Monthly Archives: September 2013

Sunny Says We’re Not a Banana Republic

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NOTE: THE VIDEO BELOW IS ONLY AVAILABLE VIA THE DAILY CALLER. IF IT TURNS OUT TO BE ONE OF THOSE ANNOYING AUNTOMATIC START-UPS THAT NEVER FINISH, LET ME KNOW. I WILL REMOVE IT & LEAVE THE URL (plus appropriate curses).

I like Sunny and have put up her videos before. However, I can understand why the things she says and does might go right by many people. Getting the jokes in her routine depend on one being an American conservative who keeps up with the news. Not the MSM news; many of her references are dependent on the things the legacy media won’t touch.

The Daily Caller has given her latest video a prominent spot – way to go, Miz Sunny, you’re moving out into the bigger time. I hope this will be available on your You Tube channel sooon.

For those of you not from America who are willing to watch Sunny’s routine, I’ll supply some Cliff notes after the fold:

VIDEO REMOVED. BUT DO CLICK ON THE LINK:

…Well, we tried, but not even Vlad could fix this thing so it didn’t keep playing on continuously after the video was over. So, as promised, here is the link:

Sunny TV: Ted Cruz Peels Obama’s Banana

And here is the promised curse delivered on a silver tray to The Daily Caller for making this deal, where Sunny’s video this week is not available at her channel but only at their site.

To the Daily Caller I say,

May the curse of Mary Malone and her nine blind illegitimate children chase you so far over the hills of Damnation that the Lord himself can’t find you…

It can be useful to have a bag of curses on hand for such occasions. Almost as helpful as possessing your own large clue bag, an item the Daily Caller could most definitely use. Not that I find this annoying or anything. Why give out an embed when it can’t really be used?

Of course when one has to explain the joke it’s not so funny, but there is value in learning what infuriates so many Americans and provides low-key gulag humor for some. So even if you don’t grin at her apparently stream-of-consciousness routine, the explanations will offer a glimpse into the immediate concerns of U.S. conservatives…
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OSCE Warsaw 2013: Biased Terms Must Be Abandoned

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At Session 1 on “Tolerance and Non-Discrimination”, Warsaw, September 24, 2013, the following Intervention was read by Stephen Coughlin.

Mr. Coughlin is representing the Center for Security Policy at the OSCE’s Human Dimension Implementation Meeting.

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While we appreciate the width and the severity of topics discussed here, the Center for Security Policy sees a need to object to the use of terms which are undefined, ill-defined, or defined by non-OSCE entities and whose purpose is to stigmatize, marginalize, and intimidate those holding dissenting opinions.

Examples include, but are not limited to; “intolerance”, “discrimination”, “racism”, “hate”, “xenophobia”, and “Islamophobia” without reference to any underlying claims or facts.

The use of controversial undefined terms to attack citizens has been a notorious strategy employed by oppressive and totalitarian political regimes seeking to silence dissent.

CSP recommends that the OSCE and ODIHR suspend this practice until a published definition of terms is provided that meets EU Human Rights and U.S. Civil Rights scrutiny.

Thank you for your time and attention.

On Force, Control, and Freedom

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A reader, Trilby Ulyanov, posted the essay below on his Face Book page along with a smaller version of the image I’ve uaed (though the Facebook image’s message also concerned gun control, I chose this variation for its size and for the bottom part of the message).

He said, “Please distribute this, I don’t really have a very big audience”. As it happens, several comments on another post addressed this same issue, so the timing seems synchronous. Guns and gun control are hot button issues in this country. The writer of the essay appears to be from Oz; I don’t know what the rules are there, but I pray its citizens haven’t been emasculated as they have been in many places. In fact what moved me to make his comment into a post was what yet another commenter, Sluggy, said before him, in the thread on “Dutch Attack”. His words were a response to something Luke 22 said, and Sluggy is frustrated with solutions that aren’t permitted to ordinary citizens:

The victims should “arm themselves” ? With what ?

Firerarm possession is a felony in the Netherlands.
Anything that can be used as a weapon is illegal.
This includes replicas, BB guns, air guns, airsoft guns and even some realistic looking toy guns are all illegal. Mace, pepper spray : illegal.
Stilletos, switchblades and butterfly knives are illegal. Arrows and arrowheads are illegal. Tazers : illegal. Blackjacks, brass knuckles : Illegal.

