Note: This post was a “sticky” feature for all of Fundraising Week. Scroll down for more items posted since this time a week ago.
If you missed fundraising week — well, the Tip Cup is still in business…
Click here to read Geert Wilders’ op-ed on the jihad terror attack in Manchester.
Spring Fundraiser 2017, Day Seven
A note to readers who are confused about how to donate: At the main page (gatesofvienna.net) scroll down until you see the tip cup on the left sidebar. Just above it is the “Subscribe” button, and below it is a “Donate” button. Choose one of these buttons, or the cup itself. The “subscribe” button sets up a recurring monthly amount of $15, and the other two are for one-time gifts.
Sunday’s update from Dymphna: Won’t You Come Home, Bill Bailey?
Last day of this Spring Quarterly Fundraiser, y’all. Last call for donations!
If you’ve been meaning to do so all week, now is your chance to tick that box on your to-do list — the one that says “donate to Gates of Vienna soonest”… What? It’s not there?? Find a pen, write it down and then hit the “Donate” button. Or send yourself a message on your iPhone: “donate to GoV”. You’ll feel so virtuous and we’ll feel so appreciated. It’s a sure Win-Win, right?
[The Baron says I often forget to remind everyone that this is a fundraiser post. Instead I jump into the theme, sans the commercial. But since these commercials are in place of daily adverts, I have to remind everyone what this post is doing up here…
…At one time, I considered doing the Amazon thing that other places use. But Bezos bought The Washington Post and has some cozy deal with the CIA, so we’ll pass on that one…]
As anyone knows who’s followed this long winding trail of breadcrumbs back to the beginning, our theme is home. For some time now, the estrangement from a common cultural home has been growing. As Lincoln echoed back during the Civil War, a house divided against itself cannot stand. You could look at his reminder on several levels: a divided West, a divided EU, a divided U.K. And because America is so large, “divided” can’t even begin to cover our fractional fussing and fuming. Sometimes my native home reminds me of a distressed, abandoned baby that can’t stop crying and can’t be comforted. It latches frantically onto one leader after another only to find out the fantasy of no more problems was just that: fantasy.
That’s where we are right now: divided, distressed, and many of us in denial. That third group are the ones who walk away: they refuse to vote or to participate because they figure that by the time anyone has managed to claw their way to the top, they’re not worth voting for anyway.
I’m not there… yet. But if Donald Trump doesn’t come back here and start tending to the home fires, we have a problem. Several venues, including The New York Times have covered the latest immigrant (slave) story. No, no one calls them slaves but those “losers” — to use Donald Trump’s own term — are being hauled into the country while he’s out there pressing the flesh and posing for pictures that the Left immediately picks apart — e.g., he doesn’t shake hands correctly. Sheesh.
Come home, Bill Bailey. And bring Rex Tillerson with you. We need you both to rein in the State Department before the shooting starts. As Ann Corcoran reported, US State Department continues its pattern of secrecy regarding refugee resettlement:
The leading non-profit watchdog on government transparency, Judicial Watch, has been digging into records relating to the resettlement of tens of thousands of refugees and other migrants and the money we spend on them.
JW reported that while the Dept of Health and Human Services was forthcoming about the cost of care for the tens of thousands of ‘Unaccompanied Alien Children’ (they are NOT refugees) spread throughout America, the State Department continues to withhold information about what you pay for the resettlement of refugees from around the world.
Incidentally, I like the use of the words “foreign nationals” in this article to describe the disparate people we are paying to care for.
Again, the ‘children’ from Central America are not “refugees” and that distinction must continue to be made because the Open Borders Left is working every day to make you think that the mostly male teens are refugees escaping persecution.
Read the ways they’ve worked out to keep us in the dark, here.
Ann has lots more, but she also keeps a score sheet on her right sidebar. The latest entry says, May 24, 2017: 45,172 [foreign nationals] admitted (this is 6,966 refugees since the supposed moratorium began and 15,050 since Trump was inaugurated). He’s on track to let in more than Obama.
All right, Donald. I get that you had to make some of those foreign visits and you might as well do it in one fell swoop since you had to do the G7 Circus. But we need your riding herd on your promises back here. I know if Hillary were in charge, there would be 50,000 more “immigrants” than you’ve let in. But that’s cold comfort at this point. We need you to demand that the evil losers (to coin a phrase) at Foggy Bottom start running a more transparent State Department. We need to see you and Tillerson, shoulder-to-shoulder, and bolder and bolder, bringing down those Augean stables. If not you, who? If not now, when?
It will always be important to the history of this country that you kept the kleptomaniac Clinton out of the Oval Office. We all remember how many historical artifacts she stole during her last tenure and her sticky fingers are even dirtier than they were then. You deserve our praise for that.
But if you don’t protect us against a continuing onslaught of foreign nationals, then we’re doomed, and you are, too, along with the rest of us. There is some number beyond which foreign people make one a stranger in his own land. It has happened to England, for sure. I hear less about the rest of the United Kingdom, but the Commonwealth is struggling. We elected you to struggle for us. Ignore the freak-leaks. They’re intended to distract you. For that matter, quit with daily press briefings. They cause far too much sausage-making and those jornolists are fat enough. Let them did for their own news. Never did a group more need the exercise.
Come home, Bill Bailey. We already know you’re not like your lazy predecessor, so show us some shrinkage on the numbers of foreign devils entering the country via your State Department.(You bought it, sir. You own it.)
The wall? Enh. Save it for later, when you need it to make points. The very odor of a wall has driven back many of those who were here. Things are quieter (it’s relative) on the southwestern front. But stop the State Department’s slave trafficking. It’s sickening. And get busy on those supercilious Sanctuary Cities. Rein in our imperial judiciary which thinks it can override your orders.
And now for my favorite rendition of this song, which has been going through my head ever since I began pondering today on the not-Clinton’s absence:
Saturday’s generous people hailed from:
Stateside: California, Colorado, Idaho, Michigan, Oregon, Pennsylvania, Tennessee, and Virginia
Near Abroad: Mexico
Far Abroad: Israel and the UK
Canada: British Columbia
Australia: Victoria
Saturday’s update from the Baron
Dymphna found this excellent quote from Robert Heinlein to head this morning’s update:
All societies are based on rules to protect pregnant women and young children. All else is surplusage, excrescence, adornment, luxury, or folly, which can — and must — be dumped in emergency to preserve this prime function. As racial survival is the only universal morality, no other basic is possible. Attempts to formulate a “perfect society” on any foundation other than “Women and children first!” is not only witless, it is automatically genocidal. Nevertheless, starry-eyed idealists (all of them male) have tried endlessly — and no doubt will keep on trying.
Intermission: Excerpts from the Notebooks of Lazarus Long, pp. 242-243
So how well is the degenerate post-modern society of Great Britain performing this prime function? The answer is abundantly clear: not at all.
