motive"? Oh... Wait... Here's the next paragraph.

"The police said they are investigating witness reports that said the 27-year-old man yelled 'Allahu Akbar', Arabic for 'God is great' as he attacked several people with a 10-centimetre knife."

So... some sort of knife attack then by someone yelling in Arabic. This happened at the railway station in the Bavarian town of Grafing (pop. 13,500) about 7 AM (local time) today. A 56-year-old man who had been on board the commuter train when he was attacked died later in hospital. Men aged 43, 55 and 58 were wounded. Where they were assaulted is not yet clear. A spokesthingy for the Munich prosecutor's office in charge of the case said one of the survivors had "serious injuries" but that he had no details on whether they were thought to be life-threatening.

Bavarian State Interior Minister Joachim Herrmann says the suspect, who has already confessed to the attacks [They haff vays of making zem talk! Ed.] is a German citizen from the state of Hesse, not a resident of Bavaria. "We have no information that he is a recent immigrant here or of that background, but we don't know for sure at the moment," he said, adding that the man "apparently has psychological problems and drug issues."

So that's all right then. The perp isn't officially a terrorist. He's just a wild and crazy guy who yells in Arabic something about Allah or something. Nothing to see here folks. Just carry on with the Willkommenskultur.

The real reasons millions of Americans are voting for Trump - Part II

On Mayday (Mayday! Mayday!) Walt passed along the opinion of Globe and Mail columnist Doug Saunders as to why Americans -- millions of them -- are voting for Donald Trump. Mr Saunders put it down to "racial nationalism", a nice turn of phrase which doesn't quite call Trumpeters "racists". But there are other reasons for supporting The Donald, as disclosed in a Public Religion Research Institute poll, the highlights of which you'll find in the same post.

Today I want to share the explanation given by Doug Casey, whose blog is called International Man. His take on the current crop of would-be presidents, and why he believes most Americans will vote for Mr Trump was originally posted on April 14th. Here's the conclusion of his analysis.

"America, which was much more a concept than a place, is long gone. What's left of the white middle class correctly feel they're losing what's left of the U.S. Their children are being both bankrupted and corrupted by politically correct schooling. To them, the society appears to have been captured by gender feminism, LGBT preferences, and racial quotas. And I'd say they're basically right.

"That's why, even if they won't admit it out loud, most Americans (hard-core Democrats excepted, of course), will vote for Trump."

Sounds right to me. In fact it sounds a lot like what Dr Hunter S. Thompson and Rick Perlstein predicted years and years ago.

Footnote about Doug Casey: Anyone who is an admirer of Ron Paul and quotes H.L. Mencken is OK in Walt's books!

The European "melting pot": one picture says it all

Agent 9 tells us that recently there was an amateur art contest in the Netherlands. People were invited to create a work of art depicting the current era of multiculturalism in Europe — a depiction of their experience in the modern "melting pot". This was the winner.

If ever a picture was worth 1000 words, this is it.

Election 2016: The world's biggest UNpopularity contest

Walt has written at least twice this week alone about the Great Divide in American politics -- the huuuuge and still growing chasm between Democrats and Republicans, left and right, blue and red. See "The real reasons millions of Americans are voting for Donald Trump" (1/5/16) and "US political pendulum swings... to the right!" (5/5/16)

My thesis -- and it's not original -- is that the polarization of US society which is so evident now began with the backlash to the loonie liberalism of the Kennedy-Johnson years, the revolt of the Silent Majority against the economic and social engineering policies of the limousine liberals, do-gooders and dreamers who dominate American universities, mass media and the Democratic Party. Although those forces were defeated by Nixon, Reagan and Bush, their "progressive" panaceas came back like bad pennies during the Clinton and Obama administrations. And the gap between the elitists and ordinary Americans keeps growing and growing and growing.

In yesterday's post, I mentioned Dr Hunter S. Thompson's "pendulum theory", according to which the middle-of-the-road, uncommitted voters swing back and forth between left and right, Democrats and Republicans, etc. My take on today's political situation is that there are fewer swing voters than before, and more committed Democrats and Republicans. That being so, both Donald Trump and Hellery Clinton can count on about 45% of the vote come November 8th. The battle will be for the 10% or so who have not yet decided who is the lesser of the two evils.

You read that right. For the first time in ages, the next US president will be the candidate who can best overcome the fear and loathing factor. The coming election looks like being "one of the world's biggest un-popularity contests"!