Indeed. I’ll bet even using your hands is considered a weapon.

When I think about this problem, one of the first things I remember is that when hostilities broke out between the American colonists and the King’s soldiers, the latter immediately attempted to secure the armory in Concord. From that failure came “the shot heard ’round the world”.

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“Gun Control” is nothing new. In fact, it’s been around for much longer than guns have existed. It’s been a universal phenomenon amongst human societies. And it’s never been about public safety. It has been, and always will be, an act of caste stratification and population control.

In ancient Feudal societies all around the world, notably China and Japan and many parts of Europe and the Middle-East, peasants and plebeians were prohibited from owning weapons. When the ruling aristocrats and feudal land-owners required a military force, their trusted retainers would issue arms to conscripted peasant-levies, and send them into battle as vanguards of the main force. After battle finished and the troops had looted the field, the retainers would retrieve these weapons and send the serfs back to work. Why were the commoners prohibited from possession of weapons?

Simple.

To prevent uprisings.

Remember that in these points in history, society was rigidly stratified, and the only individuals who could possess arms were men who had proven their loyalty to their rulers. These men were regarded as dignified individuals, men of honour and upstanding moral virtue, while commoners were regarded as little more than productive units in the inventories of their lords and masters. Just look at the culture of respect for the Knights and Samurai of old.

Control of the disarmed populace in turn went on to reflect and perpetuate such social stratification. Without the means to change their government by force, these societies were ruled by the strongest and wealthiest men with armies composed of a loyal minority to defend them.

Force is, and always has been, the highest, most fundamental form of authority. All other authorities have been, and always will be, derived from the means to exert and resist force.

In the late 1700s, the colonists of America knew this lesson from history all too well. During the Revolutionary War, the Founding Fathers fought against a tyrannical and oppressive government which sought to restrict the means to exert and resist force, and sought to take the majority of wealth away from the colonial population. The Second Amendment to the American Constitution was written to ensure that common citizens would always have recourse to the highest form of authority so that in the inevitable event of the ruling body no longer looking out for the interests of the common people at heart, they would be able to resort to force-of-arms to at least stand a chance of overturning a corrupted system.

With the advent of mass-media broadcasting and the rise of the New Feudal-Capitalist caste system, the ruling elites have gained a most powerful weapon: brainwashing. No longer have religious institutions been required to control the masses. Fear imparted by widespread propaganda now does it for them. Even more perceptive people can, and often are, influenced by this conditioning process during the formative years, developing attitudes of apathy.

Which brings us to the nature of Gun Control.
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OSCE Warsaw 2013: CSP’s Intervention On the Use of Undefined Terms

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REGARDING THE USE OF UNDEFINED TERMS

Introduction:

Here is the intervention read by Stephen Coughlin representing the Center for Security Policy at the OSCE Human Dimension Implementation Meeting, Session 1 “Tolerance and Non-Discrimination”, Warsaw, September 23, 2013:

This intervention concerns the Annotated Agenda which makes generous use of the term “aggressive nationalism”.

CSP would like a clarification of the term “aggressive nationalism.” Is there such a thing as “non-aggressive nationalism”? Is any assertion of national identity per se aggressive?

In addition, words such as “racism”, “xenophobia”, “intolerance”, and “discrimination” are biased terms that are not adequately defined. CSP is of the opinion that their purpose is to shut down debate by stigmatizing, marginalizing, and intimidating people who hold certain opinions. These words should be avoided unless they can be defined in such a manner that enjoys the consensus of all participants regardless of their political, social and cultural views.

Recommendation to ODIHR and participating States

  • To refrain from using these terms until they are precisely and officially defined and accepted by the consensus of all participating groups holding diverse views.

While The Baron is Away…Chapter the First

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I ask your patience while the Baron is away.

There have been various technical glitches beyond my ken. For one thing, our blog host decided to “migrate” things beginning last night. I’ve no idea what that means but I do hope they’re done and that all the numbers they emailed to us are not anything that can’t wait till the Baron gets home.

Oh, and the mail is also having problems but that is a separate issue. Our ISP person seems to be away at the moment and was vague about when she’d return. I have an idea she’s in Europe but I didn’t ask so she wouldn’t have to lie to me.

Regarding our hosting problem, this “migration” meant I couldn’t get in to post or to moderate comments. I believe that for some of the time, readers weren’t able to access the home page either.