The news from Manchester came in on Monday not long after the start of this fundraiser. Needless to say, the tragedy atrocity has dominated the conversation since then. As of the time of this writing, nothing significant has changed in the official response to the incident. The usual blather, the declarations of determination and solidarity, and above all, the assurance that “hate” — i.e., any criticism of Islam — will not be tolerated in Modern Multicultural Britain.
It remains to be seen whether any awakening will occur among the general public in the UK. I’m not optimistic. After watching the reactions to previous jihad attacks — not just in Britain, but in France, Germany, Sweden, Belgium, Australia, and the USA — there’s no sign of any growing public awareness of the significance of what is happening. Government propaganda and the Lügenpresse have seen to that. The hermetic seal on popular discourse is largely unbroken.
All of the above would seem to mitigate against this blog and the purpose of Fundraising Week. Why continue fighting for a futile cause?
Well…
I’m an old man, and this is what I would prefer to keep on doing until senility or death puts a stop to my efforts.
I mean, what am I supposed to do with my time? Read Reader’s Digest? Play Scrabble with the blue-rinse crowd in an assisted living facility?
No. Here I am, and here I will take my stand.
Besides, none of us knows how all this will turn out. The forces of history are too large and complex for us to even begin to understand. What we do may have an effect, or it may not. There is no way of knowing.
This brings to mind a superb poem by Ted Hughes about the “turmoil of history”. I’ve posted it before, but it’s worth revisiting:
Ghost Crabs
by Ted HughesAt nightfall, as the sea darkens,
A depth darkness thickens, mustering from the gulfs
and the submarine badlands,
To the sea’s edge. To begin with
It looks like rocks uncovering, mangling their pallor.
Gradually the labouring of the tide
Falls back from its productions,
Its power slips back from glistening nacelles, and
they are crabs.
Giant crabs, under flat skulls, staring inland
Like a packed trench of helmets.
Ghosts, they are ghost-crabs.
They emerge
An invisible disgorging of the sea’s cold
Over the man who strolls along the sands.
They spill inland, into the smoking purple
Of our woods and towns — a bristling surge
Of tall and staggering spectres
Gliding like shocks through water.
Our walls, our bodies, are no problem to them.
Their hungers are homing elsewhere.
We cannot see them or turn our minds from them.
Their bubbling mouths, their eyes
In a slow mineral fury
Press through our nothingness where we sprawl on our beds,
Or sit in our rooms. Our dreams are ruffled maybe.
Or we jerk awake to the world of our possessions
With a gasp, in a sweat burst, brains jamming blind
Into the bulb-light. Sometimes, for minutes, a sliding
Staring
Thickness of silence
Presses between us. These crabs own this world.
All night, around us or through us,
They stalk each other, they fasten on to each other,
They mount each other, they tear each other to pieces,
They utterly exhaust each other.
They are the powers of this world.
We are their bacteria,
Dying their lives and living their deaths.
At dawn, they sidle back under the sea’s edge.
They are the turmoil of history, the convulsion
In the roots of blood, in the cycles of concurrence.
To them, our cluttered countries are empty battleground.
All day they recuperate under the sea.
Their singing is like a thin sea-wind flexing
in the rocks of a headland,Where only crabs listen.
They are God’s only toys.
Does that make you more willing to clink the tip cup than you were before you read it? Probably not.
But here I stand; I can do no other.
Friday’s donations came in from:
Stateside: Arizona, Connecticut, Minnesota, New Hampshire, New Jersey, New Mexico, and Texas
Far Abroad: Australia, New Zealand, and the UK
Canada: Ontario
Australia: Victoria
Friday’s update from Dymphna: On Being Far from Home
Thanks to all of our donors who have checked in so far. To say it warms the heart doesn’t begin to cover our deep gratitude. Working on these quarterly fund-raisers has changed my relationship to things. When one’s work is supported by others, we never ever forget from where that foundation comes, nor how cheerfully y’all give to this work — to the Baron’s work, really. Fibromyalgia keeps me at half-mast (at root, it comes from developmental PTSD, but that’s a story for a separate post. The B has warned me to keep this short).
Pondering the idea of home (a perennially important subject for me), I got to thinking about the sizeable number of expatriates who give to Gates of Vienna so generously. How unutterably sad that a number of our donors have had to leave home, not because they wanted to but because the existential pain of staying became greater than the uncertain prospect of starting over somewhere else.
For that matter, we have a number of internal expatriates in the U.S. now, especially from deep-blue high-tax states like New York and Illinois. I hear from the Berkeley-unbound, too, but at least Americans get to stay in their native land.
For a while after the murderous rampage on Utøya by Anders Bering Breivik, I exchanged emails with a number of Norwegian expats — all men — who had long before found living in their native land intolerable. Some couldn’t go back for legal reasons, and others didn’t want to. Some tried to visit and found their visits too fraught with unease and sadness to be able to stay for very long. They all made their way into the world, and some even found enclaves of their own kind in places like South America.
Norway is stupendously beautiful. I suspect the light alone could make one ache to see it again. An expat introduced me to a slowTV version of a seven-hour trip by train. Here’s a twelve-minute digest. There are lots of others. Like this five-hour summer trip. (I keep wanting the engineer to slow down so I can better see the flowers beside the track.)
So how does Norway — or other Western countries — create ex-pats? Simple. As I said in a comment earlier today, Norway is a perfect template for a totalitarian democracy. Since the country is so small, it’s easy to see past the facade of “niceness” to the steel fist beneath.
If you aren’t a member of the elite in Norway — academe, journalism, government, etc. — you are forever on the outside looking in. It was ABB’s humiliation from his taunting stepfather, telling him he’d never belong to that elite youth group, which was at least partially responsible for his eventual massacre of that same group on Utøya. This “youth” organization with its evilly naïve support of Hamas had no idea how their elitism could lead a psychologically vulnerable man to attempt to obliterate them. They still don’t get it. [Norway is the only Western country which has failed to condemn Hamas as the terror group it really is; instead, it supplies material support to the murderers.]
Norway’s shameful political decision to prop up a seriously mentally ill man and try him as though he were sane is proof of the insanity of the country. The hunt for scapegoats was designed to take the focus off their totalitarian system. Ironically, during the course of their Circus Breivik trial, the world was afforded a glimpse into a kind of Alice in Wonderland “justice” system.
I don’t know the statistics for the numbers of talented young men who leave Norway each year, but it must be significant. It takes brains and guts to leave that gilded cage. I salute those men who have quietly left, not slamming the door on the way out (it’s not the Norwegian way).
Leaving a sadly dysfunctional home — be it family, state or country — is fraught with the heart’s knowing one will never be truly at home in the world again…the lucky ones carve out a new, better existence elsewhere.