Those are the words of Chris Kahn, reporting the results of a Reuters/Ipsos poll released yesterday. His piece is headlined "Top reason Americans will vote for Trump: 'To stop Clinton'".

According to the poll, nearly half of American voters who support either Hillary Clinton or Donald Trump said they will mainly be trying to block the other side from winning! Larry Sabato, Director of the Center for Politics of the University of Virginia called this phenomenon "negative partisanship". "The results reflect a deepening ideological divide in the United States," he told Reuters, "where people are becoming increasingly fearful of the opposing party, a feeling worsened by the likely match-up between the New York real estate tycoon and the former first lady. This phenomenon is called negative partisanship. If we were trying to maximize the effect, we couldn’t have found better nominees than Trump and Clinton."

Chris Kahn explains that Mr Trump has won passionate supporters and vitriolic detractors for his blunt talk and hardline proposals, including his call for a ban on Muslims entering the United States, his vow to force Mexico to pay for a border wall, and his promise to renegotiate international trade deals. As for Mrs Clinton, it seems that the former Secretary of State appeals to voters seeking continuity with President Obama's policies. This has won her a decisive lead in the race for the Democratic nomination, but has made her many enemies among those disillusioned by what they see as lack of progress [Mr Kahn puts it mildly there] during President 0's tenure.

To be sure [Mr Kahn continues] voters' opinions could change over the next several months. Candidates will be feted at party conventions, will square off in a series of national debates, and will be targeted by millions of dollars worth of advertisements. But the negative atmosphere is likely to reign, according to Alan Abramowitz, an Emory University professor who has studied the rise of negative partisanship in America. Mr. Kahn quotes Dr Abramowitz as saying "It's going to get very, very negative," as both campaigns probably work harder than ever to vilify each other.

And so we come back to the pendulum theory. Mr Kahn refers to a 2014 study by Pew Research Center which found that Democrats and Republicans have shown increasingly negative views toward each other over the past few decades. In 2014 more than a quarter of Democrats, and more than a third of Republicans, viewed the opposition as "a threat to the nation’s well-being".

In Nixonland, Rick Perlstein said essentially the same thing. And, he argued, those negative views stemming from the upheaval of the 1960s increased and hardened right up through 2008, when he wrote his book. In the eight years since -- the Obama years -- the fear and loathing has intensified still more. So here we are, ready for the Greatest Unpopularity Contest Ever. Should be interesting.

US political pendulum swings... to the right!

For the last few days, Walt has referred several times to two books which, read together, offer a fine guide as to how to bet in the US elections due in November. The books are: Rick Perlstein's Nixonland (Scribner, 2008) and Fear and Loathing on the Campaign Trail (Straight Arrow, 1973) by Dr. Hunter S. Thompson (PBUH). The former owes a great debt (largely unacknowledged) to the latter, if for no other reason than its restatement of the "pendulum theory" of US politics, which Walt will elucidate forthwith.

In a nutshell, the pendulum theory posits that American "swing voters" -- those who are not lifelong Democrats or Republicans -- have, since 1945, swung back and forth between left and right, liberalism and conservatism, in cycles of about eight years. The liberal, statist Roosevelt era ended in 1952 with the election of Eisenhower. After eight years of McCarthyism, the Cold War and resurgent capitalism, the American public were beguiled by visions of Camelot, and elected a handsome young prince -- the Justin Trudeau of his day -- who promised sunny days and sunny ways.

What America got instead was eight years of what Mr Perlstein calls the "liberal consensus", described by Dr Thompson as "left-bent chaos". Lyndon B. Johnson, much reviled though he was, in fact pushed through more liberal "reforms" than any president since Abraham Lincoln -- federal control of education, integrated schools (complete with forced busing), the expansion of the welfare state, various and sundry "civil rights", etc etc.

What was the result? By 1968, Dr Thompson writes, "the Silent Majority was so deep in a behavioral sink that their only feeling for politics was a powerful sense of revulsion. All they wanted in the White House was a man who would leave them alone and do anything necessary to bring calmness back into their lives -- even if it meant turning the whole state of Nevada into a concentration camp for hippies, niggers, dope fiends, do-gooders, and anyone else who might threaten the status quo."