There’s an additional problem that can be handled more easily when the Baron is around. When I let comments in, they don’t always show up, even though I’m seeing “zero comments” awaiting moderation. Thus I have to wait to see which ones are ‘really’ in. Some of them have been through this four or five times – I apologize if yours was one of them.

Even the Baron has difficulties with this sometimes – it’s a Word Press ‘feature’, I’m told. But his computer upstairs is much closer to all the gizmos – router and such – so his moderation is much quicker than mine. When it works, that is. However, he says they don’t always go in on the first try for him, either.

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Lulu on a Laptop
In addition, it’s hard to lose a pet, harder than I was aware of at first. After the children were grown and there was nothing left to mother, there was still the garden and Lulu, as freaky and neurotic as she was (and as stubborn as plants can be sometimes). The vet told me that this particular cat had inherited a “fear” gene from her paternal side and when cats are born that way, you can’t calm them down completely. So I gave her an anxiolytic every day and she got to live life somewhere other than under the bed.

But her “nerves” were also due to the influence of a calico we had back before Lulu made her way into the church hall one Sunday when we were having lunch. When she arrived – perhaps drawn by the smell of food – I recall that she was friendly enough. It was George’s influence after we brought her home that kind of flipped on that epigenetic process. Had she never met George, she’d have been more ‘normal’ – though we are talking about a cat after all.

George was a male calico. Males are quite unusual so we presumed that we had a cat named Geneviève until it came time to have “her” spayed (we never looked – go figure). The vet told us “she” was a male, a 10,000 –in-one ‘sport’. Even though they are sterile, you have to neuter male calicos anyway. They don’t know they’re sterile and they’ll spray things when they get older. So we went into the vet’s with Geneviève and left with George. Yes, the vet’s name was George.

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George was a mellow pleasant cat until Lulu arrived. She actually came walking through the church hall when we were having lunch. As I remember her then, she was easy. But George changed that. And even after he died, she didn’t revert to her old self. Maybe that “fear gene” was there and George smelled it and reacted to it. Animals live in another universe entirely.

Anyway, a friend came the next afternoon and helped me dig a hole for Lulu’s body, out near our large pile of shredded wood chips left from the last time they came to trim the big oaks. We have that done to keep the house safe from leaning limbs. I had planned to bury her nearer a wild azalea but…the bear changed that.

Let’s see. Lulu died about sunset. I let her lie where she was for a while, not willing to disturb her yet. Then I began a post, but fell asleep, probably exhausted from that death watch. Several hours later, there was a lot of noise on the porch. I woke, startled, thinking at first it might be a dog after Lulu. Lost hunting dogs come through our yard sometimes and if we can catch them, they get tied to the Paulownia tree and we call the owners. Lulu is way too fast for them to ever get near her but they sure can howl when they spot her up in the branches.

It was only as I walked to the door to turn on the porch light that I saw Lulu’s body under the console table, her face turned to the wall. There was a momentary frisson of remembrance. Oh. Right. Lulu was safe; she’d never have to run from a dog again.

I turned on the porch light but by then whatever had been making all the noise was gone. The large Amazon box I’d left by the glider was ripped open and the contents – a dolly I’d ordered so I could get the new monitor into the house when it came – was lying on the grass. I went outside to retrieve the box and the dolly. It had rained all day and there were large, sloppy wet footprints on the porch and steps. The container of grass seed was spilled.

What th? – as the Baron would say.
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The Bear and The Lunatic

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Long-time readers of Gates of Vienna know how much we admire the perceptions of James Lewis. These days he mostly writes for The American Thinker, as you can see from his archives page .

For a brief month in December 2006 he had a blog aptly named Dangerous Times. Reading those few entries almost seven years later, I still feel a sense of loss that he retired from the fray so soon. But then perhaps the requirements of his job(s) didn’t leave enough time. On his About page, he says he’s a writer, scientist and consultant. A commenter or two feel compelled to deride this self-description. Odd, isn’t it, how the anonymity of the intertubes doth make rude bullies of so many? And here I thought those were just Norwegian character traits [this is a Joke. Chuckle here; nudge Fjordman] but not seen much outside, say, Oslo. Or perhaps Palestine? I wish.

