Walt admits to falling into near-terminal lassitude during the "dog days of summer" -- the hot and humid days of summer. This phrase can be traced back thousands of years to the days of the Roman Empire. It refers to the dates from 3 July through 11 August -- 20 days before and 20 days after the star Sirius rises and falls in conjunction with the sun.
At this time, when it's an effort to punch out more than a couple of paragraphs on the keyboard, we here at WWW are very grateful for Patriot Post, a reliable source for stuff with which to fill this space.
Note from Agent 3: Look at the map carefully. See how the circle exclused part of the Aleutians, all of Newfoundland, and the southern part of Florida in which is located Mar-a-Lago. What can it all mean?
The following is a true story. The report was published by the Canadian Press and posted on Post Media, more or less as you read it. We could have inserted any number of cheesy jokes, but we'll leave that to our readers. Ed.
The Royal Newfoundland Constabulary have laid charges on a "very irate male" who attacked a patrol officer with a block of cheese.
Constable James Cadigan told the Canadian Press the attack is an example of the unexpected challenges that law enforcement faces while on duty. "It shows we can never let our guard down."
According to an RNC press release, the incident occurred during a domestic disturbance call release. In an overnight report, Staff Sergeant Justin Soo wrote, "Upon arrival, officers encountered a very irate male who then assaulted the officers with a block of cheese. The male was arrested and conveyed to the St. John’s lockup to await court,"
Police said the man was allegedly in breach of his probation. The officer who was attacked did not require medical attention, they added. The type of cheese used and the reason for the assault was not known. The man was arrested and charged with assault, assaulting a police officer and breach of probation.
Although there are some dissenters, the vast majority of Canadians support the Ukrainian resistance to the Russian invasion of their country. Support for a free Ukraine is visible "from coast to coast to coast", as witness this photo, sent to us by Agent 78, who was visiting the most famous town in Newfoundland.
Yes, Virginia, there is a Dildo in Canada's easternmost province, in the easterly part of the Avalon Peninsula. Agent 78 says the people there are very friendly and hospitable. The chief industries are fishing and sign-making.
And, having managed to avoid being swallowed up by Canada until 1949, they appreciate the Ukrainians' desire to keep their independence and the freedom to be who they are. God bless them, and God bless the Ukraine. Слава Україні!
Andrew Carnegie (1835–1919), a Scottish-American industrialist and philanthropist, led the expansion of the American steel industry in the late 19th century and became one of the richest Americans in history.
During the last 18 years of his life, he became a leading philanthropist in the United States, Great Britain, and the British Empire. In that time, he gave away around $350 million (roughly $5.9 billion in today's dollars, almost 90 percent of his fortune, to charities, foundations and universities.
He funded Carnegie Hall in New York City, the Peace Palace in the Netherlands, founded the Carnegie Corporation of New York, Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, Carnegie Institution for Science, Carnegie Trust for the Universities of Scotland, Carnegie Hero Fund, Carnegie Mellon University, and the Carnegie Museums of Pittsburgh, among others.
Mr Carnegie was an auto-didact, hence his special project was the funding and building of libraries, especially in small places like the Scottish town from which he came. Carnegie libraries sprung up all over the United States and Canada. I remember fondly the little library in the my hometown, which 30 years after the benefactor's death had a population numbering in the low thousands.
What does this have to do with the Titan submersible, which, as I write, is lost somewhere in the Atlantic Ocean, off the coast of Newfoundland, somewhere near the wreck of the RMS Titanic?
Consider the list of those aboard, destined, it would seem, for a watery grave near that of the souls who remains are still there, in the ruins of the great ship.
Those on board the Titan are:
* Paul-Henri Nargeolet, a Frenchman, her pilot;
* Stockton Rush, CEO of OceanGate Expeditions, the American entrepreneur making big bucks by turning the Titanic into a tourist attraction;
* Hamish Harding, a British billionaire (basesd in the United Arab Emirate), pilot, explorer and adventurer;
* Shahzada Dawood, a British-Pakistani businessman, one of the richest men in Pakistant, and
* his son and heir Suleman.