And so, through the great fissure in their society which developed in the hippy-dippy 60s, Americans entered "Nixonland". But, in Perlstein's view four decades on, the gap between liberals and conservatives, left and right, never closed. The pendulum kept swinging, although the feckless Carter presidency limited the leftward swing of 1976 to just four years. The ignominious defeat of Jimmy Carter lengthened the swing to the right by one administration, that of the almost-as-feckless George H.W. Bush, but since 1992 the eight-year cycle has been as predictable as peristalsis.

Eight years to the left (Clinton), eight years to the right (Dubya), eight years to the left (Barack Hussein Obama), and here we are in 2016, with the mood of the electorate much the same as that described by Hunter Thompson, quoted above. Except that we wouldn't use the N-word today, would we... Walt is certain (lifetime pct .988) that at least 45% of Americans are ready to vote against political correctness, pandering to minorities, a socialistic health care system that doesn't work, weak foreign policy, LGBT "rights" and the rest of the status quo (H. & B. Clinton, props.). Can Donald Trump pick up another 5% + 1? Stay tuned!

Further reading: "Ten Reasons Why the Trump Train's Given the Cocky, Lazy, PC-crazed Washington Elite the Spanking it Deserves -- And Left Hillary Shaking in Her Goldman-Financed Boots", by Piers Moron [Ed., please check surname. May be "Morgan"], in the online Daily Mail (UK), 5/5/16.

UPDATED: Ryan to be a heartbeat away from succeeding Pres. Trump?

Lyin' Ted Cruz said that he's stay in the race for the presidensity as long as there was a viable path to the nomination. Last night he said his path had been foreclosed. That's how politicians talk. He wouldn't say he got thumped by Trump. Oh no. His path has been "foreclosed". So that's that, then. There's only one more putative candidate left. Of him, CNN politics says "John Kasich is not going anywhere". Truer words were never spoken.

Meanwhile, and still in Indiana, Bernie Sanders eked out a win over Hellery Clinton. Because of the Democrats' crooked nominating system -- having 100s of insider "super-delegates" pretty much screws an outsider like Sanders -- la Clinton is still likely to wind up riding the Dem Donkey, even though she enjoys only lukewarm support from the majority of her party.

And that, dear reader, means there's at least a 50-50 chance that The Donald will be the next POTUS. If I could get Trump plus 6 points, let's say, I'd put my $$$ on the table right now. And that means that Mr. Trump, the Republicans and Americans of all stripes need to start thinking hard about who should be Vice-President (VPOTUS), because... as they say... that person will be only a heartbeat away from becoming President and all that entails.

For a country with a short history -- 240 years isn't much compared with China or even the UK -- the Paranoid States of America has had more than its share of presidents who have died in office, of either natural or unnatural causes. Four sitting presidents have been killed, all of them by gunshot: Abraham Lincoln (the 16th President), James A. Garfield (the 20th President), William McKinley (the 25th President) and John F. Kennedy (the 35th President). That's an average of one every 60 years. It's been 53 years since JFK was assassinated, so do the math.

Indeed, Mr Trump might not even make it through to November 8th. Remember what happened to Bobby Kennedy? To George Wallace? Don't tell me that The Donald is any less hated than those guys, either of whom might have won but for a case of severe lead poisoning. All it would take would be another murderous Muslim (Sirhan Sirhan) or loonie leftie (Lee Harvey Oswald), or just some nebbish who wants to get his name in the papers (John Hinckley). So Mr Trump's choice of candidate for VPOTUS is more important than at any time so far this century.

In last night's victory speech, Mr Trump went easy on Mr Cruz. No more "lyin' Ted". In fact he called his opponent "a helluva contender". Could we be looking at a Trump-Cruz ticket? It would sure as hell give Establishment Republicans a reason to do their utmost to keep The Donald alive and viable, because although they hate Trump, they loathe Cruz!

Seriously, though... as the stand-up comic says... I can't see Mr Cruz taking the VP nomination, even if it were offered to him. And I don't think the job will be offered to Carly Fiorina, in the name of gender parity -- not after her amazing speech last week. In 1972, Tom Eagleton proved that a candidate for the second-highest office in the land can't have "issues".