Some other time this week I might reminisce on my introduction to Lewis’ essays, but for the moment let’s just consider this fine piece from last week, concerning the hard realities of foreign policy. No, it’s not about “why can’t we all just get along?”, even though the residual four year-old in all of us still whispers such sentiments sometimes. When we’re tired of it all, when we’re called once too often to witness another episode in the eternal betrayals and treasons, how tempting it is to turn away from “the punctual rape of every blesséd day” and pursue something simpler, something less fraught…with ambiguities, with slaughter…[I was going to say “senseless slaughter” until I saw again that any such event is already truly without sense, deprived surely of Reason].

We see the name of his blog, “Dangerous Times”, above. I don’t know about his other writings, but he assigned the same tag to this most recent essay. Perhaps he uses it for all his work, or perhaps he saves it to designate those writings he would have in his blog were he still maintaining one.

His theses in this current essay are plainly stated. So plain they make you say, “Oh, I could’ve written that…if I’d thought to say it”…a sure sign of a good writer is the way he speaks not just to you, but also for you. Inevitably when we call a writer “good” we simply mean he expresses for us what we knew in some inchoate sense. It’s probably why so many admired Lawrence Auster’s work. Even when you didn’t agree with him, you knew he was speaking for more than just himself.

Notice that the title of my post is not the same as the one Mr. Lewis chose for his essay here. But it’s another facet of the discussion just the same. Who wants to be stuck with a truly insane neighbor?

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I certainly disliked it when a grumpy grievance collector built a house nearby, on property he’d inherited from his grandmother.

Max was, if not mad in the lunatic sense, certainly mean and angry and unable to be assuaged. He hated most everyone and most everyone found it tedious. But not surprisingly for someone who’d spent his adult years in the big city, he had a special grievance against white folks. He was annoyed to find his kin didn’t share this attitude. Not only didn’t share it, but tried to train him out of it. I’ll never forget the day his niece dragged Mad Max to our front door and made him apologize and give me a hug. Yeah, I had a big smile when Sarah explained why they’d come. I could tell it like to have killed him, having to touch me. But Max knew he wasn’t getting off our porch or out of Sarah’s clutches till he put on a neighborly smile. “Fake it” is what she said, right in his face with their noses almost touching.

You couldn’t help but notice people didn’t like Max right back, though not in equal measure. You have to be at it a long time to be at Max levels of misanthropy. We didn’t have a party when he pulled up stakes and stomped back to the big city taking his big city ways with him, but there was indeed a collective sigh of relief as he drove away. Now that fine big house, too fine and too big for our modest neighborhood, stands empty and unsold. In our sickly economy, this new white elephant has now become Max’s folly, his final albatross. Sometimes Karma is one tough dude.

We liked his wife, but Tess was a bred-in-the-bone city girl; she wanted to be able to walk to the corner store if she felt like it…she was particularly a virtuous wife for at least attempting to help her husband realize his childhood dream of returning in glory to the scenes of his childhood. The only problem was the homeplace was gone and so were all of the old folks. No audience had he when he strode onto that stage, ready to take command of us rubes.

I thought of our ex-neighbors while reading Mr. Lewis’ essay. Max didn’t deal with reality very well, but he was fortunate not to have encountered a Vladimir during his sojourn here. I do declare, though, this piece gives me some ideas for the future should Max decide to return “home” again:

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Dangerous Times: Does Putin want a Nuclear Suicide Cult Next Door?

When it comes to survival, nations act in their own interest. All talk about friendship and personal warmth between national leaders is pure fairy dust. That’s for the goo-goos, while political leaders need to deal with reality.

“Goo-goos”?? Oh, he means the kumbiyah folks. They don’t always want everyone to get along, but have you noticed they always pick out a designated victim and a designated bully ahead of time? Reason has nothing to do with their choices. It’s all about how they feel. Might as well spit in the wind as try to bring Reason into their monologue about the feelings they have for PoorPalis™ friends.
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UPDATE: That Massacre in Nairobi

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Some notes and quotes on the killings in Nairobi by a bunch of hoodlums, probably largely from Somalia, bent on revenge…

[I apologize for the lack of narrative flow in this post. I sat by my cat of thirteen years, Lulu, with the computer in my lap, following leads and trying to trace the patterns as I listened for her breathing, occasionally smoothing her cheek. At some point, she died and I retreated to finish this. Yeah, her death was small compared to this barbaric slaughter, but I thanked her for the fitting accompaniment anyway.]