This song isn’t Norway, but it’s certainly fraught with the same homesickness. What a full word that is, a longing for home can actually leave one sick and restless… and the land he leaves is indeed beautiful, carved into the heart…
[The lyrics can be found below the song on You Tube]
On Thursday, generosity flowed in from:
Stateside: California, Illinois, Iowa, Massachusetts, North Carolina, Nevada, New York, Tennessee, Texas, West Virginia, and Wyoming
Far Abroad: New Zealand, Slovenia, and the UK
Canada: British Columbia, Newfoundland, and Ontario
Australia: Victoria and Western Australia
Thursday’s update from the Baron: On eyeballs, snowflakes, and advertising
I went to the retinal specialist today, and have nothing but good news to report. The condition of my left eye (wet macular degeneration, now in remission) is still completely stable, and I don’t have to go back for another eight months. This is a great relief. Apparently my case — that of a somewhat younger person whose disease is not particularly progressive — is a rarity. It’s probably occupation-related rather than age-related.
I don’t generally exchange communications with snowflakes and social justice warriors, so I had no idea what the Current Wisdom was concerning the Manchester bombing until I spent a little time trawling through Twitter earlier this evening (or last night, really).
Egad! The asininity and cluelessness among famous people concerning our ongoing Islamization — it’s jaw-dropping. I hope our young people take these “celebrity” opinions with a grain of salt…
On Tuesday I mentioned the fact that this quarterly endeavor — in which we dun you, our readers, in an effort to persuade you to cough up in order to help us keep going — is what we do to avoid accepting advertising from commercial services that would pay us to put hideous flashing monstrosities in our header or on our sidebar.
This evening Dymphna reminded me to tell you that we used to host advertising back in the Palaeolithic Era of this blog, from 2006 (I think) until April 2008, while we were members of Pajamas Media. The superb writing and research done by El Inglés was what caused us to be cast into the Outer Darkness by the Panjandrums in Pajamas. And if we have to choose between the likes of PJM and hosting the work of El Inglés, I’ll choose the latter every time, even if penury forces us to live on Wonder Bread crusts and Hawaiian Punch for the rest of our lives.
That’s why we raise money in this manner: because if we continue to stand on principle and refuse to flutter our hands and faint whenever someone touches forbidden topics, we’ll get thrown out of just about any club that would have us as a member. That’s just the way it is.
So: no advertising, no foundation grants. Just you, the readers of Gates of Vienna, tossing your nickels and tanners into our tip cup.
Generous folk from these places showed up on Wednesday:
Stateside: Florida, Georgia, Massachusetts, Michigan, Minnesota, New York, Pennsylvania, Texas, Virginia, and Washington
Far Abroad: the UK
Canada: Ontario
Australia: Australian Capital Territory and New South Wales
Wednesday’s update from Dymphna
Ain’t Got No Home
Day Three sure came up like thunder. I’m still back there in the previous comments, gazing at the River Tyne…
So many outside events — the horror in Manchester, mainly — have diverted my attention. Fortunately our donors weren’t that distracted. Donations have been generous and lively. One donor even marked his gift for “home repairs”. How did he know??
[For those of you who are checking in for the first time, this week is the quarterly event in which we ask our readers to give a modest donation to help keep this site going. As I mentioned on Monday, it got more expensive a few weeks ago when we migrated to a server with a larger capacity.]
In keeping with our theme of home, let me tell you a bit about those pictures the Baron is using. It’s a sad story of a place that still has a name, but it doesn’t exist anymore. The fact that the name remains gives you some sense of the strength of the heart that refuses to give up even after all has been stripped away.
For years, I used the term “Vinegar Hill” to refer to a rather blank-looking place in Charlottesville. That’s what it was called, but I couldn’t understand why. Was it because there was a small theatre with that name?
As it turned out… No. The theater took on the name of the place. After the future Baron’s historical digging, I know better now. Sadly, it doesn’t make me like the Republic of Charlottesville any better — or “Berkeley East” as the fB calls the town swallowed by the University of Virginia. The whole area is still full of well-meaning Leftists, as wealthy and destructive as ever they were.
The point in this episode is that sometimes you don’t get to chose whether or not to stay home. The Baron is using images of the old Vinegar Hill section of Charlottesville, Virginia before it was torn down in the name of “progress” in the 1960s. Vinegar Hill was a real place, first settled by Irish immigrants and later by blacks as the Irish moved on.
Vinegar Hill was a real community, poor but vibrant. The modest school where black children went still stands. But then, but then… along came the sixties.
The City Fathers were tempted by all that block grant money the Democrats were handing out in Washington under the aegis of Lyndon Johnson’s “War on Poverty”. Seeing all that cash, those in charge decided to make Vinegar Hill a problem to be solved. Rip out the heart of Vinegar Hill and move its denizens into compact new “projects”. And yes, some people were given money for their homes, but they weren’t given a choice about moving. And move they did, into improved, concrete cookie-cutter “subsidized” housing. Those low-rise ghettoes still exist, while what was left of Vinegar Hill continues to erode.
Black people who didn’t want to live in government housing had to shoulder their way into the lower ends of poor white housing, raising the cultural temperature. As for the area where Vinegar Hill once was? A four-lane through-road connected the southern part of the county to the commercial northern part on U.S. 29. [And when you go back further, Route 29, which is named “Seminole Trail”, is the path the southern Indians traveled on foot, being forced further west to their very own “reserved land”. Just one more “Trail of Tears”.]
Karma is one difficult woman, eh? Now, having disposed of Indians and blacks, there are new further plans afoot for America’s rural areas (and those in other countries, too — we’re not being singled out). The Left will not admit the sober reality of Agenda 21. It’s easy to scare people off from looking too hard by calling those who do peek “paranoid” and “tinfoil hats”. That kind of vilification works, at least for a while — and they have their fingers crossed it will work long enough to get us country folk outta here when the time comes.
You can do your own investigating to decide if it’s true. This website shows why it’s such a good idea. You know, “sustainability” and “conservation” and all those fine buzzwords. I think it’s for real, but I leave you to decide if you want to be fitted for a tinfoil hat.
A few years ago the future Baron told me enthusiastically about a talk he attended in his small town. He didn’t remember the fellow’s name or organization but the speaker was convincing when he talked about “conserving the land for the future”. What the speaker didn’t say was that there wouldn’t be any people on that land. Even now, large portions of our western states are government-owned and poorly managed. The people who once called those tracts home are gone.
We have established precedents for the federal takeover of lands once privately owned. Here in Virginia, there is the Blue Ridge Parkway. it’s pristinely beautiful but at what price? People taken off the land, or their land use so restricted it was like dispossession. Just so tourists could be entertained? The same goes for the section of this road in North Carolina. FDR had originally planned to call it The Appalachian Highway.
On a much bigger scale is The Natchez Trace.
Again, while beautiful and of interest to tourists and historians who like their artifacts preserved, it was a government boondoggle designed to hire unemployed men during the Depression. But once able-bodied men were needed for war, conscientious objectors were substituted for them. Much cheaper than jailing the latter.
East of the Mississippi, government land grabs were far more modest than what was to occur after the Louisiana Purchase.