Who, then? Mr Trump will be under pressure to offer a sop to the Republican Establishment -- some harmless, centrist, non-WASP from one of the southern or western states -- to balance the ticket. That would seem to suggest Marco Rubio, a "progressive Republican" with more ambition than brains who already has the GOP grandees' seal of approval. Mr Rubio has the added advantage of being young and lightly Hispanic, appealing (it says here) to the kind of voters Mr Trump has trouble with. But Senator Rubio and The Candidate had some prettyh nasty things to say about each other during the primaries, so a public burying of the hatchet will be awkward, if not downright laughable.

If not Mr Rubio, then who? Walt repeats his call for Paul. If something should, God forbid, happen to President Trump, Paul is the kind of man I'd have confidence in to lead the USA along the path to peace and prosperity. Donald, if you're reading this, don't listen to those other guys; listen to me! Have I ever given you a bum steer? (Lifetime pct .988.)

Further reading: "House Speaker Paul Ryan refuses to back Donald Trump", on the CBC News website, 5/5/16. Mr. Ryan said "I'm just not ready to do that at this point. I'm not there right now." My emphasis.

UPDATE AND WOW! "House Speaker Paul Ryan to meet with Donald Trump next week to talk 'Republican principles'" Reuters via CBC News, 6/5/16. That didn't take long, did it...

Notice

Thanks to Agent 34 for noticing.

Fred Reed explains "why Trump must be stopped!"

I admit to having forgotten about Fred Reed. Agent 17 told me about his blog years ago, and I followed it for awhile. I love the rantings of Americans who are so pissed off with the State of the Union that they desert the sinking ship. (For realistic advice about moving to Canada if Trump wins, check out this video.) But in the course of relocating, upgrading computers and other disruptive activities, I lost Fred's bookmark and... well...

Now Agent 6 has sent along a link to a piece by Fred which appears on a new (to Walt) site called LewRockwell.com, which boasts that it is anti-state, anti-war and pro-market. My sentiments exactly! I could add another half dozen antis and pros, but those three will do for a start. I see Lew also features articles by Ron Paul, Pat Buchanan and Laurence Vance, so I know I'm in good libertarian company!

Fred's piece is called "The Mask Comes Off: Putrefaction Most Foul". It's about the conspiracy of the Republican and Democratic Establishments to secure the GOP nomination for Donald Trump. I wrote about the Republican insiders' motives just yesterday. Fred's style owes a lot to Dr. Hunter S. Thompson, so it's a pretty scathing screed, but it's way too long to be reposted here in full. I'll just give you a couple of excerpts and the conclusion.

I love it: Donald Trump’s campaign reveals the establishment for what it is, a swamp of corruption as fetid as those of Latin America. It is better entertainment than Vaudeville. The frantic scramble to rig the primaries, change the rules, and thwart the voters–anything to defend their cozy entanglement of political tapeworms–makes absurd any pretense of democracy.

The Republicans try desperately to ditch the only Republican candidate who could win the Presidency because…Hillary is one of them. Because, as every sentient being has by now noticed, the Republicans and Democrats are members of the same corrupt club of blood-sucking parasites, the action arm of the corporations, Wall Street, the Israeli lobby, and those who want the US to control the world at any cost–except, of course, to them. They are panicked at the rise of someone who might put first the interests of America. Better Hillary, a fellow parasite, than Trump, who isn’t.

If the Republicans deep-six Trump, and Hillary runs against Kasich, or Cruz, or some other derelict, what then? Our choices will be not to vote, which will make no difference, to vote for either of the party candidates, which will make no difference, or to vote for Trump if he runs as a third party, which will make no difference. But at least we will have seen under the log, the squishy pale creatures scurrying. They will keep their grip on the country, but the world will know them for what they are.

It is to preserve these overflowing rice bowl [= the troughs from which the insider pigs feed. Walt] that we have elections without substance between candidates without a difference. Hillary is just Jeb Bush in a dress, Biden a universally applicable cipher, Cruz a compliant applicant for membership in the club. Since the parties collude in avoiding issues that people care about, the contest becomes a popularity contest of the sort found in middle school. Whoever wins, the Insiders win.

Of course, Trump also is a billionaire,but he is a turncoat, a class traitor, the Benedict Arnold of billionaires. He addresses the issues that the Insiders want to remain unaddressed. He is indeed dangerous. He threatens the endless (immensely profitable) wars, the endless (immensely profitable) shipping of American jobs to China, the endless (immensely profitable) importation of cheap Mexican labor. He threatens the sacred rice bowls.

It is why he must be stopped.