There are no images. You and I have seen so much carnage and destruction delivered by the jihadists over the years that we surely have them memorized by now. Those pictures are jihad porn; they add pleasure for the killers, so I can I omit them here. On Twitter several people are complaining about the New York Times’ many images of bloody bodies. When I come across such pictures, I scroll past them. My first thought is inevitably some version of “oh, I hope the mother/wife/child doesn’t see this last image of their beloved”.

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From All Africa first, and amended by the National Post, some numbers:

At least 26 39 people have been killed or succumbed to injuries following the shooting at the Westgate Shopping mall in Nairobi’s Westlands area. This is according to the Kenya Red Cross service that provided emergency response services.

Red Cross The President also say[s] that a further 50 150 people have been admitted to various hospitals with injuries ranging from gunshot wounds to fractures and cuts.

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Kenya’s president had relatives killed or injured in that massacre. The mall is the most upscale in Kenya…
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TROUBLES

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Don’t know how I got in. It may not last. If you have trouble commenting, that’s why.

The Baron picked a fine time to go do Counterjihad team work. This stuff is way above my pay grade and Lulu died as I was writing a follow up to Kenya.

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My gratitude to Vlad…things seem okay again…

Resting in the Shade of the Tree of Lies

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Well, I had a few posts planned in the Baron’s absence, and I may yet do them. The times are too strange not to at least remark on the oddities – and sadly, the ugliness – in passing. But those must wait.

Any essays are in abeyance for a while as I keep our cat company. She seems to be dying. Perhaps she is dying. She lies in cool spots and seems drained of all energy. There is no food I can find that interests her for very long. She seems to be drinking water, and if I put out a little raw egg she laps up a bit of that. Each time the “laps” of nourishment are fewer. I can’t tell if she drinks any water, but her litter box is unused…

Her main interest seems to be in finding new cool spots where she can rest. My heart understands that impulse very well. I think she’d like to be outside as she often chooses to lie by the front door, but she’d be easy pickings for whatever hunting dog came through the yard…so inside she must stay.

I will be checking for comments from time to time during this vigil with Lulu…

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Meanwhile, I noticed a commenter mentioned John Loftus in a recent thread.

Here is his wiki; and here is the wiki for his work with the Intelligence Summit. Of course, you have to vet any Wikipedia information about conservative sites and work. As I recall, Trevor Loudon has started an alternative but I don’t have time to search for it. If anyone has information, could you please leave it in the comments?

The Intelligence Summit has some interesting essays. Scroll down to see what they’ve collected on Diana West’s book and the firestorm it has created on the not-so-new Authoritarian Right. In addition to reading the essays in her defense, notice those appearing there who have not spoken up on her behalf. There is a great deal to be learned from silences.

As Jolie Rouge said recently, “Would have thought freethinking folks do not need authoritative reading lists from conservative central”. I would’ve thought so, too, but we know what happens when the Authorities pronounce verboten on particular works and authors or voiced opinions, even on descriptive ideas. Our experience at Gates of Vienna is a proof of that particular blood pudding, i.e., the notion that merely talking about an idea is to perform some kind of magik that makes the idea real. Platonists, they’re not; thus their lists of forbidden words and cordoned-off ideas can only grow.

But look at it this way: since we were made Untouchables for daring to notice events that scare the Bigs – and more importantly those worthies who fund them – it falls to such as we to defend those the Authoritarian Right would silence…if they but could. Many of them (and their funders) are ex-Lefties who became so totally Righties that at first glance it would appear they’ve traveled one hundred eighty degrees in the other direction from their former socialist totalitarian creeds. In fact, they’ve made a very good living talking about how far they’ve come. But the reality is this: all they did was to circle ‘round to their beginnings, never actually moving out in a straight path. It became a trip of convenience, and at some point, under duress, it was ever so easy to return to what one knows by heart, even when doing so means a regression to using the brutal tactics of the ideologies memorized in one’s youth.

In other words, they may have fallen (or jumped) from the tree of Communism, but as it turns out they decided to stay in its cooling shade, resting on the roots, failing to see the serpent lying in wait.

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Back to my vigil with Lulu…

A Weary and Lonesome Traveler

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Simple SimonI’m going away for a few days, and will probably not have much access to the internet, so posting will be light. Especially given the tiny screens on these dratted laptops. Oh, how I envy you young pups who can actually see!