The Mises Wire describes the differences between east and west in the U.S.:
The troubles initially began with the Louisiana Purchase which established the federal government as the direct administrator of immense amounts of non-state land. However, the ideological justification for permanent federal ownership really began to gain influence by the late 19th century as many Americans, including influential economists of the time, began to adopt ideologies that saw centralized government as necessary for regulating the economy. We see these ideological leanings in the creation of the Interstate Commerce Commission in 1887 which was initially created to regulate the railroads. Over time, the ICC became the inspiration for a host of other federal regulatory agencies that began to appear by the early 20th century.
The rest of that essay is worth your time and gives the reasons for the big differences in reasons for land ownership (having much to do with the topographical differences).
Ah, yes, a centralized government. That has certainly solved our problems. Just ask the few remaining survivors of Vinegar Hill, for the rest scattered to the stars — and, yes, what wasn’t used for their road, and a multistory hotel, and the Federal Building, and some businesses, really did became a series of parking lots.
For the people who lived in Vinegar Hill, and for all the millions of people forcibly moved “for their own good”, here’s a cover — from Ireland! — of Clarence “Frog” Henry’s “Ain’t Got No Home”:
I ain’t got no home
No place to roam
I ain’t got a home
No place to roam
I’m a lonely boy
I ain’t got a homeI ain’t got no sister
I ain’t got a brother
I ain’t got a father
Not even a mother
I’m a lonely boy
I ain’t got a homeWoo-woo-woo-woo-woo-woo-woo-woo
Well, I got a voice
And I love to sing
I can sing like a bird
And I can sing like a frog
I’m a lonely boy
I ain’t got a homeI ain’t got a girl
I ain’t got a son
I ain’t got no kin
I ain’t got no one
I’m a lonely frog
I ain’t got a homeWoo-woo-woo-woo-woo-woo-woo-woo
Madam, take me in
Let me be your friend
Won’t you take me in
Let me be your friend
I’m a lonely boy
I ain’t got a homeWoo-woo-woo-woo-woo-woo-woo-woo
Tuesday’s donors flew in from:
Stateside: California, Georgia, Illinois, Michigan, New Jersey, New York, Pennsylvania, Tennessee, and West Virginia
Far Abroad: Finland, the Netherlands, and the UK
Canada: Ontario
Australia: Australian Capital Territory and New South Wales
Tuesday’s update from the Baron
To expand on what Dymphna said last night: it’s not just avoiding the advertising that motivates us to raise our operating funds in this manner. If you depend on advertising, it can make you vulnerable, because leftists constantly pressure corporations to withdraw their advertising from “hate” sites. We’ve seen it happen over and over again.
The method Gates of Vienna uses ensures that nothing separates us from the people who visit this site, read the material, and appreciate what we do. There’s no mediation between us, the producers, and you, the consumers. If you like what we do, you toss a nickel in the jar, and we keep going. If you don’t, we dry up and blow away for lack of funds.
Which is as it should be.
Besides advertising, the only other way to do this sort of thing is to become the ward of some foundation or other. If we did that, we’d be OK until we strayed beyond our benefactor’s pale. And believe me, we would: all benefactors have pales of some sort or other. If we went too far, our chain would be yanked, and that would be that. The model for the process is what happened to foundation-funded people who made the mistake of supporting Diana West during the controversy over American Betrayal.
One other thing that Dymphna forgot to mention in her post: we tithe to Vlad Tepes during these fundraisers. His video work is absolutely crucial to what we do, so we send him 10% of what we receive. If you like what Vlad does, I recommend that you visit his site and donate to him directly.
Tonight Vlad is scouring all video sources for any information on the terror bombings in Manchester.
Monday’s donors checked in from:
Stateside: Arkansas, Florida, Maine, Maryland, Michigan, Ohio, Texas, and Virginia
Far Abroad: Germany, Sweden, Thailand, and the UK
Canada: Ontario and Saskatchewan
Australia: New South Wales and Queensland
Monday, from Dymphna
Time for our 2017 Quarterly Sticky Wicket Spring Fundraiser!
YES! I can hear the cheers and hullaballoo for this newest episode in our cherished tradition intended to avoid “monetizing the website” — i.e., the way we sidestep having any advertising on our pages ever again. So, for a week (or an octave when there are late arrivals), we have these seemingly endless innings… but then it’s all over. Until the next time.
Recently we changed the how of our modest endeavor while retaining the why. We’re here in this particular spot in order to keep the wolf from the door; that’s the why — a fact to which our long-time readers have grown accustomed (and continue to generously endorse).
The how is somewhat new. In the good old days, we had a new post for each day of the Fundraiser. Each iteration would promptly get lost as the flow of information pushed it down the page. Now, we have this sticky post that floats atop the home page until the party’s over and you scroll down for newer posts. Meanwhile, the post gets a little update every day with reports on the places the donations come from, and the Baron puts up a new image to go with it.
So far, this new process has gotten positive feedback. From our point of view, not only is it easier for the Baron to manage, but we’re able to gather in one location the myriad of places from which our donors come, rather than have them scattered through seven or eight different posts. This aspect is important to me now that I’m an armchair traveler: I get to at least briefly visit those places y’all call home.
Gates of Vienna quickly became a bridge blog between Europe and America and has stayed so for more than a decade now; thus location becomes primary on a number of levels.
In the weeks preceding these Quarterlies, the Baron and I begin mulling over what theme we’ll use this time around. There are world events and emerging patterns to examine, but can we be brief and compelling for complex subjects? Not usually. So we end up sticking to subjects closer to home — e.g., “HOME” itself.
This time around, though, before we could properly choose a theme, “home” chose us, at least when it comes to a consideration of our virtual home:
In the time between the last quarterly and this one, Gates of Vienna outgrew its space. Due to ever-increasing traffic, we had to migrate to a more expensive server, one that had the room for our new readers. Of equal importance is the safety factor: these new digs help protect us against DDOS attacks, which are the bane of every dissident website. We did lose a few lively comment threads in the migration to a larger server, but other than that the whole process went smoothly thanks to Henrik, our techie from Denmark. Bless his Danish soul.
Home is such a simple word, and so fraught. “Home is where, when you have to go there, they have to let you in.” Or, “a man’s home is (increasingly NOT) his castle.” And, “be it ever so humble…” Except that with the burden of regulatory housing codes, it has become increasingly difficult to find a “humble” home in our cities and larger suburbs, or one you can safely retreat to without the intrusion of the Landscape Police telling you to mow your lawn shorter or that your bushes are too tall or your paint is the wrong color. And now, in Europe, it seems that the idea of private property is evaporating as houses are taken over by the government for the PoorImmigrants™.
Poverty has its blessings. As many of our readers know, the Baron chose Schloss Bodissey because it was a cheap place for a starving artist to live. And being in the Middle of Beyond, he could wake up and walk out the door to begin painting his version of a place that resembles van Gogh’s Provence.