Mr Rush's company reportedly charged Messrs Harding, Dawood et fils $250,000 to go down in the briny deep for a spot of disaster tourism. The spending of three quarters of a million dollars for not-so-cheap thrill of being able to get close to the watery graves of the unfortunate passengers of the Titanic is what Thorsten Veblen would call "conspicuous consumption" -- a means to show one's social status, especially when publicly displayed goods and services are too expensive for other members of a person's class.
In other words, no-one benefits, except perhaps Mr Rush and his partners. To the spoiled billionaires who want to play with a new toy, $750,000 may be chump change, but it could so a lot of good for the less fortunate multitudes of No-longer-great Britain or (especially) the shithole that is Pakistan. Had they given the money to charity, Messrs Harding, Dawood and Dawood Jr might have something to say for themselves when they answer to their Maker... later today.
Agent 9 has had a busy Christmas, but found time to send us a seasoned greeting and a little story which made us chuckle.
After having dug to a depth of ten feet last year, British scientists found traces of copper wire dating back 200 years and concluded that their ancestors already had a telephone network more than 150 years ago.
Not to be outdone by the Brits, in the weeks that followed, an American archaeologist dug to a depth of 20 feet. Shortly after, a story was published in the New York Times: "American archaeologists, finding traces of 250-year-old copper wire, have concluded that their ancestors already had an advanced high-tech communications network 50 years earlier than the British."
One week later, the Canadian Department of Mines and Resources reported the following: "After digging as deep as 30 feet in Newfouondland, Jack Lucknow, a self-taught archaeologist, reported that he found absolutely nothing. Mr Lucknow has therefore concluded that 250 years ago, Canada had already gone wireless."
Poor Len sez: Makes a guy bloody proud to be Canadian eh!
Agent 5 has been busy lately... mighty busy... but has taken time from his busy schedule to send us a story from Canada's happiest province, Newfoundland. Truth or fiction? You be the judge!
The Newfoundland Department of Employment believed a boat owner wasn't paying proper wages to his help.
An agent was sent to the fishing village of Burin to investigate the boat owner.
Government Agent: I need a list of your employees and how much you pay them.
Boat Owner: Well, there's Clarence, my hired hand. He's been with me for 3 years.
I pay him $200 a week plus free room and board.
Then there's the mentally challenged guy.
He works about 18 hours every day and does about 90% of the work around here.
He makes about $10 per week, and pays his own room and board.
I buy him a bottle of Lamb's rum and a dozen Moosehead every Saturday night so he can cope with life.
Also, he gets to sleep with my wife occasionally.
Government Agent: That's the guy I want to talk to -- the mentally challenged one."
Boat Owner: That'll be me. What'd you want to know?
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!"
WHOA! Hold `er Newt! This is not a new story. Rather, it's a look at something that happened 30 years and 3 days ago -- the biggest airplane crash (by number of casualties) ever to occur on Canadian soil. Walt presents it to make the point that radical Islamic terrorism -- the phrase the Prez can't say -- is not a new thing. The jihadists have been waging war on us for decades.
Just yesterday Egyptian authorities released their report into the crash of Metrojet flight 7K9268, which disintegrated over the Sinai at the beginning of November. The Egyptians persist in their assertion that the Russian plane was not brought down by Islamic terrorists. However, the Russians and the American military believe that an ISIS affiliate did it. And it wouldn't be the first time.
Rewind to 12 December 1985. A DC8-63F operating as Flight 1285 by Arrow Air, under contract to the US Army, takes off just before dawn from Gander, Newfoundland, after a refuelling stop of about 90 minutes. It is carrying a crew of 8 and 248 pax -- US servicemen going home to the 101st Airborne base at Fort Campbell KY after a tour of duty in Lebanon.
The weather is misty and cool, close to the freezing point. The flight engineer does a walk-around but apparently sees nothing that would make him call for de-icing. The plane taxis down Runway 04, lifts off but fails to gain altitude. Seconds later it crashes into the forest and burns, about half a mile from the end of the runway, killing all aboard.