If my monitor had to fail, now is a good time. By the time I return, the new monitor will have been delivered. I can carry it upstairs, hook it up, and plug the cable from the Auxiliary Brain into the socket in the back of my skull. Then life will return to normal — or whatever passes for normal in these here parts.

Until then, Dymphna will be in charge. Follow her guidance, and all will go well for you…

American Betrayed, Part 1

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My blogging abilities are hampered by my lack of access to my customary computer. Not only is this screen way too small for comfort — I have to break every five or ten minutes to get away from it for a while — but my regular computer is all but directly linked to my brain via special neuronal connections. I feel as though I’m missing a limb while writing this.

As a result, the following overview of the controversy over Diana West’s book American Betrayal will be a rambling account of what happened, with some speculative thoughts about the possible reasons for these strange and distressing events. Dymphna and I have been tossing ideas back and forth for the past six weeks, trying to make sense of what happened.

Rather than fill in all the background, I invite readers who are unfamiliar with the “take-down” of American Betrayal to visit the Diana West Archives.

Ms. West’s book was published last spring to favorable reviews in a number of conservative outlets, and the author was interviewed on television about its controversial topic: the extent of the penetration of the United States government by Soviet agents of influence before, during, and after World War Two.

Controversy is one thing — arguments about Ms. West’s conclusions and speculative deductions are to be expected — but personal attacks on her capabilities as a writer and researcher are another matter entirely.

In early August a favorable review of American Betrayal was published at Front Page Magazine’s website, and then quickly pulled by the editor, David Horowitz. It was replaced some days later by a 7,000-word attack written by Ronald Radosh, who went beyond criticizing the book on the merits and descended into name-calling and personal insults. His piece was followed almost immediately by several vitriolic pieces by David Horowitz himself (also at Front Page), additional attacks by Mr. Radosh in other venues, and a particularly snide hit-piece by Conrad Black at NRO.

The sentiments of Messrs. Radosh, Horowitz, and Black were echoed in short order by several satellite writers at smaller sites, who amazingly enough, had not read the book, and were not loath to admit that fact. As far as I am aware, no one who denounced the book had actually read it, with the exception of the Denouncer-in-Chief, Ronald Radosh.

And even he may not have read the book in its entirety, since he misattributed several arguments to it that it did not make, and “corrected” those errors with new misattributions. One is forced to conclude that he either deliberately misrepresented the truth, had not actually read the whole book, or had some sort of mental lapse, perhaps a sudden fit of absent-mindedness.

From then on, prominent defenders of Diana West were few.
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Trouble in Paradise

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I woke up to an unpleasant surprise this morning. When I went upstairs and fired up my computer, the monitor screen was all distorted. While I was trying to figure out how to fix it, smoke started coming out of the back of it, just like in the movies. A smell of hot plastic…

I cut it off and retreated down here to use Dymphna’s old laptop. I now lack my usual capabilities – my Auxiliary Brain, my set of databases and related software, is not on this machine, which doesn’t even have Microsoft Access. To make matters worse, with my eye condition ,using this screen is like looking at a postage stamp through the wrong end of a telescope.

So there will be no news feed until I get my new monitor, and posting will probably be light for a while.

Gates of Vienna News Feed 9/18/2013

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A recent study indicates that more than 90% of English soccer fans say that there is a problem with racism among fans, about the same percentage as in Italy. Unlike the Italians, however, well under half the English fans aren’t concerned about all that racism.

In financial news, the Federal Reserve unexpectedly decided to continue its practice of bond-buying, a.k.a. “quantitative easing”. The stock market surged dramatically in response.

To see the headlines and the articles, click “Continue reading” below.

Thanks to Erick Stakelbeck, Fjordman, Insubria, JD, JP, Kitman, Vlad Tepes, and all the other tipsters who sent these in.

Notice to tipsters: Please don’t submit extensive excerpts from articles that have been posted behind a subscription firewall, or are otherwise under copyright protection.

Caveat: Articles in the news feed are posted “as is”. Gates of Vienna cannot vouch for the authenticity or accuracy of the contents of any individual item posted here. We check each entry to make sure it is relatively interesting, not patently offensive, and at least superficially plausible. The link to the original is included with each item’s title. Further research and verification are left to the reader.

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