Monthly Archives: March 2015

Eyeball Report

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I returned a little while ago from my quarterly visit to the retinal specialist. Both eyes got a clean bill of health once again. However, I haven’t quite recovered from the dilation of my pupils, so I’m taking it easy at the screen for the time being.

For readers who are new to this blog, two years ago I developed choroidal neovascularization (more commonly known as wet macular degeneration) in my left eye. For a while I had to have an injection in that eye every six weeks or so, but the progression of the disease has been halted and the my eye has stabilized. I haven’t had a needle in the eye since last summer, thank the Lord.

A visit to the eye doctor back then was much more grueling than it is now. The routine now is: After I read the chart the technician dilates my pupils, and then I have to look into scanners and endure bright lights for a little while. Then everything is blurry and I have to wear temporary shades driving home. But I get to listen to Bach the whole trip, so it’s not unpleasant.

More encouraging news: the gap between visits to the doctor has been extended to four months, because there is no sign of further trouble in either eye.

Life is good. It’s been a tiring day, though, so posting may be somewhat light this evening.

Gates of Vienna News Feed 3/24/2015

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A suicide bomber blew himself up at a military checkpoint in the eastern Libyan city of Benghazi, killing five people. The Libyan government, including the military command, is now based in Tobruk after being driven out of Tripoli last year by kinetic activists. Meanwhile, the United Nations has called for a “unity government” in Libya, to consist of a president and a presidential council.

In other news, one of two “black boxes”, the flight data recorder, has been recovered from the wreckage of the Airbus passenger jet that crashed in the French Alps this morning. There’s no word yet on the cockpit voice recorder.

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

Thanks to C. Cantoni, Fjordman, Insubria, JD, 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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“We Will Die Standing, and We Will Die Free”

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We’ve reported several times in the past on the “We Will Not Comply” movement, a response to new gun restrictions imposed last year in Washington State as a result of ballot initiative I-594. The issue has moved out of the headlines, but it has not gone away. It is simply dormant, awaiting the actions of any state or federal authorities who attempt to enforce it.

The following essay by Kit Lange was posted yesterday at the Patrick Henry Society. It is worth reproducing in its entirety:

Anti-Gunners Fail to Understand That We Will Not Comply

by Kit Lange

As PHS reported a few months ago, the Second Amendment Foundation — run by pro-background check power fundraiser Alan Gottlieb — filed a lawsuit against I-594 in federal court. Washington Alliance for Gun Responsibility and Everytown for Gun Safety Action Fund, two hardcore anti-gun organizations, filed a motion to enter into the lawsuit as defendants, claiming that they had the legal standing to defend I-594 against those who claimed it was unconstitutional. Even though Everytown is an out of state organization funded and administered by Michael Bloomberg, Shannon Watts, and others who desperately want Americans unarmed, a federal judge today granted their motion to defend I-594 in court.

Their goal, of course, is to see I-594 stand as law, in all its unconstitutional, unenforceable and unconscionable glory. They seem to think that if the lawsuit fails and I-594 stands, that those affected by it will simply sigh and start complying. Surely, they think, these ‘gun nuts and ammosexuals’ will start doing as they’re told… and if they don’t, we’ll just arrest them and imprison them.

They are wrong.

The sentence “we will not comply” is not temporary. It does not have an “if, then” clause. It does not mean “We will not comply until you make us understand that it’s The Law.” Initiative 594 is not constitutional, it is not just, and therefore it is not law. As such, We the People are not bound to follow it; in fact, it is our duty to resist it.

And resist it we will.

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Terror in the Alps?

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*** UPDATE ***

The Telegraph headlines:

Several Germanwings flights cancelled after crew refused to fly

Pilots and cabin crew refused to fly over concerns the Germanwings flight 4U 9525 crash may have been linked to a repair to the nose-wheel landing doors…

Obviously the professionals whose lives are on the line appear to think this is a mechanical problem rather than terrorism…or at least that’s the public version of this refusal.

*   *   *   *   *   *   *   *   *   *   *   *   *   *   *

An Airbus A320 passenger jet, Germanwings Flight 9525, crashed this morning in the French Alps after an unexplained eight-minute descent from 37,000 feet to below 6,000 feet. All 150 people onboard the aircraft are feared dead.

Here’s the report from The Guardian:

German Airbus A320 Plane Crashes in French Alps

All 150 passengers and crew on an Airbus A320 flying from Barcelona to Düsseldorf are believed dead after it rapidly lost height and began an as yet unexplained descent into a remote and mountainous area of southern France.

The chief executive of Lufthansa’s lowcost arm, Germanwings, said the aircraft reached its cruising height of 38,000ft at 10.45am, 44 minutes into the flight, and began the descent just a minute or two later. Contact was lost at 10.53am when the plane was at 6,000ft.