Being without much in the way of amenities, the housing regulations here are lax by comparison with wealthier areas. It would be incongruous to create a strict housing code in a place which had to grandfather in any outhouses still in use. Not only that, but our Board of Supervisors, in an attempt to avoid the harm of commercial industry while still raising revenue, has chosen instead to take in Yankee trash — New Jersey’s, mostly. So we had commercial timber and now we’ve added commercial refuse. I wonder what’s in those New Jersey containers?? Best not to think about it.
When you consider what the government is doing in other places, our Board of Supervisors is beginning to look prescient. Their decision seems wise compared to the depredations of allowing in Big Meat’s structures, as is happening in other areas. I doubt we’ll ever be in the position of Tennessee and Kansas, with Tyson (Big Meat, Inc and a big Democrat donor) trying to build meat-packing plants here. [Some years back our own area learned its lesson with the local push-back against any new construction of Hog Parlors.]
Just think of the City Fathers who named their spot in Kansas “Garden City” only to have it turned into an abattoir peopled with Somalis. A piece of advice: don’t buy Tyson meats — your friendly third-world butcher at Tyson’s hasn’t had to pass any foolish bureaucratic health tests. The sad thing is, there are Americans willing to do that work, but Tyson wants ever cheaper, ever more disposable workers. American workers used to last an average of six years, or so a former employee of Con Agra told me as she was applying for disability, her hands a frozen arthritic mess.
I swan, it’s enough to make a person go vegetarian… or in my case, fruitarian.
Just think of all the songs devoted to home — going home at last, running away from it, trapped in it, or longing to be there. The permutations are endless with such a deeply fraught word. Years ago, a theology professor from Belgium taught a catechesis seminar I attended. Some days I can’t remember what I read yesterday but I have never forgotten her wise advice: before you teach a child to say the “Our Father” be sure you know about his relationship with his own father. I never forgot her words, and I’ve followed them down the years.
Here’s one of my favorite songs about home… about how to carry your home in your heart. Robert Hunter should have titled it “The Heart at Home” instead of “Yellow Moon”. But you know those Dead Heads — sometimes too clever by half.
The lyrics are below, along with directions for contributing — the latter haven’t changed…
Yellow Moon
by Robert HunterAnxious hope and thoughts of love
Will never let me down or let me go
Inside, my heart’s a cage of ice
Where love and loss still toss the lonely diceI burned the whole night long
My thoughts were never far from you
Love that locks and binds must die
But when it dies a part of you dies tooBorn, born, born upon the world
The restless heart keeps flying
Trying to become the heart of home
Love, love, love, it picks you up
And spins you round
Sets you right back down, where you belongMy head don’t fit my hat sometimes
It gets so full of clouds
Every time I pass your door
I hear you cry out loudSometimes I look the same to you
As you have looked to me
My eyes get filled so full of stars
I don’t know when I leaveBorn, born, born upon the world
The restless heart keeps flying
Trying to become the heart of home
Love, love, love, it picks you up
And spins you round
Sets you right back down, where you belongLove is like the April rain
That makes the harvest grow
And when it grows it’s like the summer gold
Love is like the colored leaves
That drift down from the trees
One by one ’til every tale is toldIf I go a-dancing out across the yellow moon
I’ll be home by morning if it doesn’t come too soon
If you seek protection go and find a safer man
And if he can’t give you what you need
Then come on by againPriestess of the sun and moon
And goddess of the wind
You know too much to ever lose
And not enough to winThough you built your house upon the rock
And not upon the sand
You’re still looking out your window
For another traveling manBorn, born, born upon the world
The restless heart keeps flying
Trying to become the heart of home
Love, love, love, it picks you up
And spins you round
Sets you right back down, where you belongLove, love, love that picks you up
And spins you round
Sets you right back down where you belong
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Lovely song. Sounds like an LP; hope you still play vinyl, as I do.
as soon as I ascertain my bank balance, the “check will be in the mail” — I wish you great success!
A fine song.
Blessings upon Dymphna, The Baron, Vlad, the patriots, the contributors, translators, tech wizards, and stalwart web hosts.
Here’s mine:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sS1cwubcF0U
I used to know this street
Someone changed the name
Signpost turned around
And nothing looks the same
But I belong somewhere
I belong somewhere
Thanks for the link. I listened all the way through. And he has some others I want to hear…
When he sings:
I wish this life of twists and turns would end
And I could find my way back home again
But where’s home? But where’s home?
I’ve been so long away
I’ll make it back someday
But where’s home?
And however many roads I walk along
I never find a place where I belong
Where’s home? Where’s home?
I’ve got no place to be
I’m like a refugee
Where’s home?
The mistaken premise in his song is that “home” is something you *find* or return to, when in reality home is the place you create for yourself after you’ve grown and fledged the nest.
I’ve watched the future Baron carefully carve out his home in a small town in the mountains. He went through a few unsatisfactory jobs before he was able to find a real one there. He belongs to a local church, though he reserves his own doctrinal differences because he knows the idea is never perfectly achieved anywhere. He has made a place for himself on the list of people who sing at the local store – and even gets paid a modest sum. He also volunteers to distribute local produce to poor people and puts in a few hours at the thrift shop.
Yes, he’s come in for some criticism for not going to D.C. and building a career instead of living so “marginally”. Sure, that’s just what he needs: a good government job. If only there were good governments, right?
In honor of his sister, who died in 2003, he recently wrote a song using just this theme. The last verse repeats the theme and then turns it a bit:
And I love you and I miss you
And I wish that you could come back home
We all love you and we miss you
We’ll see you when we get back home…
“Home” is indeed a word fraught with meaning. I often think of those heedless immigrants, headed to the lands of milk and honey, but rageful that they have to leave their home.
Home is where the heart is!
Would like to see your IRS return…and how you justify your income.
Every single cent — such as it is — is reported on our 1040. But we are not public officials, so our returns will remain private.
As for justifying it — I’m not sure what you mean by that. Do you mean: “Why should you receive this income?”
Well, the people who donate are the ones who decide whether we should receive it. If they don’t think we deserve it, we won’t get it.
Please elaborate on your concept of justified income. In particular, who decides what’s justified?
If you spend your time, your energy and your own life’s resources doing something, and you get a wee bit of money in return, then that income is justified. I should have thought it was a straightforward equation, really.
Who defines “wee bit”?
Try the dictionary, pal.
It’s not *that* straightforward, especially if people question why you’d do it, as many did when the B left computers to pick up a paint brush for more than 20 years…and was able to re-enter the world he’d left, thanks to some help from his friends.
Oh, please, gentlemen before ladies, Mr. Taxman. Show us your certified IRS return…and leave your IRS-issued firearms at home before you come with papers in hand…
I’m in a generous mood, despite your tone, so I’ll give your our usual and customary income streams: donations from private individuals and every one of those is accounted for and reported to the IRS (no foundations have shown an interest so far), some few rebates I get back from participating merchants, and the Baron’s freelance editing – also reported.