Initial reports from the scene include eyewitness accounts of an explosion and fire before the plane hit the trees. Not a day later, all mention of fire has disappeared from news reports, and the probable cause is put down to icing.
The crucial evidence that could have pointed to the cause should have been found in the so-called "black boxes" which were recovered intact. However, investigators said, the Cockpit Voice Recorder was defective and failed to record anything. And, unfortunately, the Flight Data Recorder was an older model that only recorded four parameters. It was scheduled for replacement a few weeks later.
The accident (???) was investigated by the Canadian Aviation Safety Board, which found that on Flight 1285's approach to Gander -- no more than two hours before the crash -- precipitation conditions were favourable for the formation of ice on the aircraft's wings. After landing, the CASB said, it continued to be exposed to "freezing and frozen precipitation capable of producing roughening on the wing upper surface" in addition to the freezing temperature. They also found that prior to takeoff the aircraft had not been de-iced.
Five out of nine members of the CASB signed the final report. In the Probable Cause section, they wrote:
The Canadian Aviation Safety Board was unable to determine the exact sequence of events which led to this accident. The Board believes, however, that the weight of evidence supports the conclusion that, shortly after lift-off, the aircraft experienced an increase in drag and reduction in lift which resulted in a stall at low altitude from which recovery was not possible. The most probable cause of the stall was determined to be ice contamination on the leading edge and upper surface of the wing. Other possible factors such as a loss of thrust from the number four engine and inappropriate take-off reference speeds may have compounded the effects of the contamination.
No fewer than four members of the CASB disagreed. In an unusual and controversial move, they issued a minority opinion asserting that there was no evidence presented proving that ice had been present on leading edges such as the wings. And, they speculated, "An in-flight fire that may have resulted from detonations of undetermined origin brought about catastrophic system failures."
The five-to-four opinion caused so much debate that the Canadian government appointed Willard Estey, a retired judge of the Supreme Court of Canada, to review the findings. Nearly four years later, he ruled that the available evidence did not support either conclusion.
Two years after that, in 1991, Les Filotas, one of the four CASB board members who dissented in the final report, published Improbable Cause, an exhaustive argument for the opinion that a possible in-flight explosion doomed the aircraft.
Mr. Filotas demanded that attention be paid to a call made on the day of the crash to a French news agency in Beirut -- the point of origin of the Flight 1285. According to United Press International, "Hours after the crash the Islamic Jihad – a Shiite Muslim extremist group – claimed it destroyed the plane to prove [its] ability to strike at the Americans anywhere." As noted above, the jihadists' claim was dismissed by both the American and Canadian governments within 24 hours.
20/20 revisited the story in April 2014. Here's the video, running time 30 minutes.
All the hoo-rah and hoo-hah about the appropriation of the Confederate battle flag by a racist teenage nutbar -- see yesterday's post -- has been followed by a tsunami of overreaction and political correctness on the part of the lamestream meeja and black-vote-seeking politicians. Surprisingly, even retailers are jumping on the anti-South bandwagon. WalMart, Sears, Amazon and others are falling all over themselves to get the "Southern Cross" out of their catalogues and off their online shopping sites.
Yet the demand persists, not just across the Excited States of America -- and Walt means all 50 states, especially Alaska! -- but north of the world's longest undefended border. Yes, there are lots and lots of Canucks who aren't happy seeing their country becoming the Great Formerly-white North, and they're showing where their sympathies lie by displaying their own versions of the "rebel flag". Like this one.
"Rebel flag" stickers and decals are a common sight on highways in northern Ontario and the Prairie provinces, although (Agent 3 tells me) not so much around the Jane-Finch corridor in Toronto. In provinces which don't require a front licence plate, you can buy license plates merging the Dixie flag with a symbol of the province (the official seal of Alberta, in this case) or the Canadian maple leaf.
Then there's the case of Hillbilly Heaven, a restaurant in Hamilton ON mentioned in WWW just over two years ago. As you can see from the picture in Walt's post, the owners painted a large Confederate battle flag on a panel right over the front door. They said they were just using an iconic southern symbol to advertise their food -- barbeque, beans, pecan pie, that kind of thing. But, as their website says now "In this world, you can't do anything without someone getting upset", and the PC police made them take the flag down. Maybe they should have tried a Canadianized version, like this.