The dead are believed to include 45 Spanish and 67 German nationals. A school party of 16 German teenagers returning from an exchange trip to Spain were booked on the plane but school officials could not say if the group had boarded.

[…]

The French weather station said the meteorogical conditions were calm at the time of the accident and that the sky was “completely clear”, with almost no wind.

Given the multiple terror threats issued recently by Al Qaeda and the Islamic State, whenever a major jetliner crashes one immediately suspects that jihad may be involved. And, given the Western political propensity to deny and cover up any planned Islamic terror attack, one suspects that the evidence of jihad will emerge slowly, if ever.

The A320 is designed to cruise at 37,000 feet for optimum fuel usage. The fact that it began a controlled descent at full speed without making radio contact with air traffic controllers is peculiar, to say the least.

Our English correspondent Seneca III has been thinking along the same lines, and sent a succession of emails with his observations as various facts began to emerge:

A320 pilots association is saying crash was most likely caused by, quote, ‘pilot incapacitation’!

There were at least two Turks on the passenger list.

French air traffic controllers have reported that the aircraft did not initiate the Mayday call; they (ATC) did because they had lost touch with it (quote). No doubt they were watching its speed/altitude graph, calculating its “steep, controlled” rate of descent and failure to turn away towards the nearest airfield:


(Click to enlarge)

Look at that part of the tracks from about 0931 to 0937ish when the speed first began to drop off five minutes after the beginning of the descent stage and the rate of decent began to decrease until it levelled out at 0941 at approx 6500 feet, which is below clearance of the mountain range. Furthermore, I repeat ‘the aircraft kept on its course despite SOP’s requiring it to deviate to the nearest Airport’ (both to the South and West) under such circumstances.

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Gates of Vienna News Feed 3/23/2015

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Republican Senator Ted Cruz of Texas announced his presidential candidacy at an event at Liberty University in Lynchburg, Virginia. California Governor Jerry “Moonbeam” Brown asserted that Sen. Cruz is unfit to be president, due to his opinions on climate change.

In other news, the Saudi foreign minister said that the Kingdom may have to intervene in the conflict in Yemen, in order to counteract growing Iranian influence.

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

Thanks to C. Cantoni, DS, Fjordman, Insubria, JD, Papa Whiskey, Phyllis Chesler, 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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World War One and the Decline of European Civilization

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If you appreciate this essay by Fjordman, please consider making a donation to him, using the button at the bottom of this post.

World War One and the Decline of European Civilization
by Fjordman

I have just watched several DVDs with documentary film, lightly colorized and with added sound, but otherwise authentic historical footage, about World War One. It is a French-Canadian co-production, written and directed by Daniel Costelle and Isabelle Clarke. The version I watched was retold in English as “World War One: The Apocalypse.” I did not agree with every single narrative comment, but overall, the series was fair and relevant.

The original footage is amazing. While books may be great for historical analysis, there is something very powerful about images, especially moving images. It brings people and events to life in a way that no text can ever match. In the Alps, in mountainous battles against the Austro-Hungarian Empire, Italians used the basic WW1 tactics of trench warfare even in the snow. I vaguely knew that, but I had never seen it illustrated before.

What struck me the most when watching this footage is how much Europe has changed in the past century. Some of this change consists of technological advances. In the early twentieth century, airplanes were a very recent innovation. Indeed, the First World War was arguably the first major war where airplanes were used in combat to any significant extent.

A few visionaries such as Konstantin Tsiolkovsky were already dreaming of space exploration in those days. Yet in the early 1900s, this was more or less science fiction. A person transported from Europe in 1914 to 2014 would have been amazed to see a European space probe orbit a comet and land a robotic science probe on its surface. This was achieved in 2014 by the European Space Agency’s Rosetta spacecraft.

However, while technological advances have been huge, they cannot fully mask the cultural decline that has arguably affected the continent during the same interval. Europe in 1914 was optimistic and confident. It was so strong that even great cataclysms such as the First and Second World War didn’t fully destroy it, at least not immediately. Europeans in 1914 still ruled much of the world. A century later, Europeans don’t even rule many of their own suburbs.

The European percentage of the global population had reached a peak in the early twentieth century. In the twenty-first century, it is dropping to levels never before seen in historical times. Meanwhile, other regions such as Africa and parts of the Muslim world are undergoing an unprecedented population explosion. The global South is dumping some of its excess population in Europe, in effect colonizing the continent. They are not just trying to do so. They are being allowed to do so by European authorities. Natives who object to this development are stigmatized, marginalized, ridiculed and sometimes legally prosecuted.

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Martyr Yourself, NOT Your Phone!

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It’s the moment you’ve been waiting for. Your entire life has been spent preparing for it: you’re finally going to be a shahid for Allah, and send hundreds of mushrikun to hellfire while buying yourself a ticket to Paradise!