Our income level is low enough that I’m eligible at our local clinic for the lowest on their sliding scale for the expensive medication, Advair. My doctor talked me into applying for it, since I don’t consider us poor. But evidently, the gummint scale weighs us in among poverty people. Thus, instead of paying 300/month to the rapacious pharmaceutical firm for my Advair, I now pay 3.00 a month. But the paperwork is hideous. And long-term Advair can cause osteoporosis, so I only take a half dose of the lowest version. I wouldn’t take it at all but my heart needs the help to keep pumping.
Our out-go from these Quarterlies includes tithing to Vlad Tepes for all his wonderful video work (and his general keeping up the Baron’s spirits on those occasions when someone like you shows up) and things like groceries and doctor bills.
As me mither used to say, “’tis the height of rudeness to question anyone’s income, religion or political leanings”. To get around that the Dublin Irish would ask you your address. That gave them all the information they needed. Well, it’s still true: we live in a below-poverty level county which is eligible for lots of federal aid and which dropped everyone’s real estate tax rate two years ago.
We avoid partaking of government aid where we can, but I’d be most tempted if I heard they were willing to supply broadband connectivity beyond what they installed in our courthouse district. We’re so far out in the boonies we live in a cell phone dead zone. Fine by us…we don’t go anywhere.
I justify my income by bothering to answer people like you.
We don’t have to pay for any of our medications. Prescriptions are free, north of the border. One of the few things the SNP got right.
Nothing is “free”. You can distribute the cost across all of society, but one has to ask if that is fair? Why should I pay for the health problems of the overweight, the drug addicted, or the careless? Where exactly does the government get the money from in the first place (taxes obviously)? Is it actually cheaper for the consumer if we never let all the middlemen into the business in the first place? Insurance and government add cost to the consumer. You try to create utopia, and end up with bankruptcy.
Why should anyone else pay either taxes or insurance premiums that will eventually end up paying out for your medication?
Why do people in England have to pay tax and pay for prescriptions?
I was working with someone who lived in America not long ago – why on earth should anyone have to face a crippling financial bill just because they fell ill? That ends up in bankruptcy.
It’s a question of the role of the state. It is – bottom line – to establish and maintain the negative freedom of the individual. By operating a health system this goal will be achieved – someone can fall ill, be treated, and get back to their life, as it was before they fell ill. Their “negative freedom” is thereby maintained.
So in principle, it is easy to make an argument for a state-operated health system.
And it is just as easy to make an argument against a free-for-all, pay as you go medical system which would leave its patients facing financial ruin.
That is amusing. The Taxman may have had a government job or grant or handout but never a real job and doesn’t know how it all works.
In the case of this site, the other patrons and I decide how much the service B and D provide is worth (a lot) and what fraction of our too small budgets for contributions they should get.
-Der Förderer
Here’s mine:
Let me tell you that I love you,
that I think about you all the time,
Caledonia you’re calling me,
and now I’m going home …
Frankie Miller singing “Caledonia”.
Tip jar tapped. Thanks for breaking all the European news in English with the help of your contacts and translators. I see today the Daily Mail UK reporting a story you carried almost a week ago in a translation from a French newspaper. I suspect it’s only because of your work that some of these reports get out into ‘the wild’ in English and thus become unavoidable by the MSM. Many more of the stories you report don’t get into the mainstream and I’m grateful to be able to read them here.
As for songs about ‘home’, this sums up the alien world I grew up in: https://youtu.be/jBkQ6kzissM Costafine Town is in South Shields, near Newcastle-upon-Tyne a large city in the North-East of England. I came from the North-West where just in the last few hours Manchester has been attacked.
Well we left the home grounds in the month of June
and to canny Shields we soon were farin’
with a hundred cran’ o’ the silver darlins
that we’d taken from the shoals of herring …
https://youtu.be/6Ov81aogaxg
https://youtu.be/XWqJZ_uiDtM
Of the two, I much prefer Ewan MacColl’s version to be honest. I do like the next verse:
Now you’re up on deck, you’re a fisherman
You can swear and show a manly bearing
Take your turn on watch with the other fellows
While you’re searching for the shoals of herring
Sung from the point of view of a cabin boy, it’s a song not just about a way of life but about growing up in a world that ceased to exist a long time ago.
If you look at the boat’s numbers on that video, there are one or two from up my neck of the woods, here in the “frozen north”.
The last time I heard the song being performed was at the funeral of a friend of mine (an retired fisherman) not too long ago.
The music is fine, the photos are great! One of my favorites is the Geordie songs that Mark Knopfler did.
Come drive me down to the central station
I hate to leave my river tyne
For some damn town that’s god-forsaken
Fare thee well, northumberland
Although i’ll go where the lady takes me
She’ll never tell what’s in her hand
I do not know what fate awaits me
Fare thee well, northumberland
My heart beats for my streets and alleys
Longs to dwell in the borderlands
The north-east shore and the river valleys
Fare thee well northumberland
I may not stay, i’m bound for leaving
I’m bound to ramble and to roam
I only say my heart is grieving
I would not gamble on my coming home
Roll on, geordie boy, roll
Roll on, geordie boy, roll
Roll on, geordie boy, roll
Roll on, geordie boy, roll…
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h-cA_Znry2k
Knopfler is so very talented in a number of musical genres – e.g., his movie songs…
The B has Bach. I have Knopfler.
Sad to say, a young South Shields couple missing since the Manchester Arena atrocity have today been confirmed among the dead: http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/home-news/manchester-bombing-victims-chloe-rutherford-liam-curry-confirmed-dead-missing-scotland-teenagers-a7754706.html
Well, as far as I am concerned, while I have it, the Gates will get it or a part share thereof.
Thank you both for your courage and forbearance in the face of such adversity.
Your contribution to individual awareness and liberty would make George Orwell proud.
And I forgot to mention. I just love the old photos, they have a story of their own.
Yes, they do, and if I have any extra time later this week I’ll explain a little bit about Vinegar Hill in Charlottesville, which is where these photos were taken in 1962.
Well, for a change I have a little bit of cash in my bank balance! But I can’t find the link/button to donate! Please advise 🙂
Return to our main page and look on the sidebar: you’ll see “donate” and “subscribe” buttons, and also a tip cup with pencils in it. clicking the first or the last sends you to a PayPal page for a one-time gift. The “subscribe” button sets up an automatic monthly subscription.
And thank you!
Good evening Baron and Dymphna: I just about to hit the ‘Paypal’ button again!
Best wishes from West Wales!
The most beautiful song of homecoming is “These are my Mountains” (traditional Scottish song)sung by the Alexander brothers.Not to be confused with Dolly Parton’s saccharine little ditty.
Here is the link to the you tube video and another link to the lyrics
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bgp5fd0-StI
http://www.rampantscotland.com/songs/blsongs_these.htm
Makes my heart sing to hear the beautiful lilting words of this traditional song.Contribution to “Gates of Vienna” ,for making it possible for me to see all the videos the M.S.M would rather suppress coming up.