What does the Confederate flag symbolize to Canadians who fly, wear or otherwise display it? According to a story in today's National Post, the meanings vary, with defenders citing rural pride, redneck kitsch, or simply a generic statement of rebellion, like wearing a Che t-shirt.
During the War of the Secession, many residents of the British colonies which later became Canada supported the Southern cause. Although most British North Americans weren't in agreement with slavery -- it was outlawed in the British Empire decades earlier -- they did champion the Confederates as underdogs standing against the Washington government for the freedom to choose their own way of life.
Stop the press!!! Agent 3 just called with an update. Seems what he told me about not seeing Confederate flags in Toronto isn't entirely accurate. You can still buy the Dixie flag at numerous outlets in the GTA, he says, including Reppa Flags and Souvenirs, which is run not by a redneck but by... wait for it... and Indo-Canadian gentleman. Tell `em Walt sent ya!
UPDATED Thursday morning 25/6: CBC News reports "Confederate flag sales jump at St. John's shop as U.S. grapples with massacre". The subhead reads: "Business owner says limited stock sold quickly; more on the way". Looks like political correctness hasn't reached Newfoundland yet. But trust the CBC to get the design of the Confederate battle flag wrong!
Gwynne Dyer know something about war. Born in Newfoundland almost six years before it became part of Canada, he joined the Royal Canadian Naval Reserve at the age of 16. While still in the reserve, he obtained a BA in history from Memorial University in 1963. Later he earned an MA in military history from Rice University (1966) and a PhD in military and Middle Eastern history at King's College London (1973).
Mr. Dyer served in the Canadian, American and British naval reserves. He was employed as a senior lecturer in war studies at the Royal Military Academy (Sandhurst) from 1973 through 1977. In 1973 he began writing articles for leading London newspapers on the Arab-Israeli conflict, and soon decided to abandon academic life for a full-time career in journalism.
In the mid-1980s, Mr. Dyer created and hosted War, an outstanding documentary mini-series that aired on BBC and PBS. As so often happens, the series begat a companion book (Crown Publishers, New York, 1985).
In the latter part of the book, the author discusses the future of war and the role of the military in today's society. More specifically, he considers the likelihood of an all-out nuclear war which would lead to the annihilation of mankind. Here are a couple of quotes which I think worth passing along.
Since it is the professional duty of military officers to identify threats to the security of the state, they are constantly searching for potential dangers abroad -- and virtually every other state within military reach constitutes such a threat simply by virtue of having armed forces of its own. The planning reflex of general staffs provides governments with detailed and regularly updated scenarios for conflicts in unlikely places with improbably enemies (as late as the 1920s military planners in the United States and Canada were maintaining carefully worked out plans to invade each other), which on occasion can lend undue military importance to minor incidents and alarms.
There is a new common factor discernible in all the armed conflicts that ravage the contemporary world, and especially in the majority of those conflicts that are irregular in nature. Military power is becoming less effective in achieving decisive, politically satisfactory results at every level of conflict. This is as true for enemies fighting with conventional weapons as for the nuclear-armed great powers, and it is equally true for governments and for insurgents in the lower intensity irregular wars that now account for most of the world's actual killing.
Gwynne Dyer wrote those words in the 1980s -- before 9/11, before the Gulf Wars, before Iraq, before Afghanistan, before Libya and before whatever is coming tomorrow. He has been criticized for his "anti-militarism" and "pacifist tendencies" by many warhawks, including Conrad Black who discontinued publishing Dyer's columns in his newspapers. But Walt thinks War makes some good points. I suspect Ron Paul agrees.
Also on YouTube is a more recent (and shorter) commentary by Mr. Dyer on the wars in the Middle East. It's called "The Mess They Made" (2007). Here it is.
Conrad Black no longer owns any newspapers. Gwynne Dyer's insightful columns continue to appear in the Fort Mudge Weakly and other fine newspapers.