Why Republican insiders are deserting Trump

Sad. Very sad. Now that it appears almost certain that Donald Trump will win the Republican nomination, potential running mates are hastening to disclaim any interest in joining him on the ticket. The list of those saying they're going to sit this one out grows longer by the hour, as the GOP Establishment stampedes for the exits.

Let us ask ourselves why. Could it be that they're afraid The Donald will lose to Hellery Clinton? Could be, but trends suggest The First Lady in Waiting shouldn't be measuring the Oval Office for drapes quite yet. [She probably already knows the measurements from years of looking behind the drapes and under the desk for interns! Ed.] No, I think there's more to it than that. I believe the likes of JEB! are not just afraid that La Clinton will win, but hoping for that result!

What the "moderate Republicans" are hoping, I'd guess, is that Trump will turn out to be a latter-day Goldwater, and lead the party -- their own party -- to a defeat so disastrous that it will take four or possibly eight years to recover. They'll let the right-wing, populist Tea Partiers carry the ball, hoping for a QB sack, after which they'll come onto the field and move the team back to the centre. [That's enough metaphors. Ed.]

In 2020 they'll bring back the old coaches and put in a new, young, NICE quarterback [Stop it! Ed.], like, say, Marco Rubio. It worked for the Republicans in 1968, as Rick Perlstein explains in Nixonland, recommended here a few days ago.

The regular machine Democrats tried the same thing when the "radical" George McGovern captured their nomination in 1972. His chances of beating the Evil Nixon weren't great to begin with, but according to Dr. Hunter S. Thompson (in Fear and Loathing on the Campaign Trail, Straight Arrow Press, 1973), the Democratic Old Guard set Senator McGovern up to lose! That (the Dean of Gonzo Journalism says) is how he came to choose Thomas Eagleton as his running mate, in blissful ignorance of the Senator from Missouri's three sojourns in the Wet Sheet Hilton.

Walt cautions Mr Trump to be very, very careful in choosing the man (or woman) who could be only a heartbeat away from the presidency. Don't listen to the voices from inside the Beltway. Go for someone solid, someone with an independent mind and an abundance of common sense, someone who has a record of calling BS on the Establishment when they deserve it... someone with a name like... wait for it... Paul!

Only a minority of Canadians "positive on immigration"

"Racial nationalism"... See "The real reasons millions of Americans are voting for Donald Trump". The last point in Walt's post was that it's not just race, but economics that drives the opposition to immigration which prompts millions of Americans to support The Donald. If the migrants from Mexico or wherever were rich, and would make a financial contribution (in the form of taxes) to the country, they'd be more welcome than those whose first words on crossing the border are "Which way to the welfare office?"

It's not just Americans who feel this way. On May 1st we posted a video report from the Calgary Sun on attitudes to immigration and immigrants in Canada and other countries. The gist of it was that only a minority of Canadians were in favour of bringing more immigrants into the Great Not-so-white North. An alert reader pointed out to us yesterday (May 5th) that the video first appeared in the summer of 2011! Since attitudes have presumably changed since then -- the Liberal Canuck government keeps saying that its subjects are delighted to "welcome" 25,000 (and counting) Syrian "refugees" -- we've deleted the video. We'll give you current figures when they're published on the CBC or when hell freezes over, whichever first occurs.

Meanwhile, if you want to see "Anti-immigration nation?", as it appeared on 8/8/11, just click here!

The real reasons millions of Americans are voting for Donald Trump

Shock! Horror! The lamestream media are starting to awaken to the fact that Donald Trump is on track to win the Republican nomination. Mayday, Mayday, Mayday! The American people, or American Republicans at least, have suddenly become evil, xenophobic, Islamophobic, racists!

What's wrong with that last sentence? It's the inclusion of the word "suddenly". The Prez's statements that race relations in the US of A have never been better notwithstanding, the pundits tell us now that millions of Americans have been racist all along! And that, you see, is why The Donald is going to win the GOP nomination. "It's not over yet, but by Wednesday morning it might be," says the CBC's Keith Boag in "Conventional wisdom crumbles, yet again, in U.S. primaries".

The reason for Mr. Trump's popularity, they're saying now, is that he's appealing to the "latent racism" of white Americans. Trouble is, white Americans (and Canadians, Brits, Aussies, Frenchmen, Germans, Swedes, etc etc) don't like being called "racist" any more. Is it "racist" to be proud of your country's history, culture and language? Is it "racist" to have border controls and certain requirements for immigration and citizenship?