You perform a valuable service Baron and Dymphna. Keep it up.
Thank you, Shelagh.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yeZ9C5xG5sM
Thanks for the link .
Some US$ coming in soon – you’ll get a contribution, though a little later than usual!
I am down with the flu, but as soon as it leaves me, I too will contribute.
You are the most worthwhile site I know of, btw.
There are a few others I like as well, but you are the fave!
If I’m repeating myself, chalk it up to the dear flu. sigh.
Thanks for the reminder. I try to kick something in each quarter. I really appreciate this site, and the lack of advertising is also appreciated.
This is a good time to remind people that GoV gets a little income from Amazon when you make your purchase by linking from this site. I typically put my shopping cart together and then go to this site. Then I click on a book on the left side of the page, my go to book is the red one by Stephen Coughlin. I spend anywhere from $200 to upwards a month on Amazon and ALL of my purchases are made via the link from GoV. I have no idea how much this helps out, but it’s more than nothing and if everyone did the same it would make a difference.
Barron, glad to hear the good news about your vision. How about posting some of your paintings?
I post one from time to time. The problem is getting a good scan or photo of them. They’re difficult to reproduce. And of course, the best ones were sold and I don’t have them, although I do have slides of most of them.
Barron, I’m glad your eyes are doing well. I would love to see some of your paintings, why don’t you post some?
BTW, thanks for the reminder, I tipped in.
On the Baron’s eyeballs. I think he is in VERY good hands.
Me, too. 🙂
And me, several times a year to ophthalmologist for the last 60 years, but worth it–I still see just fine.
Wet macular degeneration; that’s a bad one Baron. Glad to hear you’re OK, where are we without sight, eh?
” The superb writing and research done by El Inglés was what caused us to be cast into the Outer Darkness by the Panjandrums in Pajamas. ”
There are a few contributors whose red pill essays form part of my conceptual framework. One is El Engles,
https://gatesofvienna.net/wp-content/uploads/2015/04/El-Ingl%C3%A9s-Ethno-Religious-Diversity-and-the-Limits-of-Democracy.pdf
who presented a graphical analysis of diversity in a polity, and exactly why makes it progressively impossible to govern in a representative framework. Specifically, government is the act of compromise and reconciliation. However, once you have different constituencies with almost no overlap in values and objectives, it becomes impossible for a government to avoid destructive dissatisfaction from a significant part of the population.
In other words, physical conflict and totalitarianism is a built-in feature of diversity.
Another view-changing contributor is actually known more as a translator, Ava Lon. But she provided an important perspective on the mechanisms by which the populations we value, European ethnics, are declining in birthrate.
https://gatesofvienna.net/2016/11/children-parents-and-grandparents/
Simply speaking, I never thought of family planning decisions in light of community or family support, but it makes sense. The decision to have a child is not like shopping for a new car: there is more to it than a cost-return analysis. Throughout history, from the Roman Empire on, governments have attempted financial incentives to encourage native childbearing, with spectacular lack of success. But, the need for a supportive community, relieving not only the physical stress of tending children, but the psychic stress of always having to focus on passing along values, knowledge and culture, is dramatically reduced with a supportive homogeneous community.
And it became immediately apparent why the neocon administrations of both Bushes, and the profoundly anti-American administration of Barak Obama, tasked the Justice Department with enforcing diversity in organizations, and enforcing the breakup of successful, ethnically homogeneous, suburban and rural living enclaves. The result was increased pressure on parents concerned with the success of their children, and increased financial resources for parents who take no interest in the upbringing of their children once the baby is actually produced.
So, I guess ideas are really not free. There’s a lot of free stuff around the web, very important and stimulating material: almost anything older than, say, 20 years. But, you can either be a journalist of an entertainer. The journalists and their followers are not going to get rich.
Trying to help with what you do so well
My little way of saying “Thanks”
Bill in the desert
The UK (and by extension, Europe) far abroad? We are twice as close as Australia, and the content of your blog by and large revolves around the goings-on within our continent! That aside, do keep up the good work.
It used to be that every country outside the U.S. except for Canada and Mexico was listed as “Far Abroad”. Then the Australians and the Canadians petitioned me to break down their countries into states/provinces, so I eventually modified the software to do that. But the UK is a much tougher nut to crack — what with these new regional designations and urban conglomaerates, the UK postal listings are a hotch-potch — nothing consistent that I could parse with code. So the UK just remains the UK for the time being, and thus in the Far Abroad.
Not only do I appreciate this site for its tremendous content covering subjects either ignored or slanted by the MSM, but I also really thank the Baron and Dymphna for keeping it all, articles and comments, to a higher standard of civility. And as a bonus we’re not subjected to those truly annoying ads. Thanks to you both for your monumental efforts.
Thank you for noticing. It’s mostly the B. I’m becoming ever more limited by fibromyalgia, so it’s mostly his work. I do pull myself together for the Quarterly blegs. They’re fun, and not too demanding (if, like me, you’re no longer carrying the Acknowledgments Divison. I remember dimly when I did).
The B’s robust ability to keep on keepin’ on never fails to amaze me. I am *so* fortunate to be able to participate or just to be able to observe the depth and breadth of his work.
GoV-Thanks for your work in bringing truth to us here in the land of ozero!
This site is part of my daily news.
Thank you.
BTW…Mark Knopfler…the very, very best. One of my top 2 concerts -Dire Straits in Ottawa, CA in July 2005. Religious experience. For those inquiring minds…the other was Midnight Oil in Chicago area.
He is a phenomenon, for sure. His Geordie songs have a depth of pathos unmatched by any modern musician. Yet he’s never maudlin. One gets to hear the hard choices for British men of a certain class.
What a pity Midnight Oil’s Peter Garrett is such a… well, a word that would be deservedly redacted. He befouled Australia’s politics for two decades as a member of parliament for the Labor (Socialist) Party and is still an unutterable ass full of his own sense of importance: http://www.westword.com/music/midnight-oils-peter-garrett-preaches-politics-at-denvers-paramount-theatre-9090515 His commentary on Obamacare is predictable; his calling for a moment’s silence for the victims of leftist policies in Manchester is simply hypocritical.
Mick,
GoV readers should be aware that Peter Garrett, left wing rock and roll icon turned socialist politician, had all his daughters (just as he was) educated at an exclusive private school. In his daughters’ case it was Frensham, THE private female boarding school favored for generations by the rural aristocracy of New South Wales. For Americans, think Groton or whatever prep school FDR, Al Gore or Edward Said attended.
I remember doing the Inter-Rail thing many years ago, listening to a few cassettes on my then-cutting-edge Walkman. One of the tapes I had was “Red Sails in The Sunset”.
Then years after that I saw the bald one prancing about saying to his fellow Aussies “Let’s give it back …” and I thought to myself, what fantasy land is this guy living in?