This is no time for a media FAIL. You want to be sure your martyrdom video goes up on YouTube as soon as your head bounces out the door into the street.

That’s why you need a JihadPhone. It’s the only smart phone guaranteed to withstand the blast:

Many thanks to Vlad Tepes for providing this inspirational and informative testimonial.

Available only at BOOMGOOD.COM. Note: Price does not include ritual cleansing cloth.

LBC Interview With Tommy Robinson

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As reported here previously, Tommy Robinson, the founder and former leader of the English Defence League, caused an uproar over the weekend by making public secret video recordings of conversations with a Tory politician named Afzal Amin. Mr. Amin, with the help of a wealthy backer, had offered money to Mr. Robinson and the EDL for their help in the upcoming election.

The following interview with Tommy Robinson aired earlier today on LBC Radio in the UK. In it you’ll hear the former EDL leader discuss the “money man” behind Afzal Amin, his offer to take care of Mr. Robinson financially, and the apparent corruption of the British police:

Hat tip: Vlad Tepes.

On Rome, Russia and Multiculturalism

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Our Colombian correspondent Diego returns with some reflections on Multiculturalism and empires.

On Rome, Russia and Multiculturalism
by Diego

I once engaged in an attempt to debate with some multiculturalists. Here in Colombia there are not many, at least not in the open, and I must admit that, until a dark day in 2011 I shared some of their views… However, I am derailing myself from why I am writing this.

During our debate they claimed that both Rome and Romanov Russia are bright examples of Multiculturalism working. I will do my best now to debunk this.

Rome: Multicultural or Adapting?

Rome, the great empire that ruled over the Mediterranean and absorbed so many elements of other cultures, at first glance seems to represent Multiculturalism gone right. But, please: look deeper.

Why do you think Spanish, Romanian, Portuguese and French share a Latin base? One clue: they were all part of the Roman Empire.

The Roman Empire is probably the most successful example of how to defeat the woes of the Multiculturalism that the EU preaches. Let’s take a look at it.

As a first step, Rome conquered a region. This region would then receive Roman colonists. Additionally, for those natives who adapted to the new ruling culture, juicy incentives would be offered, such as citizenship, which meant full political rights, the impossibility of being sold into slavery, and the possibility of holding public office.

We can say that a lot of their technology was copied, and that their philosophy was originated by Greeks living in Rome. Even in law, many innovations attributed to Rome are in fact Egyptian, Punic or Greek.

But the Punic language did not survive Rome. Egyptian became the second language in its own homeland, and Greek survived because it was already established as the tongue of trade, and because it was the language of philosophy and science. In everyday use, those three language were at least partly supplanted by Latin, even more so in Spain, or in Gallia, where most local Celtic languages died out on a few generations.

So Rome simply took a rather proactive stance that Europe should have taken. It did not seek to bring a Multicultural Paradise. Instead, in order to gain the benefits from other cultures, it decided to make good Romans out of the rest of the Mediterranean. And it worked really well.

So well, that by the early 3rd century, everyone in the Empire was, in the end, as Roman as the Old Romans, and the incentives were dropped because they were redundant.

Now, do you want to know what broke Rome’s unity?

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Gates of Vienna News Feed 3/22/2015

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Nigel Farage, the leader of UKIP, was chased out of a pub by a group of protesters, who then jumped on the bonnet (hood) of his car when he tried to drive away. His attackers were a diverse group, and included immigrants, disabled people, breast-feeding mothers, HIV activists, and gay people.

In other news, Israeli authorities have allowed 620 trucks carrying agricultural produce and commercial goods to pass through a border crossing into Gaza.

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

Thanks to C. Cantoni, Fjordman, Insubria, Ivan Winters, JD, Papa Whiskey, Steen, 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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Courthouse Trashed by “Vandals” in Toulouse

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According to the French MSM, a courthouse in Toulouse was “vandalized” last week, presumably by “youths”. Gallia Watch, as usual, was more candid, saying that the building was “sacked”.

It’s just a coincidence, of course, that there were threatening graffiti in Arabic left on the wall at the site. And the fact that an immigration decision by the court was pending — nah, that must be unrelated.

The damage to the building was fairly serious, and operations had to suspended for a period. Also, the unions threatened a work stoppage until security at the site could be assured.

Below is a news report about the incident from French TV. Many thanks to Oz-Rita for the translation, and to Vlad Tepes for the subtitling:

Transcript:

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Corrupt Tories, Corrupt Police

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As reported here last night, Tommy Robinson secretly videotaped a Muslim political candidate for the Tories attempting to “buy the EDL”, and offered to set Mr. Robinson up for the rest of his life if he helped him out.

In the following brief call to a BBC TV program, Tommy Robinson discusses Afzal Amin and the shadowy figure who finances him, and also the corruption of the British police:

Hat tip: Vlad Tepes.