The limousine liberals and "human rights" advocates who promote massive immigration yell "racist" at people who aren't happy to welcome into their countries hundreds of 1000s of aliens who will not, indeed cannot assimilate into the culture of the majority. But the stone truth is that pro-immigration policies are antithetical to the natural human desire to associate and live with others of the same kind. Birds of a feather flock together... and the other birds can damn well flock off!

Oh... I'm so sorry... Did I just write "hate speech"? All I did was give voice to a sentiment which is now being called "racial nationalism". In the Globe and Mail, Doug Saunders, a frequent apologist for diversity, multiculturalism and all that liberal claptrap, says racial nationalism is the reason for the ascendancy of Donald Trump. He writes:

"Once upon a time, a lot of people voted not for candidates or parties but for the big, all-explaining ideas they embodied. The last century was the age of the totalizing ideology: communism, fascism, socialism, libertarianism, theocracy. Most of those big ideas have all but vanished from mainstream national politics. People generally vote for pragmatists of the left or right, who, in practice, support some variation on a market economy and a more or less pluralist society, or for charismatic individuals offering an equally ideology-free version of personal authority.

"There’s really only one totalizing ideology remaining, one overarching theory that is currently attracting voters. It is by no means a majority philosophy, but it is gaining in popularity, attracting voters who seem to hunger for a large, simple theory. That ideology is racial nationalism – the belief that each country is associated with a race, a people or a religion; that it is therefore threatened by the arrival or rise to power of different people; and that the country’s problems can be solved by preventing their arrival, ascent or empowerment.

"It’s certainly not a new idea. What’s interesting about it today is how it has filled the vacuum once occupied by other big-picture ideologies.... It appears that a lot of people voting for racial nationalists are not single-issue bigots, but rather people searching for satisfying large-scale answers, and racial resentment is the only one on offer."

As proof for that last sentence, Mr Saunders reports the findings of a large survey conducted this month by the Public Religion Research Institute. The key finding (according to Mr Saunders) is that, when given the statement "It bothers me when I come in contact with immigrants who speak little or no English", 64% of Trump supporters agreed! But fewer than half of those backing other candidates felt the same way (or admitted that they did). So Trumpers are, if not racists, at least racial nationalists. See?

But there's rather more to the survey findings than the erstwhile opinion-shaper suggesets. Follow the link and you'll discover other reasons why millions of people are going to vote for Donald Trump.

• Trump supporters are notable for the degree to which they believe society has become too soft and feminine in recent years. More than two-thirds (68%) of Trump supporters, compared to 57% of Cruz supporters, say society as a whole has become too soft and feminine. By contrast, more than six in ten Clinton supporters (64%) and Sanders supporters (69%) reject this notion.
• Nearly half (45%) of Americans report being worried that they or someone in their family will be a victim of terrorism. These Americans report much stronger support for a leader who is willing to break the rules. About six in ten (61%) Americans who say they are very worried about being a victim of terrorism agree that the country needs a leader who is willing to break rules to put things right, compared to 39% of those who are not at all concerned.
• A majority of Americans report a dim view of their current economic health, with 37% saying that their financial situation is fair and 17% saying it is poor. More than four in ten Americans say they are in good (36%) or excellent (8%) financial shape. Trump supporters do not report being in worse financial shape than Americans overall. Close to half of Trump supporters say that they are in excellent (12%) or good (34%) financial shape, while a majority say they are in only fair (35 percent) or poor (19 percent) financial shape.

The emphasis of "not" in the penultimate sentence of the previous paragraph is mine. The significance of that finding is this. Trump supporters are not poor or (economically) lower class, as the chattering classes keep telling us. They are the kind of people who fight poverty by working for a living! And they are not about to see their hard-earned money "redistributed" to those who sit idle on the front porch making babies [On the front porch?! Ed.] waiting for the "guaranteed annual income" which is the latest brainstorm of the Clintons and Sanderses and other "social Democrats".

So you see, there's more to the Appeal of The Donald than racial nationalism, although the existence of that phenomenon is not to be denied -- and nothing new, either. Mr Trump, like George Wallace in 1968 and 1972, is playing to a fundamental dissatisfaction in the populace, a populace that feels it has no voice. This makes him popular -- also (some say) dangerous and unpredictable -- but it doesn't mean there wasn't a problem in the first place.