I’ve long wondered about ABB and to what extent he really was mentally ill or perhaps just disturbingly long sighted, even more so when one considers answers to the Thorny Questions for Europe asked by Der Konservative Rebell elsewhere on GoV today.
Very happy to hear that your eyes are stable!
This is a comment related to Dymphna’s post about Norway. In the past several years, two TV series have been set in Norway: Lillehammer and Occupied. In the former, a New York Mafia-thug is given asylum in Norway after ratting on his friends; he reverts to his old ways and the resulting culture clash with the hapless Norwegians is a fascinating and hilarious take on clash of cultures. The latter, Occupied, is set in the near future when Russia takes over Norway in order to get their hands on the country’s oil. In both series, one sees the devastating results of passivity and political correctness on a once-proud country and culture. I recommend them both.
My check in support of your invaluable work will be in the mail next week! I rely on you daily for my “reality-check.”
Elenka, are you familiar with the book, Lillelord?
http://worldbook.press/book-details/1407793.Lillelord.html
A Norwegian recommended it as a kind of insight into a troubled Norwegian mind. I read part of it but couldn’t finish it…too dark and ugly. It certainly showed a literary precedent for ABB. The blurb says:
In this book, the author demonstrates his belief that our lives tend toward schizophrenia. Wilfred Sagen at fourteen is still a perfectly turned out, impeccably behaved ‘Little Lord Fauntleroy’ to his family, but to his teachers he is a disruptive enigma and, to a pack of Oslo street urchins, an instigator of crime….
You can download the book at that link, above. See if you don’t think ABB cribbed some of it.
—–
On that note, do you remember when they had the ‘satire’ of Fjordman on TV? A series, iirc. He is portrayed as a paraplegic in a Nazi uniform. I swan, only Fj’s stubborn Norwegian DNA kept him going through that dark time. It left *me* permanently changed, that’s for sure.
Why in the world would Russia invade Norway for its oil. Russia has copious reserves of oil and gas of its own. The problem is to extract and sell it, especially in light of the fact that western politicians show they have guts by always strengthening economic embargoes against Russia.
As with much of our foreign policy, the benefit of a Russian embargo to US citizenry totally escapes me. I don’t care if the Crimea is under Russian or Ukrainian control. I would be ecstatic if NATO were dissolved. The European countries can coordinate their military actions through bilateral negotiations, and NATO would not be serving as a tripwire to a useless, highly-destructive war with Russia. Oh, and the opportunity for collaboration with our NATO “ally” Turkey would be drastically reduced. The horror, the horror!
Lilyhammer is (or rather, it was) a FANTASTIC programme.
Mafioso vs. Muslim
National Day Speech (at 33m25sec)
Lilyhammer.
Israeli grapes and Arabic nutjobs
Lilyhammer.
I read Breivik’s manifesto. He’s NOT crazy.
Well, that’s as may be. But Breivik didn’t actually write most of the manifesto, so it doesn’t demonstrate anything, one way or the other.
I was wondering about that. Whether he wrote it himself.
You’ve just asked my burning question. After all this time, it’s still burning.
Doing a linguistic forensic analysis on that “manifesto” would show how much of it is written by a native English speaker. I realize Norwegians often learn English, but – for instance – a lot of his email recipients for his manifesto are kind of “insider baseball” American neocon sites. For instance, how many Europeans read National Review??
There were a lot of 3-letter cultural attachés at the American embassy in Oslo. They scattered after WikiLeaks broke. IMHO, they left Norway’s PET in ‘charge’ of their project of weaponizing this brain disordered man who spent a year in the dark playing “Worlds of Warcraft”. At the time, ol’ Hillary was looking for white lone extremists…
….I’ll say again, they kept him supplied with steroids, and the plan was to roll him up as soon as he stepped out of the truck in Oslo. The truck was never meant to go off. And he was clever enough to keep them totally in the dark about his plans for Utoya…he had lots of costumes – somewhere there are photos available of him dressed up in them. So the police uniform, which he was wearing on the ferry to Utoya, was *his* plan. As were all his weapons.
ABB got away from them because the Norwegians never took his schtick seriously. It was one of those stupid American things. Remember, they couldn’t even figure out who Fjordman was, for heaven’s sake. And when Fj got a lawyer and turned himself in, they didn’t believe him at first. Their treatment of him, an innocent man, shocked his lawyer deeply. As Fj remarked, they kept his socks for a year, looking for clues.
Norway is a good example of why superior intelligence is not necessarily a trump card. It is a beautiful country which has fallen into the hands of a soft dictatorial (vs. “hard” dictators) who rule with a velvet-wrapped steel fist. DO NOT GET OUT OF LINE.
Something pleasant from Norway—this lovely young woman’s rendition of Bach’s Trumpet Concerto:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XXc2JRyPcJU
“Norway is a good example of why superior intelligence is not necessarily a trump card.”
My theory (not mine, actually, but one I adhere to) is that intelligence is composed of many factors, and that the general intelligence we have read about is being split apart, due to the beneficent environment of the welfare state and modern medicine.
So, you have the government being run by men with high verbal ability but deficient in other abilities, such as creative thinking, scientific understanding, or moral characteristics. Plus, the bureaucratic state, of course, which promotes and protects the most incompetent individuals imaginable.
…he had lots of costumes – somewhere there are photos available of him dressed up in them.
Let’s never forget the photos of him wearing his Masonic outfit … funny how that was “forgotten about” by the MSM eh …
I can’t believe that GoV published El Ingles essay on a predicted Danish Civil War TEN years ago! I’m off to read it for the nth time.
I didn’t read that, but all sorts of violence has been predicted, particularly for the last ten years, while in fact the violence has only come from one side.
“People are waking up at last…” Really? Not in France, not in Netherlands, and as we shall see, not in Germany. While in Norway, which has figured prominently, above, there is a very good chance the next election there will see the return of the Labour party with Jonas Gahr Støre as the next PM–a man no better than Stoltenberg….
For all that, Norway is in fact in much better shape than Denmark or Sweden, for the present.
I couldn’t see a donate link in this post…
Using Android
At the main page, https://gatesofvienna.net/, scroll down until you see the tip cup on the left sidebar. Just above it is the “Subscribe” button, and below it is a “Donate” button. Choose one of these buttons, or the cup itself. The “subscribe” button sets up a recurring monthly amount of $15, and the other two are for one-time gifts.
That cup is misleading, but it’s so purty…another Baron design. The “button” is really a rectangular kind of embossed looking thing. On my honey-do list is having the B make a picture of a button so that when I tell people to choose the “button” the meaning will be very clear. Like a button with four holes in it, waiting to be sewn onto a shirt…
Lady D, thanks for the link to the cab ride on Nordlandsbanen from Trondheim to Bodø, my wife’s sister lives just north of Trondheim, near the railway line, and we were able to see her house.
Being from Nordland and having travelled that route many times, she watched it all the way. Thanks again! Peter.